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Using Forum Marketing to Build Your Business

Forum marketing and taking part in social networking and business networking websites can considerately boast your brand and traffic to your website. Forums give you the ability to reach your target audience and develop an image for your brand and yourself. The best part? IT’S FREE!!

Forum marketing a new term that often gets put in the Spam pile. But in reality forum marketing is a worthy activity that can boast more than your sales. Basically to take part in forum marketing you need to take part in forums. You can do this by answering people’s posts or starting your won threads. Generally to consider forum marketing actually marketing rather than just taking part in a forum you will need to have your own website linked every now and then (when appropriate). Although many people have their website link on their signature so that their link is always there without being pushy.

How can boast your traffic and brand identity at the same time?

1) Your profile should be well done and correct. Make sure you have a fully functional profile that actually has your contact details, name, link and information that readers can use to establish your authority in this particular field.

2) Never be to sales driven. If you are online trying to establish traffic and brand identity, people will be turned off if your posts, profile and threads are too sales driven. Forums are more about directing people rather than pushing people.

3) Take part in the forum topics. If you have an active presence in the forum people are more likely to trust you and your website. So take some time each day to answer questions and be part of the community.

4) When you post make sure that your posts make sense, are intelligent and offer something to the community. The more questions that you answer and the more people that find your posts relevant, the more authority you will form.

5) Make sure than you forget about your products and services. When posting you should be trying to build up authority for yourself, then your site and finally your products and services. People can smell a salesman a mile away.

6) Put a photo or picture on your profile, so that your posts can be recognized immediately. This way once you have trust you will develop more brand recognition.

7) Always remember that you’re representing yourself on these forums. So don’t swear or say/post things that you might regret later on.

Popularity: 57% [?]

“Is it the next best thing to sliced bread…or the next asbestos?” - Dr. Mark Wiesner, a Duke University professor.

Reports are sketchy about what really went on at the grand opening of Minatec*, Europe’s primary center for practicing innovation in nanotechnology, in Grenoble, France.

An apparent press-blanket kept news coverage of the event to a minimum, but what appears certain is this: on June 1 2006, roughly a thousand protesters crashed Minatec’s opening party, causing the French President to pull-out of his planned attendance, and delaying the center’s opening by a day. According to activist group Earth First!* there was a “military-like control & siege” of the French town, “with riot police wading in and injuring people.”

Since then the center has managed to remain open and in business, protests aside. But the questions remains: what is nanotechnology all about, and perhaps more importantly, why is it worth waging war against?

War on very small things

To start to understand the war on nanotechnology, we have to grasp at least some of the concept of what nanotechnology is. If, like me, you aren’t employed in applied physics, materials science, interface and colloid science or supramolecular chemistry, it’s worth pointing out that nanotechnology is the science of the very very small. Word experts at Princeton University describe it as the branch of “engineering that deals with things smaller than 100 nanometers”; and to answer your next question, a nanometer is equal to one billionth of one of our regular meters– which makes a nanometer very very small.

So why are people becoming hostile to nanotechnology? Well, the practice of nanotechnology itself generally involves manipulating nature at the atomic and molecular level; reconstructing matter, and even creating entirely new living organisms; from the cell up. The impact this could have on our future lifestyle is tremendous. An article* published in 1995 in Wired magazine spoke about biologist Leeroy Hood’s vision of being able to “rewrite human genes” and cure diseases in an instant. Over a decade on, medical scientists are trying to realize these dreams; but now nanotechnology isn’t being restricted to medicine. An India Daily article on current and future developments in the field of “Military Nanotechnology” spoke of the terrifying “Nano-bomb that contain engineered self multiplying deadly viruses that can continue to wipe out a community, country or even a civilization.” Researchers in the US are already trying to find out just how advanced China’s research into the field of nanotechnology is.

The war against this potentially dangerous science of the very small rages on. Protests at the potential health implications of clothing modified by nanotechnology, to be “stain- and wrinkle-resistant”, has taken place outside stores selling these goods in Chicago. A spokesperson for the protesters described nanotech as “a radical and unpredictable new technology”. In Jürgen Altmann’s report Military Nanotechnology* he concluded that it “could trigger a new arms race and gravely threaten international security and stability”. A study* carried out by a professor of life sciences communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, rocked the world with news that 70.5% of Americans found nanotechnology morally unacceptable. “They are rejecting it based on religious beliefs,” said Dietram Scheufele, the author of the study. He stated they don’t want people “playing God.”

Regulating nanotech

With the scientific giants like Minatec still doing business, and the Eddie Bauer store in Chicago still selling nanotech clothes; there seems to be no end in sight for the technology which last year was incorporated into $50 billion worth of consumer goods– and neither for the war against it. As the debate becomes more and more popular, and the implications of nanotechnology come further and further into the realm of our daily lives; it’s good to hear a voice of reason amongst all the hysteria. Nanoethics* is a research & education organization, which like many similar organizations, was set up “to move nanotech ahead responsibly”, and work “to develop real safeguards before we unleash such a powerful technology on our world”. Whether Nanoethics and there contemporaries will have their desired effect on the science remains to be seen; but one thing is for sure: the war on nanotechnology has only really just begun.

References
* Minatec… http://www.minatec.com/minatec_uk/index.htm
* Earth First!… http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/?q=node/1397
* Wired… http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/hood.html
* Military Nanotechnology… http://www.amazon.com/Military-Nanotechnology-Technology-Contemporary-Security/dp/0415371023
* Nanoethics… http://www.nanoethics.org/

Popularity: 34% [?]

Recently it has been popular that people who are successful don’t have to work 5 plus days a week and work their fingers to the bone to achieve their goals. Working smarter, but not harder is the new way of doing things, so get on board and have some fun.

1. Focus

Keep the focus on your goals and where you are going, stop thinking about how you are traveling and what is in your way, instead keep your mind on what you are working towards and what it will be like to get there. Keep the focus on these goals and do every task with the knowledge that this task is taking you to your goal. You may also want to come up with short term goals to help yourself through each period.

2. Look After Yourself

You need to take the time to check in with yourself and make sure that you are balanced and focused. Take the time once a week or month to schedule some thinking time. Block everything out and spend some time working on yourself. Just like your car, you need to service yourself every now and then.

3. Work with yourself

You know what you are good at, what you need help with and what kind of things stress you. Make sure that your work is tailored for yourself. Therefore you need to spent more time doing the things you are good at, less time on the things that trouble you and the things that will cause stress. If you like working during the night, you should. Don’t try to do important things in a time of the day that isn’t your peak and so on.

4. Rewards

Take the time to reward yourself and take time for vacations. This is important but so is the idea of a mini break. This means that every hour, try to take 2 minutes to yourself. Just breath and refocus yourself.

5. Indulge your work space

If you are going to spend a lot of time in your work place, make sure that it suits you, the way you work and how you like to work. If you like bright colours around you, then put them in your work place. Make sure there is sufficient ventilation, clean air and pleasant sounds. Also make sure that your desk is organized and easy to move around.

6. Delegate or Outsource

You need not do everything yourself. If you have a small company it may be worth while outsourcing smaller work so that you can concentrate on your goals and focus. For instance you should work towards having an answering service, bookkeeper and perhaps even a virtual assistant.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Popularity: 37% [?]

Your brand is a the very essence of who you or your company are. A brand will give you the opportunity to stand a side from your competitors and be remembered. Take a minute to think about a few things in life that you like. What’s you favourite drink? What kind of computer do you use? What kind of car do you drive? And so on. The answers will most likely be brands, like, Coke, Apple and BMW. Why do you like these brands? What about the brands that you stay loyal to makes you stay loyal? Is it their products or their name?

Brands, actually strong brands, stand the test of time and have the ability to ride through issues that may occur. For instance an issue that concerned Panadol in the early noorties could have ruined their brand. But through brand re-establishment their brand stood the test of time.

Tips for creating and establishing your brand

1. Take a minute to think about some strong brands that you look up to. Write them down, think about them and find out more about them.

2. Start thinking about your own brand and the core message that you want to present. Ask yourself some questions: Who are you? How to do you want people to think about you? What values are important to you? What images do you want people to see when they think about you?

3. Write down answers to these questions and think about what connects these statements.

4. Your branding needs to authentic and feel real. This means that your brand and it’s statements need to come from the heart. People won’t believe in a brand that doesn’t seem real.

5. Now think about your brand message and it’s audience. Who is your audience? What kind of people do you want to impress? What kind of people do you want to deter, if any? When your audience leaves your sight, what do you want them to remember? Think about your general audience, but also take the time to think about your target audience, because you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.

6. You need to make sure that once you have designed your brand image you make sure that everything you do, say and send out has you brand image on it or the core values of your image is attached to it.

7. Take time to study the brand messages of people that you look up to. You can start by googling the person and finding out more about them and their brand. Sir Richard Branson is a great place to start.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Blogging is not all about being the best writer on the web. Becoming successful at blogging is all to do with providing excellent content for your readers. Nowadays anyone can set up a blog site and start blogging. It takes a matter of hours to set up and such resources such as WordPress make things 100 times easier. Even though anyone can do it, it takes a lot of effort to be a great blogger.

First off you need to have a blog strategy. Pick a niche subject you are interested in and blog about your subject. While writing your niche it is important to you conduct blogger relations. This is where success will begin. Contact and maintain conversation with other bloggers. Leave comments on their blogs and in turn they will do the same for you. Bloggers provide link backs, this way there are links back to your blog from other blogs, and a great way of getting additional traffic.

Content is the key. Create content of value to your target audience. This way your readers will have a reason to return at a later time. This is one of the most important parts of blogging. Good return and relations with your readers is essential.

Don’t be afraid or put off blogging when others criticize your ideas and blogs. Use it as opportunity to get a conversion flowing. This will earn you respect in then the blogosphere. In many ways a criticism of your work can bring more attention to the discussion and increase readership, as well as being constructive.

Most of all promote your blog. No-one will find or read your blog if you don’t open doorways to it. When you have written articles you must start to promote them. Start chatting to other bloggers online and connect with them. When bloggers take note of your article, it tends to have a viral effect, increasing the amount of reader you will receive. So start producing quality content now and promote your blog.

• Use WordPress to make managing your blog easier

• Have a strategy

• Pick your niche

• Conduct blogger relations

• Leave comments for link backs

• Have good content

• Give readers a reason to return

• Use criticism constructively

• Open doorways

• Enjoy it!

Popularity: 35% [?]

Most people do not readily realize how old the Internet actually is these days. The Domain Name Server, or DNS, was created in the year 1984, and by 1985; there were already several different top level domains that could be used, including .com, .org, .edu, .gov, .mil, .cctld.

The first .edu domain names to be registered were cmu.edu, purdue.edu, rice.edu and ucla.edu, all of which occurred in April of 1985. The first .gov domain name registered was css.gov in June 1985. The first .org domain name registered was mitre.org in the month of July 1985.

The first .com domain name was registered on March 15, 1985. The first domain name ever to be registered on the Internet was Symbolics.com. Although the website is not much to look at, it is still up and running even today, more than 20 years later.

This is a list of the first 100 domain names ever to be registered. Some are well-known names, and others are less well known, though they were important companies twenty years or so ago.

1985 – Only six domain names were registered this year, which should speak volumes about how popular or accessible the Internet actually was.

Symbolics.com, on March 15 1985.
BBN.com on April 24, 1985.
Think.com on May 24, 1985.
MCC.com on July 11, 1985.
DEC.com on September 30, 1985.
Northrop.com on November 7, 1985.

1986 – The year 1986 experienced a much larger growth in domain name registrations, with 54 of the first 100 domain names registered coming into existence this year.

Xerox.com on January 9, 1986.
SRI.com on January 17, 1986.
HP.com on March 3, 1986.
BellCore.com on March 5, 1986.
IBM.com on March 19, 1986.
SUN.com on March 19, 1986.
Intel.com on March 25, 1986.
TI.com on March 25, 1986.
ATT.com on April 25, 1986.
GMR.com on May 8, 1986.
TEK.com on May 8, 1986.
FMC.com on July 10, 1986.
UB.com on July 10, 1986.
Bell-ATL.com on August 5, 1986.
GE.com on August 5, 1986.
Grebyn.com on August 5, 1986.
ISC.com on August 5, 1986.
NSC.com on August 5, 1986.
Stargate.com on August 5, 1986.
Boeing.com on September 2, 1986.
Itcorp.com on September 18, 1986.
Siemens.com on September 29, 1986.
Pyramid.com on October 18, 1986.
AlphaCDC.com on October 27, 1986.
BDM.com on October 27, 1986.
Fluke.com on October 27, 1986.
Inmet.com on October 27, 1986.
Kesmai.com on October 27, 1986.
Mentor.com on October 27, 1986.
NEC.com on October 27, 1986.
RAY.com on October 27, 1986.
Rosemount.com on October 27, 1986.
Vortex.com on October 27, 1986.
Alcoa.com on November 5, 1986.
GTE.com on November 5, 1986.
Adobe.com on November 17, 1986.
AMD.com on November 17, 1986.
DAS.com on November 17, 1986.
DATA-IO.com on November 17, 1986.
Octopus.com on November 17, 1986.
Portal.com on November 17, 1986.
Teltone.com on November 17, 1986.
3com.com on December 11, 1986.
AMDalh.com on December 11, 1986.
CCUR.com on December 11, 1986.
CI.com on December 11, 1986.
Convergent.com on December 11, 1986.
DG.com on December 11, 1986.
Peregrine.com on December 11, 1986.
Quad.com on December 11, 1986.
SQ.com on December 11, 1986.
Tandy.com on December 11, 1986.
TTI.com on December 11, 1986.
Unisys.com on December 11, 1986.

1987 – This was another year that saw a significant increase in domain name registrations, making up the last 40 domain name registrations in our top 100.

CGI.com on January 19, 1987.
CTS.com on January 19, 1987.
SPDCC.com on January 19, 1987.
Apple.com on February 19, 1987.
NMA.com on March 4, 1987.
Prime.com on March 4, 1987.
Philips.com on April 4, 1987.
Datacube.com on April 23, 1987.
KAI.com on April 23, 1987.
TIC.com on April 23, 1987.
Vine.com on April 23, 1987.
NCR.com on April 30, 1987.
CISCO.com on May 14, 1987.
RDL.com on May 14, 1987.
SLB.com on May 20, 1987.
ParcPlace.com on May 27, 1987.
UTC.com on May 27, 1987.
IDE.com on June 26, 1987.
TRW.com on July 9, 1987.
UniPress.com on July 13, 1987.
Dupont.com on July 27, 1987.
Lockheed.com on July 27, 1987.
Rosetta.com on July 28, 1987.
Toad.com on August 18, 1987.
Quick.com on August 31, 1987.
Allied.com on September 3, 1987.
DSC.com on September 3, 1987.
SCO.com on September 3, 1987.
Gene.com on September 22, 1987.
KCCS.com on September 22, 1987.
Spectra.com on September 22, 1987.
WLK.com on September 22, 1987.
Mentat.com on September 30, 1987.
WYSE.com on October 14, 1987.
CFG on November 2, 1987.
Marble.com on November 9, 1987.
Cayman.com on November 16, 1987.
Entity.com on November 16, 1987.
KSR.com on November 24, 1987.
NYNEXST.com on November 30, 1987.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Anyone who has ever used Gmail, Microsoft Outlook Web Access or Google Maps is already indirectly familiar with the power behind AJAX, which gives the responsiveness associated with desktop applications to website applications. AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML enables back-channel communication in these web applications so that only small portions actually ever need to update in order to respond to the activity by users. AJAX is capable of offering an improved user experience, benefiting both the website designers with reduced server and bandwidth requirements, and the web application’s users with increased usability.

The Yahoo User Interface, or YUI, is a library, or a set of utilities and controls that is written in JavaScript. The Yahoo! User Interface can be used to build web applications that are richly interactive through the use of DOM scripting, AJAX, DHTML and other effective tools. You will also find several core CSS resources in the YUI library. The YUI library’s components are all open source, which means that they are free for any and all uses.

DOJO is an open source toolkit for DHTML that is written in JavaScript. DOJO builds on several different contributed code bases, including Burstlib, F(m) and nWidgets. For this reason, Dojo is often referred to as a unified toolkit. The main purpose of Dojo is to solve some of the long-standing problems that have existed relating to DHTML, which have prevented the mass development of dynamic web applications. Dojo makes it easy to build dynamic capabilities directly into web pages or other JavaScript supported environments. The components that are provided by Dojo can be used to create websites that are more responsive, user friendly and functional. Through the use of Dojo, users can build user interfaces more quickly and easily before, simplifying complex scripts through the use of lower-level Dojo APIs and compatibility layers.

Ext JS is a client-side JavaScript-based framework that can be utilized to build web applications. Ext originated as a set of extension utilities created for the Yahoo! User Interface library (YUI). These extensions were well received and quickly organized into their own independent library. Ext was originally distributed as Yui-EXT. Jack Slocum released version .33 of Yui-EXT, which turned out to be the final version of the code under that specific name, because by the end of the year the library had gained enough popularity that its name simply became Ext. In 2007, a company was formed to deal with the growing popularity of Ext, and the tool kit is now dual licensed under commercial license and the LGPL. On April 1, 2007, the Ext library officially hit version 1.0.

AJAX requires a significant level of mastery when it comes to JavaScript. Unfortunately, JavaScript happens to be one of the most misunderstood, misaligned programming languages out there. However, JavaScript is actually an extremely powerful object-oriented scripting language. As more developers become acquainted with the true power behind JavaScript, they can better take advantage of everything that AJAX has to offer the Internet.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Popularity: 32% [?]

As if the rest of the world wasn’t enough, the iPhone takes the webmaster world by storm! The Apple iPhone has unquestionably shaken the technological world, managing to single handily drive both enthusiasts and every day consumers into an absolute frenzy. Armed with its colossal touch screen and flirting with its sleek and rather seductive design, the Apple iPhone has been widely dubbed the technological revolution of the year – and for good reason.

While the iPhone is gifted with a vast variety of features, ranging from its unrivalled cosmetic characteristics to its solidly developed internal applications, one must naturally question how far this nifty device is willing to extend its ground-breaking qualities into the business world – and more precisely, the webmaster domain.

Equipped with an extremely effective and consistent wi-fi feature, which is enforced with a first-class web browser, the iPhone allows webmasters to easily access their web hosting control panel, manage forums, or even make a blog post at the touch of a screen. The device allows a computer-like online browsing experience.

It’s reasonable to expect that something Apple defined as a phone, media player, and internet communicator rolled into one, would hold some sort of email capabilities – and let me tell you, the iPhone does not for a second fall short on this. Currently supporting POP3 and IMAP email, Apple has drifted away from the traditional use of standard mobile email, which seems to be excessively restricted. This means webmasters can easily receive support from providers (web hosts for example), assist users or even read alerts that have been dispatched to their email address.

In what may be one of its most valuable features, the iPhone is proficient in subscribing to RSS feeds, which without question is valuable to any webmaster.

While the standard iPhone is an impressive toy, it can be further pushed to produce a succession of generously proportioned features – at a cost. I’m referring to jail breaking, which in its simplest terms refers to hacking the operating system and therefore forcing the device to accept third party applications. Some of these programs include;

However my favourite application would have to be Telekinesis, which allows you to completely control your computer from your iPhone through the effective use of wi-fi.

Regardless of whether the iPhone is jail broken or kept in its standard form, this ingenious device is of benefit to practically anyone running a website. Its sleek design, flawless operating system, and vast array of practical and innovative features is the reason technological enthusiasts and everyday consumers are equally excited with this product.

Popularity: 34% [?]