jazzme1:
1. Identify where your blogs potential readers are gathering

Quite often the forum is not just a standalone forum – it could be just part of a larger site. So hunt them down!
They don’t have to be big forums either (but they should be active).

2. Join up…. and Do Nothing (for a while)
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This is key. Many people identify a hot forum and rush in, leaving links to their blog as fast as they can. All this will do is quickly get your banned, annoy people and hurt your blogs reputation.
Instead of rushing in – join up and be a lurker for a few days. Watch and learn.

Learn who the key players are.
Watch to see what topics are hottest.
See which areas of the forum are most active.
Observe what the culture and rules of the forum are.
This ‘lurking’ is all about learning as much as you can so you can so that when you actually get active you can do it in a way that actually connects.

3. Set up your Signature and Avatar

Set up a very simple yet effective signature so that when you start posting people can find out more about you.
If the forum allows you to choose an avatar – choose a simple one of these.

4. Start Posting

You have watched, learned and set yourself up – now it is time to start interacting with the forum.
Don’t go too hard too fast. Keep in mind that this is a community that you’re entering. Nobody likes a showoff or attention seeker. A few posts a day for your first week is more than enough. This means by the end of the week you’ll have 20-30 posts which is a signal to those on the forum that you’re investing time into it.
Point people to sites that might help them or answer their questions – but in the first week or two show some restraint about pointing people to things you’ve written on your own blog. There will be time for that later.

5. Write Resource Content/Tutorials

In these ‘tutorial’ type posts you want to be writing top quality ‘how to’ type content that people will value highly. In many ways these tutorials are the type of things you might normally post on your blog.
It’s writing impressive content that makes people pay attention to you.
In these tutorials you generally will either include a relevant link to my blog to a post that extends the topic or is a ‘further reading’ type link OR at the end of the tutorial you include a simple line pointing out that you write more of this type of thing on my blog (with a link).
What you'll find is that as you write these tutorials that people begin to want to know more about who you are. When you help people do something it makes an impression and they begin to seek you out.

6. Make Connections

You will find that the relationships will happen fairly naturally at this point but you can also put a little extra time at this point to establish relationships with people in the forum, particularly key influencers, moderators and owners. Send these people private messages introducing yourself, encouraging them (particularly owners and moderators – many of them will really appreciate positive feedback) and even making offers of help or suggestions (if appropriate).
If you show that you’re willing to help make a forum a better place you’ll find these key people within the forum will be very open to working with you at some point in the future.

7. Let Others Promote Your Blog

You'll find that at this point a wonderful thing happens – forum members begin to promote your blog. They come across you either through you answering questions, your tutorials or through conversations that you have with them and they begin to read your blog. When they find something on it that they like, they write about it.
It’s almost like when you find other bloggers in your niche beginning to discover your blog – but instead it can potentially be a whole community discovering your blog at once (a very powerful thing).

8. Be Generous, Be Understated and Be Useful

My parting words of advice for people wanting to use forums to promote their blogs is really to be as helpful as possible while remaining as subtle as you can.
This actually takes some restraint. If you’re anything like everyone your natural inclination is to shout out about your blog at every opportunity but take it from me, it doesn’t work. The more understated you'll be the more success you'll get.

Forums to get started with in Nigeria

1. Nairaland Nairaland is a very popular forum to use in Nigeria. But the problem is that bloggers are not using it the way it should be used. As a blogger when you post on nairaland. Don't post the page url underneath. Doing that is useless and a waste of time because readers don't really click on link, the only read and comments on nairaland without minding to know the poster or source.
Tips: Nairaland do not promote the poster or the source. You can find your way by posting other related content by using Title url instead of the raw url.

2. Skulary: Skulary is another popular forum to use in Nigeria. Skulary is a Nigerian based forum where people can write on any topic.

Infact Skulary is a better place to get recognition than Nairaland. When creating an account, you can use your blog name and logo. This is a quick way to get recognition.

Tips: Write meaningful content so that people can start following you on Skulary. The advantages of getting followers on Skulary, is for them to receive email notifications when you have a new post.
Find Skulary on https://skulary.com

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