5 Reasons To Include Forums In Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Are you still involved in Forums? Forums are the early form of what we now know to be social networks and social media!

Online Forums, which also allowed the user to setup a profile, send private messages, start a public conversation;  Are much longer around than other social communities like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Forums are also indexed by search engines. Especially Google values forums very high!

“It is normal for Google to favour forum threads for certain queries. Naturally websites do not optimize themselves for long-tail queries that forums are automatically optimized for by way of user-generated content.”

It could be a valuable step to include Forums in your social media strategies as well! Here are some reasons!

1. The Marketing Benefits Of Forums
The marketing benefits are the same as the benefits that come from social media marketing. In fact your social media marketing strategies should include forums in the media marketing mix. Conversation can be extended into online forums as well.

2. Manage Your Reputation
Forum participation allows you to manage your reputation and to gain respect as an expert.

3. Grow Your Brand Awareness
Online Forums can help you to optimize your brand awareness strategies and tactics through direct feedback etc.

4. Generate Back Links
You can generate direct back links. Every internet marketing pro knows this, but forums seem to be getting out of sight in the minds of the trendier networks.

5. Nice Source For Networking
Online Forums are still a fine source for networking with other professionals. Being involved in the conversation can help to stay up to dater to current trends within your industry.

Forums are still valuable and they are positioned in niche marketers as well. This means relevant and related content, audiences, and engagement.

Related Articles: Social Media Marketing

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Is Social Media Like Black Magic For You?

To use social media for your business can be a challenging job for you. You need to find your way to address your audience effectively!

Most business out there starts to use social media very carefully in lack of knowledge and support. But this is not the issue!

The important point is to get started! Nobody expects from you to be a one hundred percent pro in this field within a few weeks!

If you feel you need help with establishing your social media and inbound marketing strategy, go ahead and ask an inbound marketing professional for help. Rates out there start with USD 150 per hour.

To setup a company blog, followed by get involved in facebook (build your fan page) and get into LinkedIn and twitter, all this can be done step by step and will bring you much more closer to your goals than to be scared of social media and inbound marketing.

Social media and inbound marketing is not about pushing your potential customers, it’s about to attract them, it’s about to establish your self as a trusted source of information and help. It’s about to attract them to come to you, wiling to try out your products and services!

Show your self as a human person (include pictures of you and your staff). People prefer to do business with people, not with corps! Be personal and helpful! Ask for customer reviews (written or better as a video) and post it on your website and blog.

Participate in communities, ask questions, ask for feedback about your products or services. Take complaints as great opportunity to show your clients that you are able to improve and to discuss in an open manor! Integrate social media into your customer service.

There is nothing you can do wrong when you take action. To not take action can be your biggest mistake.

This all above is no black magic and no rocket science. Do one step behind an other! And if you need help hire a consultant to help you, to show how to get the things done and within six month you are up and running on your own feet and use the potential of social media and inbound marketing!

Related Articles: Social Media Marketing

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10 Valuable Twitter Lists To Follow

Here is a update of the blog post of yesterday ‘3 Power Twitter Lists Tips’

• Patrick LaForge’s “Linkers”
  LaForge is an Editor at the New York Times and finds great links to share all the time. These are some of the people he finds them from.
• Josh Elman’s Awesome Social
  Josh Elman recently jumped ship from working at Facebook to working at Twitter. Silicon Valley super-geeks took notice, because Elman is a smart and connected guy. Here’s a nice big list of people he created that you should know if you’re interested in the social web.
• Robert Scoble’s Founders
  You want to see curation taken seriously? Watch Robert Scoble, any day of the week. Scoble has built out more great lists than you can shake a stick at and this one is a favorite of ours. It’s a list of company founders on Twitter. Strange beasts, these are, but good to pay attention to.
• Rebecca Leaman’s Nonprofit Geeks
  Rebecca Leaman works at WildApricot and she’s created a great list of geeks focused on social good, nonprofit tech folks. These people should be on your radar.
• Chris Grayson’s Augmented Reality Peeps
  We like Augmented Reality and so does Chris Grayson, a New York City mobile marketing consultant. He’s put together a nice long list of people working in AR. If you get to know these people now, you’ll probably be glad you did later.
• Mike Taylor’s XMPP List
  Mike Taylor, also known as Bear, does XMPP work at Seesmic. His XMPP list is a nice collection of real-time web developers, without bandwagon-jumping marketing types. Looking for early hints about where the real-time web is going? This list is one place we’re watching.
• Raven Zachary’s iPhone List
  Raven Zachary is the founder of Small Society, an absurdly hot iPhone dev shop in Portland, Oregon. Raven is curating a giant list of all the people working on the iPhone that he can find. We’d love to see his list of just must-read iPhone folks, but this list is pretty cool too.
• Christina Braden’s Disability List
  Christina Braden goes by the handle @advocate4all and her bio reads: “There will never be justice in the world until those who are not harmed are as indignant as those who are.” Hell, yeah. If you want to read biting, insightful critiques of social injustices, a list of disability rights activists is a great place to find them.
• Ben Turner’s Anthropology List
  Ben Turner is a renaissance man with a pretentious Twitter handle (@xeus) but his Anthropology list is an awesome collection of people studying digital culture.
• The ReadWriteWeb Team List
  Charming, intelligent, attractive and humble – the ReadWriteWeb team is a great source of news and analysis about bleeding edge trends and developments online. We’d love it if you’d follow us on Twitter and engage with us in conversation.

If you have further lists, please ad them by commenting to this blog post below.

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11/05/2009 Update: 10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists

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Five Powerful Tips To Get Found In Real Time Searches

To be found in real time searches can help you to get additional FREE organic traffic.

To get additional traffic you need to actively participate in social media and to keep people talking about you and your business.

1. Use Good Selected Keywords
To use related keywords within your posts is an essential point. Also to include your keywords within your WordPress All in One SEO pack.

2. Start To Talk About Timely Events
Research for timely events in your industry and write a post about it. Distribute your post through your networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (Start a discussion). The chances are good that you are able to start a discussion. Keep the discussion alive by commenting on replies.

3. You Need To Have A Lot Of Followers
Of course, the more people are within your network the more you are able to spread the word. But stay focused stay targeted on your industry, because the probability is higher that you reach the people who are interested in your messages!

4. Promote Your Conversation
Do it by ping your information to Twitter and Facebook with up to 140 including a link to your post/ info and by starting a discussion on LinkedIn. Simply include your grabbing headline and a snippet of your content and let the party start!

5. Include Calls To Engagement In Your Post
Ask your friends within your networks for their opinion. Be controversial, be provocative to initialize  feedback!

Let’s go and start today!

Tell me what you think about this post and simply write a comment below!

Read also my other articles about the value of social media marketing.

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FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

Changes Affect Testimonial Advertisements, Bloggers, Celebrity Endorsements

The Federal Trade Commission today announced that it has approved final revisions to the guidance it gives to advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act.

The notice incorporates several changes to the FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which address endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities, as well as the disclosure of important connections between advertisers and endorsers. The Guides were last updated in 1980.

Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor. Read the full release here.

Find here the Text of the Revised Endorsement and Testimonial Guides

Read also my previous post: FTC Wants To Fine You $11,000 Per Post

Take a look here also how your disclaimer can look like!

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