Traffic Generation #2: Joining Community-Based Sites

In my last post, we discussed about generating traffic by submitting articles to article directories. Today, we’re going to consider community-based websites. Community-based sites are very interactive sites and they are great places to generate targeted traffic, targeted in the sense that you are dealing with people who are interest in the information you have to provide. Examples of such sites are message boards and answer sites.

A message board is a site where people come together to discuss different types of topics. The topics covered can be anything from gardening, fishing, money making and sports to dog grooming. Yahoo! Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com) is an example of a message board, likewise is FaceBook (www.facebook.com).

On the other hand, answer sites are sites that offer free or paid advice to its members. Here, you can ask questions and get answers or you can answer questions people ask. You can register with some of them and start offering advice on your area of specialization. They include:

Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com)
Expert Bee (http://www.expertbee.com)
Helium (http://www.helium.com)
and Just Answer (http://www.justanswer.com) – mainly for U.S citizens.

When you join these sites, do not make the mistake of trying to advertise. If you do people won’t pay attention to your adverts and you may be branded as a spammer and banned. It is the quality of your discussions or answers that will attract people to you. What you do is just to join a group that is related to your market and start providing useful information and asking reasonable questions. You can also form your own group in a message board and call it something like Cybercash. You can then invite interested members to join your group. Your advertisement should be done subtly. You do this by putting a link to your web site or opt-in page in your signature file or resource box. Always know that it is the quality of the information you provide that will determine whether members would follow you to your site or not. When you join one of these groups, it is good to wait and observe for a little while. Know how the members do things in the group and follow suit. Do not break the group’s netiquette or regulation.

I again hope that you enjoy this post. I’ll be back very soon for another tip on traffic generation, but for the meantime, try visiting the several message boards and answer sites. Nose around and join as many as you can.