Table of Contents
show
Forums are places where you meet, interact and exchange ideas with people who are in the same profession or share the similar passion. You can also use forums to get opinions on new concepts, troubleshoot your roadblocks, or get expert advice. A great community will help you achieve your goals easily by providing you with solutions to your problems and feedback on your progress. Forums are also great for establishing contacts and networking, which will also help you a lot in the long run.
It is, however, important that you choose the right forum to engage with as this will determine the quality and comprehensiveness of the answers you would get. There are various generic forums like Quora and Yahoo answers where you can ask about practically anything. While this might sound like a good thing, the problem is that the answers you receive may not necessarily be from the experts in the subject. This is a serious drawback of the generic forums. However, if you find authority niche forums, you will receive comprehensive answers and get to interact with the subject experts. Let’s look at the characteristics of a good forum.
What Makes a Good Forum
An ideal forum should be large enough with cooperative moderators and members with quick response time. There isn’t anything worse than posting a question and receiving no response. The factual accuracy of the answers is another critical point to consider. This can often be evaluated from the reputation of the forum or by checking the existing threads. The quality of the community can also be determined from the depth and comprehensiveness of the responses from the members.
The forum should have reputation tracking options which will help you develop reputation over time by engaging with the members and actively contributing by sharing tips and coming up with solutions for others’ problems. The moderators also play a crucial role in the well-functioning of a forum and keeping spam and low quality content off the bay.
We have compiled a list of the top niche alternatives to Quora from various domains, such as marketing, recruitment, technology and web scraping.
Stackoverflow
StackOverflow is the #1 destination for professional and enthusiast programmers. Founded and run by the StackExchange network, this Q&A site is a great resource for programmers and is helping them with their day to day work. The forum has strict guidelines and is well moderated. If you have questions about programming or you are stuck while writing code, StackOverflow community can help you out.
Digitalpoint
DigitalPoint is an immensely popular discussion forum for internet marketing and search engine optimization enthusiasts. You will find great discussions and exclusive tips on marketing here, along with a strong community that’s well maintained by the moderators. DigitalPoint also features a marketplace where users can sell and buy SEO/Marketing services. Forum scraping helps build better leads!
Inbound
This is a dedicated forum for inbound marketing and technology founded by Dharmesh Shah (CTO and founder of HubSpot) and Rand Fishkin (Founder of Moz). Inbound.org aims to build a community of inbound marketers where members can find content, share knowledge and connect with peers. The members can build profiles centered around marketing, read high-quality content on marketing via excellent peer review system, promote own content and stay connected with fellow marketers.
Indeed Job Forum
If you are a recruiter or a candidate on the job hunt, Indeed’s job forum is a great place to get a bird’s view of the recruitment market or seek career guidance from experts in the community. Owned and operated by one of the world’s most popular job board, you will never find your questions left unanswered, thanks to its huge user base. Forum scraping helps build better leads.
WebHostgingTalk
If you are particular about choosing the best web host that provides maximum uptime, quick server response and a load of great features, you can’t go by the money minded reviews out there. WebHostingTalk is a community of hosting enthusiasts who can give you reliable advice on web hosting, server management and administration. Although very niche, this is one of the biggest and most popular forums on the internet.
Web Scraping Forum
Web scraping is another niche domain where getting help wasn’t easy due to the lack of dedicated public forums on the topic. Web Scraping Forum, the newly launched public forum by PromptCloud is rapidly turning into the one-stop destination for clearing doubts and getting help with web scraping technologies. Forum scraping helps build better leads. The discussions here fall under tools and tips, questions, miscellaneous and content resources. If you are stuck while scraping a website all by yourself, Web Scraping Forum is a community you can count on.
Conclusion
The internet is filled to the brim with forums and communities on any niche topic you can imagine. Often, the discussions take the form of Q&A, articles, tutorials, tips and news. However, it’s not easy to differentiate between the reliable and unreliable ones. Instead of settling with the generic forums where you might not find in-depth answers, it’s better to find and join a niche forum where first-grade information is shared. Forum scraping helps build better leads!
