Many people don’t find time to blog because they spend excessive time on forums. And believe it or not, in forums lies your greatest idea source.
If you’re just a lurker, then you surely have problems expressing your opinions. But, if you post regularly, then congrats! You’re half way through.
Next time you visit a forum (like WarriorForum for the IM niche), and you hit the reply button, open your blog as well. That’s because, when you’re replying to some idea in the forum, you’re expressing your own opinion.
Your opinion is original in the sense that you’re writing what YOU FEEL. And that’s what blogging is all about.
Let’s say you see a forum post by someone asking for “The Best Affiliate Program For Newbies”, you suggest something, as well as learn new things from other’s suggestion.
Now write a detailed blog post on “Best Affiliate Programs For Newbies” on your blog, putting in the same thoughts you had while replying to that topic. Write what you feel.
Your blog post certainly would be more detailed and complete than the forum reply, but you still maintain the “You Attitude” in your blog post. You write as if you’re writing a letter, a reply to someone. And that adds such a great personal feeling. Your blog’s readers would certainly be very happy.
Also, while replying in the forum, you can’t be very selfish. You can’t keep on promoting stuff everywhere. Normally, most of your forum replies would be pure information. And you need to bring this same selflessness to your blog. All newcomers to blogger write every post with a selfish interest. Every post just has one conclusion, “Buy My Stuff!”.
You will have a hard time finding ideas for such “selfish” posts. That’s why “hardworking” novice run out of ideas. They only focus on content that has a direct relation to an affiliate program.
But don’t hit the “Post” button yet! Now that you’ve written a good post, see where you can add affiliate links. In the above example, if the affiliate program was indeed a second-tier one, then you can profit from referring affiliates to that site.
Maybe you can add some “related” affiliate links? But don’t add affiliate links for the sake of adding them. If something does not fit, then don’t add any links.
There is NO harm in having blog posts that promote nothing. It adds to the amount of content on your website. Google and other search engines love blogs filled with content.
If you want a certain post to be ranked high, then it also depends on the total quality of your blog. If you have tonnes of content, then you certainly have something useful. But beware, you need tonnes of original content. And that’s what PowerBlogging gives you.
You cast a wide net. You start getting SE traffic for keywords you never had thought about. Since your content is original and complete, you don’t need to use “blackhat” and “artificial” methods to get traffic.
You want your traffic to appreciate your content. And this is what PowerBlogging delivers. And, we’re not finished yet. To say the least, we’ve just begun.
Why Are Forums A Good Idea Source?
When writing on topics actively discussed in forums, you write posts on “unanswered” topics. Or topics which don’t have a firm answer. This prevents you from having a blog filled with rehashed PLR style content. And this also means that, your blog has a good chance of being linked-to by other blogs.
And, never just join “professional” forums. Stick around in forums wherein newcomers interact. See which questions are repetitive in the forum. And just like you would reply to them, write a detailed blog post tackling this very problem.
Case-Study: CodeIgniter and Zend Framework are both PHP frameworks. I’m a novice PHP programmer. I hardly know even the entire basics. But I found that people in the CodeIgniter forums were asking repetitive questions on how to integrate Zend and CodeIgniter. I knew the “obvious” and “simple” answer, but couldn’t believe others had such a hard time figuring it out. I wrote a blog post on that, and posted a link to it in the forums. I got a lot of traffic. But magic happened when the official Zend Framework blog linked to me. I didn’t have to tell them, but they found me. Because my post was useful, and on the cutting edge. It was an idea from the forums. Along with getting an authority backlink (which SEO-Experts will take ages to get ), I also get regular traffic to that post from visitors who “appreciate” my work. They don’t feel they landed on a spammy blog.
Forums thus can be a source of very great ideas. And those ideas are not limited to “problems” or “plans”. They can be anything. Forums can often hint towards controversial ideas, which you can find from the sheer number of replies such topic get.
Then what? Write your own opinion on your blog. Many may disagree with your controversial opinion. But what you have is, another quality post added to your blog, as well as chances of other bloggers linking to you.
Forums are such a powerful place.
So, the gist of PowerBlogging using Forums is:
- Hang out in forums related to your niche. Interact with ALL types of crowd, whether novice or professional
- Whenever you feel like hitting the reply button (i.e. expressing your opinion), create a blog post on the same. The blog post will be detailed since you even have to state the problem/question first (in forums, this is done by the topic creator). What follows is your own opinion, your own voice. You don’t need to reply in the forums. You only have to get the “feeling” of replying.
- Add affiliate links ONLY if relevant. Don’t spam.
- Hit Post.
- Rinse and Repeat
I’ll talk about the advantages of PowerBlogging in a latter section, but let’s move on to some more idea sources.
Since you already know how to use forums, you should automatically know how you should use the idea sources I mention below. Remember, don’t confine yourself to whatever I said. Try out your own ideas. That’s the only way to be remarkable.
