Article in Social Media

Forums like Webmaster-Talk.com are great for reading about what other people are doing on the web, for getting help for a particularly difficult problem, for making deals, for finding people to hire to help you with your online projects and for just hanging out in to meet other affiliate marketers, webmasters, web designers programmers and more. But beware, there is a creature that trolls forums and has been know to be subtle and sometimes bold. They are known as the dreaded sig pimp.

I know everyone has been stalked by one or two in their time spent in forums. You know exactly who I’m referring to. You’ve see them, the guy who joined just 2 months ago and already has 1,000 posts. Have you been so fortunate as to have one follow a thread you started? They rarely start their own threads and their responses to others usually go something like this: “Great post!”, “Sounds good to me”, “Well said, exactly what I thought” and further nonsense. There’s not ever much substance with what they offer.

So what’s the point of the sig pimps useless banter? At some point, people like this got the idea that they might get some traffic by constantly getting the links in their forum signature in front of as many eyeballs as possible. In their quest to build an internet empire they never leave their computer and their life revolves around answering as many posts as they can each day with one of the three responses mentioned above.

I belonged to a forum several years ago that had some 90,000 members and it became overrun with sig pimps offering nothing of value. They were only there to get people to click on their links and it became such a problem that successful people offering good advice started to leave. I left as well, but went back to check a couple of months ago and things haven’t changed much. Sadly, this popular forum has dropped membership to around from that once high 90,000 to 20,000 people and what was once a vital community full of entrepreneurs is no longer useful to those trying to build legitimate businesses.

Unfortunately, most all forums usually have a couple of these lurkers in their midst and many times they are moderated out and banned if they get too bold. The only positive thing these trolls offer is a great example of what not to do in your online discussions. Forums exist for the benefit of their members to learn about subjects they have less experience in and to offer their advice and help out others with subjects they are experts at, or at least have some experience in.

For forums to be beneficial to all, members must be responsible, stay on a thread’s main topic and show respect to other members. Some forums can deteriorate into name calling, way off topic posts, spammy nonsense and just a general waste of time if people don’t follow the rules to the best of their ability. Some people may enjoy spending their time online just talking and getting to know people and most forums have specific threads and sections known as the water cooler or a general discussion area for its members to do that. But the remainder of the threads should be left to those that are trying to build their businesses and figure out new ways of doing things.

Forums can be fun, informational, a great place to meet like minded webmasters and they can be a huge asset to your business. Use them wisely so everyone can get the greatest benefit. That goes for you too, Mr sig pimp.