Discussion forums are a positive means of increasing credibility and making valuable contributions to others who may be just starting out in business or who may not know as much as you do.

Some people use discussion forum to find help while others use it negatively by posting useless comments that spam the forum board only because they want to promote their own business. This is unacceptable by most forum moderators. Some forums offer a place to add blatant advertising, so you can look out for these. However, if there is no place to put an ad, DO NOT post ads on the forum. You will be banned and it is distasteful.

Tips on Posting

1. Be wise and discreet when posting
2. Look for topics that interest you
3. Comment on topics that you know about
4 .Offer help where it is needed
5 .Include your signature line and make it short
6 .Offer free consultation, free ebook, free newsletter, or some other free resource in your comments. This will encourage members who will appreciate that you really want to help.

Be vigilant to look for topics that you are knowledgeable about and make comments that will generate a threaded discussion of value. For example, if someone has a question about Paypal, you may comment on the discussion or you may add a new topic that offers a free report on how to use Paypal to get clients. This will start a new thread or expound on the previous thread. Your free report will be gratefully accepted and may help to increase your subscriber list, if you have started your own ezine. It also helps to identify you as an asset to the forum and members will eagerly look out for more of your postings.

If there are topics and questions that you don't know enough about, you can possibly do some research on the topic to find the answer and post it to the forum. You can find answers at http://answers.google.com or http://answers.yahoo.com or you can do your own search. I know it may seem like a lot of work, but in the long run, it will help to build your credibility for members to see that you have gone out of your way to answer their questions and it will also create exposure for your business as well.

There are softwares and websites that will assist you in locating forum topics by keywords. One of my favorite is "Botsurfer." You can download it for free. Send an email to me with the subject, "Botsurfer free download," and I will be happy to send it to you or tell you where to find it. You can do a manual keyword search on each forum, but that can be very time consuming.

To learn more about Forum topics and tips, there is a free ebook written by Harvey Segal, a well-known Internet Marketing Guru. I have read it and that download is also free. You can download it at my website. I can personally recommend it to you and guarantee that you will find it very informative and helpful to your forum postings. I wish you all the best and hope you enjoyed this article.