Pillar #9 – Group Interaction________________________________________________________________________
Group interaction allows you to form relationships with prospective
customers before they’re even aware of you or your company.
Pillar #9, Group Interaction covers:
- Participating in discussion forums
- Social networking groups
- Answering questions posed by other people
- Commenting on other people’s blogs
Discussion forums are websites on which that you can interact on to build up your reputation as a figure of authority within your own industry.
One thing that you should ensure that you take advantage of is something called a signature message. A signature message is a common footer, which appears at the bottom of every post made on a forum. The great benefit of having a signature messages is that you can generally also include a keyword-rich link back to your website. This means that as well as driving visitors back to your website from these forums, the search engine optimization benefits are also extremely valuable.
Industry Specific ForumsThe important aspect of using forums as an effective form of internet marketing is to make sure that you interact on forums that are relevant for your business. In other words, think about your target market, and the kinds of forums where you target are likely to gather.
You should use search engines to find the right forums for your industry – by entering your keyword phrase and the term ‘forum’. For example you could search for ‘golf equipment’ and the word ‘forum’ or ‘sales management’ and the word ‘forum’. The exact keyword phrase of course depends on your industry – and your own Wordtracker research.
Deciding which forum is right for youOnce you’ve made a list of a few forums which may be worthwhile to interact on, the next step is to decide which of those forums would be most beneficial for you.
The first method of ‘weeding out’ less valuable forums isn’t tangible. It’s simple a matter of you browsing through each of the selected forums and deciding which of the forums house participants which are more likely to be your customers in the future.
Once you’ve reduce the list to no more than around five forums, it’s time to analyze the approximate amount of visitors that each of the forums gets. The can be done by using a combination of Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank.
In my personal experience, an Alexa Rank of lower than 200,000 (the lower the better) and a Google Rank of four or better indicates that a forum could provide a reasonable return to make it worthwhile participating in on an ongoing basis.
How many forums?You should try to find about ten forums to begin with in search engines – this should ensure that you limit the chance of missing out and not discovering forums that are very relevant for your business.
After choosing your ten forums, manually knock a few forums off this list after reviewing some of the posts before reducing the list further by choosing the forums with the best Google Page Ranks and Alexa Ranks. Starting to interact on forumsOnce you’ve reduced your list of forums down to about three, double-check that each of the forums allow live signature links, then register a profile of each on your chosen forums and start interacting with the existing members.
Bear the following thought in mind, though. A forum is a tool where members meet, interact and help each other on a particular topic area. Do not overtly talk about you’re your own products and services – and certainly not within your first few posts. If you simply contribute in a giving manner in forums posts then fellow members will be able to find out more about you from your signature link. That’s all the self-promotion that you should participate in.
Case study - how Freddie Faldo discovers and interacts on golf forumsIf Freddie Faldo wanted to discover the best golf forum for him to participate in online, he’d begin by searching for ‘golf forums’ on Google. One of the first forums which comes up after conducting this search is Golf Forum (Figure 9.1).
By interacting on this forum, he can see that some people use the signature link to describe the golf clubs that they use. This means that if Freddie has a golf equipment shop, he could use his signature link to describe the kind of equipment on offer in his shop. Freddie should ideally use keyword phrases that link to specific categories on his Golf Equipment website.
This too may be a valuable method of building keyword-rich links to your website.Figure 9.1 – The Golf Forum Online
A sample post from ‘The Golf Forum’
Remember that the less common the signature links are on the forum you choose to interact on, the more chance you have of driving visitors through to your website from that signature link. In other words, if you’re involved in an industry which generally isn’t that knowledgeable of different methods of internet marketing, signature links on forum posts are more likely to be fruitful when it comes to driving traffic to your site.
Case study – Jane Jobs & Sales Recruitment ForumsLike Freddie Faldo, Jane Jobs should search for forums that are appropriate for her business, using a search term like ‘Sales Recruitment Forums’. When you conduct this search using Google, one of the first forums which you should come across is called highprobsell.com - a Sales Discussion Board which may well be an ideal discussion area for her industry sector.
My example – Digital Point ForumsOne of the forums which I have consistently posted at in the past is called Digital Point Forums (Figure 9.2). At the bottom of every post that I make, I have a message which says “Free Report – The 10 Biggest SEO Mistakes” and a link to where to download that report.
I’ve made a few hundred posts so far on the Digital Look Forums, which means I have a few hundred posts that contain this marketing message at the bottom of each forum post.
As long as if your chosen forum supports signature links, they will appear on every post you make in that forum. Search engines can pick up these signature links easily when they crawl the forum, making it another great search engine optimization opportunity.
In addition to my ‘10 Biggest SEO Mistakes’ link on my signature in figure 9.2 you can also see two other links - Internet Marketing Consultant, and Website Promotion Marketing. These are linked to different category sections on my website, meaning that I’m maximizing the SEO potential from my signature link opportunity – as well as trying to make the content relevant and useful for reader.
Develop credibilityThere are other reasons apart from search engine optimization of why contributing to forums on an ongoing basis will benefit your business. If you submit posts on an almost daily basis, people will start to respect you more and treat you as a figure of authority within your industry.
Figure 9.2 – Digital Point Forums
A sample of one of my posts on the Digital Point Forums website
Looking back at figure 9.2, you can see that the discussion topic was article marketing. In my post – a response to another forum member, I said: “Ezine Articles worked great for this. I always include a non-HTML URL, a keyword link to the home page and a keyword link to an internal page in my author bio.”
Looking further down the same forum thread, one of the other forum users has quoted me, adding: “Excellent advice just the way that I set my Author boxes up for some time now and it works great.”
By quoting my post in his post, and agreeing with me, he has made me just a little bit more of a figure of authority within the forum, and by default within the internet marketing community.
If you participate in different forums which are relevant for your industry sector, and offer good, free advice without trying to sell something, then forum readers will be more likely to visit your website – overtly selling your own service in forums is likely to be of no use – and perhaps even counter-productive.
Register and postHaving found the forum that is right for your business you will generally need register with the forum prior to being able to submit your own posts. This is a good thing as the effort that it takes to register is enough in itself to put-off many spammers.
Quite often there are forum rules that only allow the use of signature links after so many posts – commonly 10, 20 or 50. This is again to put off spammers – not many spammers would be willing to put in the effort to write 10 posts before being able to get a link.
Make sure that you offer especially great value content in your first few posts. This is the stage where you develop a reputation quickly – good or bad.Three key reasons to participate in forums
In summary, the following are three key reasons to participate in forums:
1) Build up your reputation
Once you have researched, selected and registered with appropriate forums, start participating on these forums - asking and answering questions from other users making sure that you offer good, independent advice.
Remember – do not actively market your own website outwith your signature link. Start participating by demonstrating that you are a respected figure of authority within your industry.
2) Drive relevant visitors directly to your site
Ensure that when you’re given the opportunity to include links within your signature file that you don’t waste the opportunity. Include as many relevant links as you can – while maintaining the readability of the signature – and remember to use the keyword phrases which are most appropriate for your landing pages. Finally, if allowed to, you may wish to vary the colors of your signature links so that they ‘stand out from the crowd’.
3) Improve your search engine ranking
As mentioned above, it’s highly recommended that you include links to your website in your signature file. If you take the time to research keyword phrases using a tool like Wordtracker, these links will be much more likely to offer search engine optimization benefits.
Another increasingly important element within online group interaction is social networking. Social networking represents represent another important route to generate additional brand awareness, trust and more visitors. Two key examples of social networking sites are MySpace and Facebook, both of which I’d like to examine in a little more details below.
MySpace
Although appearing to be slightly on the wane, MySpace is still an incredibly popular website, ranked approximately the eighth most popular website in the world at the time of writing. When you visit MySpace and navigate towards the ‘Groups’ category, you can literally view hundreds of thousands of specialinterest groups which have been set up by MySpace users.
For instance, at the time of writing there are 29,823 groups in the Business and Entrepreneurs category and 48,705 members in the top group within this category.
One of the top groups on MySpace is called Online Skill Game Business (figure 9.3). The business strategy behind their MySpace Group is to use it as a launch pad for a future online game launch. That’s just one of what you can use a MySpace Group for.
One benefit of building your group membership on MySpace is that MySpace offer you the ability to send a message to all of your group members. For instance, you can send broadcast emails to your members alerting them to different events and special offers. As long as if you give people a reason / a benefit to join your group, your membership level should grow. Like a rolling snowball gathering pace, if more people join your group, more people will tell their friends and the pace at which your group increases in size with grow considerably.
Figure 9.3 – MySpace Group Page
Online Skill Game Business are using MySpace to advertise an upcoming product
The difficult part is recruiting your first few hundred members – after that the viral effect of current members recruiting new members should take effect. That is one of the reasons why you should try to build up a good relationship with your list of email subscribers. If you continually provide people with good, valuable free content, then they’re more likely to be willing to take action on any requests that you might have – such as joining new groups.
Imagine if you have a list of 5000 subscribers, and just 5% of those subscribers are willing to join your new MySpace Group. That would mean that you immediately have 250 group members – enough to kick-start things nicely.
FacebookAlthough much younger than its rival MySpace, Facebook is already more popular. It does however depend on where your target market is more likely to ‘hang out’ that really determines the best social networking site for your business. There are pros and cons to each network, with MySpace starting to position itself as more of a site for music lovers.
Just as there are thousands of different groups, some with hundreds of thousands of members on MySpace, there are also thousands of similar sized groups on Facebook.
Figure 9.4 - Facebook
A Facebook group discussing ‘Facebook for business’
Figure 9.4 shows a group on Facebook called ‘Facebook for Business’. It offers information about how you can conduct business on Facebook and advice on how promote your business on Facebook. Part of this group is also an online forum discussing topics related to Facebook for business use.
If you view the Discussion Boards on this Facebook group, once of the first posts discusses tips for growing Facebook group membership numbers – so you can see it may even be a very useful group for you to join.
Another part of group interaction and indeed interactive marketing is answering questions online. There are several websites which specialize in questions and answers on various topics. Some question-based websites are on specialized subject areas – others offer more generalized questions on which virtually anything can be asked or answered.
As long as if you take the time to search for the right question, you will find questions which relate specifically to your industry segment, enabling you to interact on a topic that relates to your business – which allows you to demonstrate that you are an authority in your field.
Yahoo AnswersIn Yahoo! Answers (figure 9.5) there are many questions and many different categories. Categories include ‘advertising in marketing’ and ‘careers and employment’. All you need to do to begin answering questions on Yahoo! Answers is register for your own free account.
You can then browse through to find out what questions are being asked and begin answering questions. Just remember that your answers should be carefully though out and relevant to the question. You shouldn’t try to sell your company – allow your profile to do that.
The way that Yahoo! Answers works means that the person who asked the question views all the answers before picking the answer which in their opinion is the best answer - the most relevant response to their question. If your answer is selected as the best response in the opinion of the question poser then it will be displayed as the most appropriate answer to that question forever. And other users will be able to view your profile from your answer and find out more about you from there.
Just remember that it’s not about selling your business within the answer; it’s about getting your profile together in the first instance – and then answering questions in a knowledgeable, unbiased manner. If people appreciate your answer, there is a good change that they will want to view your profile.
Figure 9.5 – Yahoo! Answers
Yahoo! AnswersLinkedIn offers a very similar question asking and answering service to Yahoo! Answers. It’s effectively a social networking community for business – an online networking service where you can build relationships and meet potential new business partners online. To participate on LinkedIn, you begin by inviting your friends and colleagues to participate with you on the service.
Figure 9.6 - LinkedIn
LinkedIn – a social networking community for business
Once you start to build your list of contacts who you know personally, you are able to view who your own contacts know (your second-tier contacts on LinkedIn) and who their contacts know (your third-tier contacts). You’re not able to contact those second and third tier contacts directly, but you can, just like traditional networking, ask for an introduction to these contacts through the people who are already your personal contacts on LinkedIn.
Because of the way that LinkedIn works, if you’re looking to meet someone with a particular skillset, you should be able to get introduced to them through someone you know. It could even be argued that LinkedIn is a more efficient form of networking than traditional face-to-face networking. Imagine LinkedIn as being like traditional business networking, but with everyone pinning a list of their own contacts on their lapels.
Although LinkedIn provides a great way to meet new business contacts, it also offers an opportunity for you to demonstrate your knowledge on a particular subject matter. LinkedIn has a ‘LinkedIn Answers section’ (Figure 9.6) which is very similar to Yahoo! Answers.
When you use the LinkedIn Answers service, like Yahoo! Answers, do not attempt to sell your company or your services overtly. You’re much better off relying on your LinkedIn profile to sell your business on your behalf – people will click through to look at your profile if you provide enough relevant value in your answer to somebody’s question. There are people on LinkedIn that answer over a hundred questions a week on the site – so obviously they find it a really effective marketing tool for their businesses. Answering questions may or may not be the right approach for your business but you should certainly test it to see if it works for you.
Blog Comment MarketingThe final important part of group interaction is blog comment marketing. By blog comment marketing I mean participating and interacting on other people’s blogs – I’m not talking about your own blog here.
With blog comment marketing, like with answering questions on Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers, make sure you avoid the temptation to market your own products or services within your blog comments. If you make comments on relevant, popular posts which are timely and add value, then people who read your comments will be likely to click through to find out more about you from your name. (With any blog comment you make you get to add your name and your website address – your name automatically links to your website address in the vast majority of blog systems.)
Remember to register on the service MyBlogLog that we talked about in Pillar#3 if you want an avatar (your personal image – perhaps your company logo or your picture) to appear beside comments that you make on other people's blogs.
How to find the best blog posts to comment onTechnorati is a great pace to find fresh, relevant, popular blog posts on which to leave a comment. Technorati is essentially a directory of the latest blog posts from the majority of the top blog in the world. The posts are categorized in a manner which means that you don’t have to wade through piles of irrelevant posts before finding something that’s worthwhile to comment on.
Figure 9.7 – The Golf Blog
The Golf Blog, where Freddie Faldo can leave comments on
At the time of writing there are around 100 million different blogs which appear on Technorati. You’re bond to find at least some blogs that are worthwhile participating on! Using the previously mentioned case study of Freddie Faldo – the fictitious golf shop owner – we’ll try searching Technorati for blogs which talk about golf. When conduction a search on Technorati for golf blogs, one of the first blogs we come across is called ‘The Golf Blog’. (Figure 9.7)
This would be a great blog for Freddie Faldo to start interacting on – he’d be bound to find a recent blog post on a subject matter which was of particular interest to him.
The more Freddie interacts and adds a valuable contribution to each relevant blog post, the more he will enhance his reputation in his industry, and the more targeted traffic he will drive back to his website. Although it’s very important to always include your website address in the form that submits your blog post comments, the vast majority of these links to your website will include ‘nofollow’ tags. In other words, broadly speaking, these links will not help with your search engine optimization. However, blog comments are still valuable links – they drive relevant visitors to your website who are interested in finding out more about you.
Subscribe to the most relevant blogsI’d advise you to take the time to so find ten different blogs relevant to your business. By relevant to your business I mean blogs that your target market is likely to read as well as blogs from your industry segment.
Technorati should be your first port of call to find these 10 blogs. Another great place to find relevant blogs is the blog directory on BlogCatalog.com. Once you have found your chosen blogs, you can subscribe to their RSS feeds, which means you will not have to visit their blog every time you want to find out if they have updated their content by publishing a new post.
The most efficient way to stay updated as soon as your chosen blogs have updated their content is to use RSS feed reading software. An example of this is Google Reader. You can have Google Reader installed on your personalized iGoogle home page which means that you se whenever these blogs have been updated as soon as you open up your internet browser.
Be consentient with your adding of blog commentsWhen you decide that it is appropriate to start adding your comments to blog posts on a particular blog you should do so consistently. Once people who often read that blog see that you add comments on a regular basis, they’ll start to take you more seriously and will be more likely to remember you.
Also, note that many blogs also offer you the facility to subscribe to comments s well as blog posts. That way, if you do add a comment, and you wish to keep tabs on whether or not someone has replied to your comment, then it is a good idea to subscribe to the comments feed for individual posts as well. That way, you can keep track of any responses to your comments and immediately choose whether you wish to revisit the post and add to your initial comment.
• Forum Participation can be a great way of building up your reputation in your industry. By posting good quality, relevant posts in a forum (which is relevant for your industry segment) together with using a good signature which links to your site with a keyword phrase, you will be generating direct traffic to your site as well as tremendously helping your search engine rankings.
• Social networking groups such as MySpace and Facebook can help to create awareness of your company. They can be used to promote new products that you are releasing in the future as well as be a good way of allowing people to let their friends know of your business. Just make sure that you initially interact with people by aiming to assist people rather than aiming to sell them something.
• Consider driving people on your email list towards good forum posts that you’ve made. This will encourage interaction and quickly increase your credibility in that forum.
• Answering questions on Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers is another way to increase your credibility. You should post good quality answers on relevant topics. Don’t promote your own business in the answers – aim to drive people to your site from your profile. If your answers are good enough and relevant enough people will want to read your profile.
• Blog comment marketing – posting comments on blogs that are relevant to your business can also help raise your industry awareness and drive traffic to your site. You should aim to select about 10 relevant blogs and subscribe to them. Every time there is a relevant post, make sure you add a valuable comment. They key with making this a success is consistency