Are Forums Vanishing With the Growth of Blogs?

With Internet being the staunch work horse that is, it’s no wonder that it represents the premiere way to market yourself or your product. Your business will sail upwards if you can achieve enough traffic to your site and, in return, develop customers.

Forums have been a long running staple of the Internet. They’re the place where people who share the same interests can join up, and read posts that relate to their topic of choice. They can also have many different subjects relating to the main topic of the forum.

Web site marketers have long been fans of using forums to promote their sites. They are adding links and information that the search engines find and link-to which will raise your rankings. As a result, your web site link will be clicked on more often by being near the top.

Blogging is the new craze among Internet users. Think of it as a journal of sorts, an on line diary where people post about their daily lives or important things that may have happened here and there. It’s a means to keep friends and family members in the know on a person’s life.

Blogging and forums is not the same thing. In fact, they are quite different. Forums are sites used specifically for information or socializing with those looking for that information, and are sites that you have to join. Blogs are public and generally located on a web site. Other sites like MySpace and LiveJournal are sites that you join in order to give you a place to blog that doesn’t involve needing your own web site. They’re still public as anyone can read the blogs that are posted.

Forums are dying out. This is a fact that Internet users have known for a long time. They’re a pain to join and force you to remember yet another set up of log-in names and passwords. Internet marketers are taking full advantage of the early demise of forums. In fact, they are a primary cause of this by sheer en masse posting and link building tactics that forums don’t allow you to do.

Being able to post blogs quickly and with the right software even automatically, means a mass posting strategy filled with keyword rich content, links and link backs and RSS news feeds. All of these things bring blogging to the forefront of an on line users activity. It’s private, just for you and your friend and family. Forums are a community into one specialized areas that you don’t really control.

Will forums ever truly go away? That is highly doubtful, as they remain very useful to the collective. There is an appeal to talking to other people about a subject that you quite enjoy like video games, television shows or movies. You can post a blog link in a forum that can begin to garner hits from these highly specialized groups. Use signature files though, so it doesn’t seem like you’re blatantly promoting but, instead, actively participating in group discussion.