With the ever increasing popularity of chat rooms and discussion boards on the world wide web there can be many advantages to having one or the other on your website. This creates the opportunity for you to start a community of people in your targeted niche. Setting up such a community will establish you with people that are interested in the type of products and services that you sell.

Once you have made the business decision on just what product or service niche that your website will promote and sell then start a chat room or discussion board or forum on that particular topic and promote this along with your website for registered members. Search the internet for community directories and list your community with all of them that you feel that will attract people that have an interest in your topics. Placing a listing with these directories is normally free which means more free advertising.

Since you are the owner of your chat room or discussion board you can place ads for your products and services, any affiliate products and programs that you promote and of course your main website. Again this advertising will be free since it’s your space.

When other web businesses find your chat room or discussion board and they do not have one of their own you can allow them to link to yours and invite them and their customers to participate in the discussions. This way “all their customers” will see “your” ads every time that they visit. Also this will provide you with more free advertising since those businesses will be linking to you. This will also increase your link popularity with the search engines.

The newly created network between you and those businesses could also provide you with the opportunity to chat back and forth with those owners and exchange business ideas, leads, advertising and marketing methods that are producing results for each of you.

Your newly acquired business associates will also serve as an avenue for you to exchange ad space with or to sell ad space to them if they choose not to barter space. As your chat room or discussion board gains popularity on the web there will be other websites that will want to buy advertising space from you as well even if they do not participate in the discussions.

By forming this community you will start to establish a more personal relationship with your visitors through your communication with them in the chats. This will serve to strengthen the loyalty bond between you and your customers and they will feel much more at ease buying from a person that they feel they know rather than buying from a stranger.

With each new visitor that bonds with you and your other visitors cyber friendships begin to form and these people will return on a regular basis and will spread the word to offline friends and family. They will begin to see your chat room or discussion board as a very friendly place to hang out and visit with friends. And equally as important they will tell everyone that they know that this is a business that can be trusted completely when you need to buy something.

Through your online chats with your visitors as well as just listening to their conversations amongst one and another you will gain valuable insight into how they feel about your business and products or services. This will enable you to more effectively market your sites and products and services because you will have first hand information to what your targeted market is looking for.

With your hands on approach of participating in the chats you will have the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your chosen field by answering your visitors questions about your products and services or your site in general. This will boost your credibility and trustworthiness within your community and they will spread the word about you.

To further your credibility you could offer a free online class with you as the expert teacher. This class could be done in your chat room on a certain day at a certain prearranged time. Of course you will want to promote this free class and tell all your interested visitors to tell their friends and family that may have the same interest. This will create a new source of traffic to your chat room and website that will also be seeing all your ads.

These are just a few of the advantages of having a chat room or discussion board on your website. With increased popularity of your chat room or discussion board your registered membership will grow daily which means your mailing list grows along with it. These members will be happy to receive your e-mail campaigns that promote your chat room or discussion board along with product ads. It goes without saying that you have also offered all your registered members your free newsletter as well. Remember the bigger the membership the bigger your list of potential customers that have double opted-in to receive your e-mail notices.

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