Forum Post meets Article

For those who are into article marketing or article writing as their work from home or part of it, it’s important not to mix up things that should not be mixed up like articles and forum posts.

One fine moment when I was on the verge of my work from home experience specifically crawling through forums, I happen to stumble upon one thread which quite caught my attention. It was around 400-500 words and occupied most of the screen space plus you need to scroll down a bit to read the remainder of it. Well, maybe it was just a really long inquiry on something or an update packed with details that can’t be missed out. So, I read on. To my surprise, it WAS an article and the added irony is that it’s about article writing or article marketing.

The article versus forum post issue has been on the edge of debates and discussions for quite some time but the majority seems to be in favor of putting a thick line between the two. What’s for forums should be for forums and what’s for blogs or sites should be for blogs or sites. Period.

But how does a forum post differ from an article? The world wide web offers a quick rundown of their differences.

Length

Usually, articles consist of not less than 300 words. Articles with 400-700 words are said to be very effective and have greater chances of being approved in article directories and be read thoroughly by online readers. On the other hand, forum posts are generally shorter since they only ask something, give an answer or generate a brief topic to be discussed most of the time. Yet, this doesn’t apply always because forum members oftentimes post an inquiry with numerous questions in it and some added text that the words may sum up to more than 200 or 300. Also, when forum people provide answers to these long inquiries or information on a topic, what more or less happens is that their posts tend to be quite lengthy too or shall I say more detailed. Of course, that’s understandable. However, if forum posts can have as many words as those of the articles or even more, the latter can never be less than 250 words for the directories will surely turn them down. We don’t want that to happen to our work from home, do we?

Structure

Forum posts are somehow casual and conversational in tone but nonetheless informational. Articles are more often than not formal in nature and have several known and distinguished elements which include the headline, the lead, the body and the conclusion. But when it comes to forums, one doesn’t have to bother thinking what headline fits appropriately or how to conclude this and that. You just type it away, hit the ‘Reply’ button and that’s it.

Purpose

The common purpose of articles and forum posts is to provide links leading back to your site. Specifically though, forums are haven for inquiries, answers, opinions, suggestions and discussions. Meanwhile, articles exist mainly to attract readers through its content which may be informational, entertaining or both.

Maybe this forum-post-and-article-confusion is no big of a deal for some. But you just can’t afford to take for granted every important detail in your work from home no matter how small or huge it is, right?