There are so many online forums nowadays and there are many businesses that do not know how powerful it is to be a member of one. With many people sharing the same interests in one website, online forums are the best way to gather useful insights about a certain niche or industry. It is another personal way of getting feedback from relevant people from your target market and sharing information about your business to potential clients.

How to find online forums you can join in:

• Go to Google, Yahoo or Bing and type in your niche or business keyword and the word forum. For example, you run a beauty salon. You can type in “salon forums” or “beauty forums” and then there will be links that will lead you to relevant online forums.
• Check out Google Groups and you can choose the relevant category for your business. You can be as specific as there are options to narrow down the search results.
• You can also use Facebook. Log in using your business account and type in your local business keywords in the search area. Choose from the results the pages that are relevant to your business.

Now that you have found forums you can participate in, create an account so you can join. For Facebook, you only have to “Like” the Facebook Fanpage you want to join and you can participate in discussions.

It would be best that you have a signature link that will always be seen after each post you make. You should include eye-catching lines plus links to your website, Facebook account, blog, or Twitter account. If you are a make up artist, your signature may start with “How to make yourself more beautiful in no time” and then followed by your links.

Make sure that you check the rules of each forum you join. Ask the moderators if you can insert links on your posts just to make sure that you won’t get banned from that forum. There are some forums wherein you have to be an active member for quite some time before being allowed to post links.

Once you get the ball rolling, you will be amazed with the useful information you can gather from just being active on these forums. You can ask specific questions so you can enhance existing products or services or how to execute new ones better. Imagine getting first-hand information from your target market for free!