Today’s social media marketing trend is using Facebook and Twitter to promote brands. People use those two social media everywhere. But they just come around 2008. Before them, online forum is where people go to get socialized on the internet.

Some forum has more segmented audience than FB or Twitter. For example, there’s forum for php programmer, forum for businessman, forum for movie lover, etc. By choosing the right forum we can target more specific audience for our social media marketing.

There are a few tricks in SMM-ing through forum. First, it’s important to gain reputation. Most forums have this reputation point system where members can give good or bad reputation point to other member. Members with a lot of good reputation point will have a good impression to other member. That means they’re popular, or helpful, or trustworthy, or have any other good attitude.

To gain good reputation, once again we must be a human. Don’t act as a brand trying to sell itself. Post like a human and response like a human, but a little more than that.

People like to hang around in some forum because they see it as the right place for smart discussion. So to get popular here, just be smart. Post anything that could be valuable for other member.  Be resourceful in answering people’s question. Avoid useless one liner post, that’s junk and people hate it.

Add link to your site as signature that always appear at the bottom of your post. One or two people will likely to click on one post so it should increase your traffic. It would also act as offsite SEO.