How to Leverage External Forums to Grow Your Brand

Forum sites like Reddit and Quora have become increasingly popular which is relatively new territory for many marketers. Thanks to the panel that the HubSpot Community Champions Program hosted, experts in SEO, Demand Generation, Community, and Global Growth have shared how you can navigate these platforms to grow your brand.

We found this panel interesting and valuable, so we wanted to share a summary of everything that was discussed in case you missed it.

As affiliate marketers, getting involved in external forums may not be the best way to increase signups directly, but it can be a great long-term strategy to help increase your traffic and build community – both of which lead to more conversions. Like many aspects of affiliate marketing, it comes down to whether you're in it for the long run.

If you're willing to invest your time and effort into forums, here's what you need to know:

Why external forums are becoming more popular

There's been a shift in how people get their information, and younger generations are the primary drivers of this shift.

Aja Frost, Senior Director of Global Growth at HubSpot, said Generation Z and even Millennials will go on platforms like Reddit, Quora, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to start their search on a product.

More people are gravitating toward forums in particular because these channels are one of the last places on the web where truly authentic content exists. They offer a place for humans to engage in deep, thoughtful conversations with other humans – not brands.

In places like Reddit, you can find real people's unfiltered opinions. 

Source

How forums boost influence and visibility in thought leadership and search

Google has been testing out a feature in which online discussions on Reddit and Quora show up quite a bit in the SERP. Users are clicking on those results and Google is rewarding this activity because it's finding a sufficient amount of user data that suggests that people want their information from forum discussions.

From Google's data leak, experts have made some strong guesses about why we're seeing forums pop up so much in search results from an algorithmic stand point. Victor Pan, Principal Marketing Manager for Product SEO at HubSpot, talked about the user-generated content effort score being one of the reasons for this impact. 

User-generated content (UGC) is content created for a brand by someone not associated with the brand. Victor explained that it appears as though Google is prioritizing websites that have high-quality UGC which is why it's very easy for searches to show Reddit or Quora results.

Let's look at the data to support these speculations. Since Google's updates in November 2023, the number of Reddit domains in the SERP have skyrocketed with organic traffic reaching up to 638 million visits.

Source: Ahrefs Data, June 2024

How to get started and actively participate on forums

1. Contribute, contribute, contribute ... and then advocate for your brand

"Give much more than you take", said Evan Hamilton, Community Director at HubSpot. He suggested thinking of forums as a group of friends. You won't be liked very much if you're the one always asking for favors and never giving them.

Remember, forums are all about community. They provide a space for people to contribute to the collective and they're usually very far from being focused on self-serving agendas.

As a rule of thumb, you should contribute meaningfully to 10 posts before you post or promote something of your own. 

2. Avoid using marketing speak

Forum sites are informal and very casual in the way that people speak. Your contributions shouldn't be too carefully constructed like a LinkedIn post or blog post would be.

Again, with the friends example – treat your forum discussions like you would an in-person conversation with friends.

If you used marketing speak in that setting or spoke too formally, your friends may not feel as comfortable engaging with you or they might feel like your contributions are not genuine.

3. Follow forum rules

This piece of advice is pretty straightforward. Make sure to review the forum's sitewide rules and abide by them.

Here are some of the rules in Reddit's Content Policy:

• Post authentic content
• Have genuine personal interest in the communities you're involved in
• Don't cheat or engage in content manipulation (like spamming or voter manipulation)
• Don't harass others and respect their privacy

Also note that every subreddit has it's own rules which may include a no links policy. If you break those rules, you can get automatically removed, so be aware.

4. Read the room

In addition to formal rules, there are unspoken rules you should follow. If you become a Reddit user, you should spend time in the subreddits you want to engage in before participating in them to get familiar with what is accepted.

Do we steer clear of certain topics? Do we talk about our services? 

It's also important to know the vibe of different forum sites. Although they're the same by definition, they still have their differences.

Let's compare Reddit and Quora:

5. Unleash your geekiness

It's encouraged to go deep, be less polished, and get into the nitty gritty details of the subject matter when participating in forum discussions.

However, Reddit will suppress posts with down votes, so it's not the place to post something that is intentionally inflammatory.

Grow your brand in the new era of UGC

Because of forum sites' "help as many people as you can first" approach and the prep work needed before posting, it's important to understand that participating in forums is a large investment. If you don't have the bandwidth, that's okay, too. You might want to direct your efforts elsewhere. 

If you can make the investment, we encourage you to do so! You'll start to build your reputation, community, and get the occasional opportunity to discuss your brand.

Ryan Gunn, Director of Demand Gen at Aptitude 8, said, "We’ve seen much more success with Reddit as a demand gen plan than lead gen. For the most part, we are not linking to [our] website or even talking about our services. When we make meaningful, non-promotional contributions, people who need help find their way to our site and reach out."