i also agree that both should be used. If the forum is the right niche for your product (which it should be) then it can be great for traffic and promotion (especially with ecommerce sites). Blogs i find are better for SEO as they can be quicker and you can get a good range of websites with your link on.
Indeed, using the forums you can drive good traffic as well as building blogs you can drive traffic from many sources like search engines, linking to other similar niche blogs
Blog commenting is good for getting backlinks just like forum posting.. but forum posting also generates more relevant traffic if you do it right.
I use about 75% blog commeting and 25% forum posting but that is mainly because there are not enough forums for most niches. Just use both methods.
both works, but forum posting in similar niche works better as you could expect some traffics from the forum .
It is depending on the poster. Personally, I prefer blog commenting. Reason, I have choices to comment on multiple domains (hundreds, thousands of dofollow blogs). You get more credit if your backlinks is coming from unique domain and unique IPs. Forums, gives backlinks from similar domain (just like DP signature). The more forum posts will give more backlinks but all from one domain. Comparing 100 dofollow link from one domain and 100 dofollow backlink from all unique domains, unique is a lot better. But, it depends on your favorite. If you like commenting, the go on commenting on multiple blogs. If you like forum posts, then go on and do post on multiple forum domains.
Completely agree with you. It is better to have 1 dofollow backlink instead of having 100 links from one source. As per the search engine algorithm you only one backlink is consider to benefit the PR.
Forum posting is more time consuming but should bring better results if the forum is targeted to your niche.
I'd say that your chances of the forum posts that are indexed with your link stand a greater chance of being dropped later. Blog commenting has a better chance of being sticky, but you're going to want to go beyond both for a diverse portfolio.
If you want traffic from forum posting, you most likely have to become a valuable member of the community, which takes time. It is then they will start visiting your website. On the other hand, by leaving a simple helpful comment on a blog you will 1) salute the author of the blog 2) give yourself a linkback
So far, I found forum commenting more effective as increasing number of blogs are going nofollow and it is becoming harder and harder to identify the dofollow ones. I'd rather save the energy searching around for the right blogs, and focus on writing more constructive comments on the forums to attract attention and get backlinks.