Creative Traffic Builders

Now that you’ve finished building your newest website, you’re going to have to get out there and let people know about it. A great guerilla marketing technique is contributing through comments on forums and other online communities. I’m assuming that you’re smart enough to participate in a forum that you know has interest in your product. If you’re selling pet products, then you should be on a online community for dog owners. So, here are some guidelines and tips that would make best use of your time:

Speak from the Heart
People who participate in Online Communities can see right through any sales pitch you’re trying to convey to the community. The best thing to do is respond to topics with no alterior motives in your mind. Let your own experiences dictate what you would like to respond to in order to help the topic stay active.

Golden Rule 2.0
There’s nothing more rude in real life conversation than to have someone shout you down before you can make your opinion heard. So, as the golden rule applies offline, it applies just as much online – treat others as you would like to be treated.

Be Personable
This shouldn’t be too hard for most of you as you have had a lot of experience with talking to people on the phone. The great thing about the internet and online communities especially, is that they don’t care as much for proper grammar. With this being said, feel free to type as you would speak to people on the phone.

Get a feel for the Community
Start off by commenting on popular topics (a topic with over 10 responses). The key is providing comment that can either lead to another discussion topic or help build on the topic already being discussed. Just make sure you don’t comment using a closing statement which could lead to the end of the topic. i.e. that’s a great point about embryotic stem cells, but what do you think about the use of cord blood stem cells? Remember, religion and politics are something you never talk about with new people except for when you’re online. The point is you want to create controversy and stoke the topic fire.

Develop a reputation
Before you start spamming people to come visit your sites. I would say posting 50-75 posts without mentioning your sites would be a good buffer to give members of the community to see that you’re not there to just sell something. Let them start to know your interests and what you do for a living, which would naturally help you transition to talk about your site

Cultivate Vanity
People always love showing off, so if you can think of topics that will get people to talk about themselves, then go for it – i.e. Best Workstation Threads, Best Design Threads, Best Joke Threads – things that anyone can answer. They key here is that you’re giving yourself an opportunity to interact with as many people as possible in the community. After each response to your thread, I would recommend writing back a response to comment on their own response.

Take Advantage of Community Features
Most online communities have either Private Messaging or the ability to email people directly. Utilize these features to help fellow community members out. If you think they are in need of private counseling or advice, go ahead and send them a message to let them know you care.

Use this time to Research and Learn
Like I said in the beginning, this type of guerilla marketing can be extremely time consuming, but like one of my favorite cartoon character, Scrooge McDuck, says - “Work Smarter, not Harder!”  So, what I like to do while I’m interacting on these online communities is to find out what people are saying about the industries - favorite websites, favorite features, product requests, customer service hassles, etc. You can learn so much and apply what you learn to your websites.

If you have any additional tips and suggestions, please feel free to provide in our comments section. I’ll try my best to answer any questions or offer my opinions on your online community strategies.