He said, “I would be interested in your take on Shel’s description of two different approaches to social media:” Two Social Media Camps in the Enterprise

In his post Shel Israel describes two camps.

Camp 1:
In nearly every company I talk with, I hear about those who understand that social media is something new and different from traditional marketing. It is not about putting messages into foreheads. It is about the enormous wisdom and efficiency to be gained simply by having conversations with customers, prospects, employees and partners.

Camp 2:
…there is muttering and trepidation of another camp, one that is often being pushed by the traditional marketing people who see social media simply as another channel to push out brand awareness and product-related messages. It is another way to have the corporation talk about the corporation rather than listen to customer concerns, complaints or even compliments.

Responding from my current practice is difficult. For one thing my entire professional career has happened online, in the shadow of Google. I started at an email newsletter editor with 1 million subscribers and helped grow a 50k member forum based on reader responses. I’ve only ever known the cluetrain.

Secondly Israel’s writing about social media at a scale that I left behind when MSI folded and I went freelance. My clients are small businesses so I think these days at a scrappy, micro level.

One of my clients runs a designer jewelry company. He started http://www.FairJewelry.org and writes about the agonizingly slow changes in the mainstream jewelry supply chain. He also wrote a guide encouraging jewelers to be more transparent in their sourcing so buyers can make more educated decisions. His primary tools are his blog and his email – he sends out his FRE handbooks as email attachments to people who write to him requesting it.

I have a client who sells power tools. I visit woodworking forums and aggregate advice, acting as a sort of community editor and highlighter for our site blog and newsletter (30% opens, 46% clickthroughs on average). Not razzle-dazzle social media but none the less it works and generates response (comments and page views) from our readers.

That said, I believe I fall into Israel’s first camp, as I prefer letting conversations grow organically and I lean heavily towards transparency. Also, don’t tell my clients but I’m not a marketer in the traditional sense. I prefer to find mutually-beneficial ways of communication and conversation.

But to stretch my brain a little I’d look at several opportunities/proven models for conversation and community building for an enterprise client.

1) identify and segment the creative types who use their product lines and create mutually beneficial communication tools to empower them to leverage the company’s existing attention share. Something similar to how SalesForce opened their financial ecosystem to developers.

2) build a customer-run and driven (or at least augmented…) help desk.

3) identify the brand evangelists and let them drive. I’d reread all Jake McKee’s lego posts and figure out how to apply his findings to the enterprise.

Thanks to Mr. Shelton for getting me thinking macro! It’s a lot of fun :D

So how about you? What camp are you in?

Ranking for competitive terms in 6 months with a brand new domain.

Sounds pretty sweet, huh? Those are the numbers that Matt Inman reported to Joe Whyte in a Search Marketing Standard interview… Those are the numbers that made the quiz bug bite.

Four months later I’m working with the Search Commander himself, the Internet Consulting Guru Mr. Scott Hendison, to develop a quiz-building app and write link-building quizzes for his clients. Woohoo!

I just wrote 2 quiz marketing posts. The first is an overview of quiz marketing tactics that I’ve seen – going beyond link building (I know, scary territory, right ;). The second shows my initial approaches at quiz writing, how I’ve been thinking about them and the research I’ve conducted to try and become a better quiz writer.

Personality Quiz Marketing for Links, Leads and Consultative Sales
Some Thoughts on How to Write Personality Quizzes for Link Building

A SMStandard article first got me interested in personality quiz writing. The article mentions a quiz called “how geek are you?”

Here is an example of one of the more than 80,000 links developed with this campaign: How geek are you? Notice the badge that links back to the quiz location AND the sweet little bit of link text pasted beneath it… (free online dating). WOW!

Here are some of my hypotheses and questions for your consideration:

1) Start With a Pre-Built Personality-Type Framework
I’ve been working towards creating personality-insight quizzes that begin with a set number of end results (8) for those taking the quiz. To create a stronger framework for my types – which will ensure that people get results that actually match their personalities – I’ve spent a great deal of time researching the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test.

The Myers-Briggs system has 16 types. This page grouped them into 8, which was convenient for a particular quiz I’m writing: http://homeopathy.healthspace.eu/psychology/8types.php

2) The Ring of Truth Will Increase Usage and Linkability
I speculate that people will be more likely to post results (and generate more links) if they feel their results have the ring of truth – if they see something of themselves in the results. Perhaps more to the point, that they see something in the results that resembles their ideal for how they appear to others.

3) Have Lots of Questions but Only 2 Possible Answers per Question
Rather than forcing people to select from LOTS of potential answers, let them pick from just two. This is easier on the brain and helps the quiz go by faster. If you’ve done your homework in understanding the framework of the Myers-Briggs types you can then ask questions based on the binaries they developed in their work.

Here’s an example of such a quiz: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

4) Differences Between 1%-100% Quizzes and “Type” Quizzes?
The wildly successful “How Geek are You” quiz is a 1%-100% quiz. There is only one type – geek – and you get your percentage based on your answers. I have the sense that these types of quizzes would be easier to create, especially if you have a deep knowledge of a given area. Further, in certain areas where people place value in how steeped they are in a stereotype/lifestyle you may see wider link placements. Further, the 1-100 gradient frees you from a more rigorous type system. I can see both having strong marketing application though, and I think there’s a deeper thrill of discovery when it comes to discovering your type.

5) The Crazier the Better?
Upon reading this blog post by How Geek Are You? creator Matt Inman: Fighting 5 Year Olds, I recognize that there may be more in writing crazy, depraved and/or ridiculous quizzes than I initially thought. My brain usually tries to work the site’s content/intent into the quiz itself. I suspect that this may limit who takes the quiz though, and how popular it can become.

Ok – enough writing about writing – time to do the actual hard work of writing quizzes!

Then I started to notice how much people ADVERTISE to get people to take quizzes (what’s your true age? when will you die?). When I see people paying to advertise their quizzes I take this as an indicator that there’s value.

This post – which I may update in the future as my understanding of quiz marketing improves – includes the following marketing objectives served through quiz creation:

1) Quiz Marketing for Links
2) Quiz Marketing for Leads/List Building
3) Quiz Marketing for Forced Surveys
4) Quiz Marketing for Consultative Sales

1) Quiz Marketing for Links
Link development is what originally got me started thinking about personality quizzes (see article linked to above). In this method you strive to create not only compelling quizzes, but compelling quiz results that offer the quiz taker some unexpected or much-desired personality definition. The goal is to have folks paste their results on their blogs, favorite forums. If you’re really slick you create them for MySpace and Facebook.

For an idea of what these types of quizzes look like, and a site that enables visitors to create them for its own advertising ends, check out GoToQuiz.com. Also see the original quiz that helped Matt Inman develop links and traffic to his dating site which he sold: http://www.justsayhi.com/bb/geek.

2) Quiz Marketing for Leads/List Building
Typically these are the folks who advertise their quizzes. And why not? They know the value of a lead/list member and know how much they can pay to get new ones. Here’s an example of an ad I saw (in gmail…):

The Average IQ is 100. – www.TheFreeIqtest.com – What is yours? Find out with our Free IQ Test.

Linked to: http://www.thefreeiqtest.com/ Note the pure lead-gen quality of their landing page. BRILLIANT! This site is all about renting its list to – most likely – online education companies.

3) Quiz Marketing for Forced Surveys
If you have a ready market for selling consumer surveys then you might consider something along the lines of the “Are You Ugly?” quiz (check out parent site worldofquizzes). You may remember the “Are You a Slacker Mom?” quiz that someone advertised so heavily in gmail ads. This is another case where you get your quiz results AFTER taking the consumer survey.

4) Quiz Marketing for Consultative Sales
Maybe consultative sales is too high-falutin of a term for this particular quiz I found. The concept could work for b2b or b2c though. A travel site enables its visitors to take a quiz that helps identify their travel personality. Then, based on this personality, they provide suggestions for where in the world to travel.

What I like is that they created their own labeling system for personality types. There’s more opportunity for them in that they could have developed the concept out for link building as well.

Best Trip Choices travel personality page. (there’s a quiz on the site somewhere…)

I think there’s a great deal of room for developing the personality quiz concept into many different marketing areas – to me it’s one of the most exciting content marketing concepts around :D. Further, there’s huge potential in quizzes for helping segments of your community identify themselves and determine who else in your community they could benefit from knowing. I’m sure there are other personality quiz marketing ideas out there… and many more ways that providing tools for personal insight can benefit your business.

If you have experience in any of these tactics you’re willing to share I’d value an email: gfrench(at)gmail.com.

update:
this site charges 5$ to take their personality quiz: https://www.personalitypage.com/get_passwd.html

It was Ben who introduced me to the back link analysis processes that have become the foundation for my content creation and link building efforts these days. This post is an outline of my methods for the more creative SEOs out there – the article marketers and bloggers seeking to build powerful, business sustaining links – who have perhaps overlooked some crucial publishers and communities to target with awesome content.

1) Know and Target Your Most Profitable Keywords
2) Conduct a Link Hub Research Dig
3) Sort By PR and Links Out (Co-Citations)
4) Determine Your Strategic Options: Social Media, Directories, Blogs, Publishers, Forums
5) GO! GO! GO!

1) Know and Target Your 3 (for now) Most Profitable Keywords
This link building process begins – as your online marketing efforts always should – with your most profitable keywords. It’s likely that these are your most competitive keywords too – the words you used in your URL, the titles of your site pages and in the link text of the articles you’ve been writing and distributing and links and PPC ads you’ve been buying.

The process I outline here can certainly stretch to encompass ALL of your keywords, from the top of the big head to the very tippy-tip of your long tail. I’m not adept at managing and manipulating such enormous amounts of data and for my purposes I find that limitations – like digging in on only a couple of the most important keywords – give me far more traction and forward momentum.

I say know and target 3 keywords because this will give you plenty of data to start a two-three week project at a couple hours or so a day. Target more if you want, but if you lean on the creative side like me it’s important to maintain momentum on projects. Aiming at just 3, or 2 or even 1, will simplify the process for your first run through and will get you to spend more time focusing on the important hub sites in the communities that influence rankings for your target keywords.

2) Conduct a Link Hub Research Dig
This is an exciting part for me because of the tool I use to support my dig. Nothing beats hands-on rankings investigations, but these won’t show you as efficiently whose links are actually affecting rankings right now.

I use a for-pay windows-based program on my wife’s computer for my hub digs. Before plunking down your hard-earned cash for a hub finder I’d suggest working with Aaron Wall’s hub finder, currently housed on his LinkHounds site.

Hub Finder on LinkHounds.

I’m not as familiar with Wall’s hub finder as the tool I use, but in conducting a search on his I found it did help identify the sites that link out to more than one of the top 10 sites for your search term.

It has several posted mirrors in case Wall’s has reached its maximum queries:
http://webseodesign.com/seo-tool-chest/hub-finder.php
http://www.emeraldcoastentrepreneur.com/Hubfinder/hubfinder.php
http://www.cyclelicio.us/hubfinder/

When I search for hub site potential link partners I “open up the flood gates” and investigate the maximum listings for my tool (top 30 sites for a term) and the minimum number of links to sites in the top 30 (which is 2). This means I’ve got tons of back link data for those top 30 sites and will see the hubs that helped these top sites achieve those rankings.

I’d suggest that you conduct as wide a search as possible at first with whatever tool you’re using. Over time you can narrow down your searches as you experiment to find that sweet spot for the term or niche you’re developing links in.

3) Sort By PR and Links Out (Co-Citations)
So once you’ve got 100,200 or even 1,000 sites in your spread sheet you can start analyzing and organizing them.

First I list my sites by PR – though this metric alone is NOT an indicator of a good link – and then by number of “co-citations,” which is how many of the top 30 sites for my keyword this given site links to. All the sites that didn’t return PR get cut. Depending on how many sites I’m analyzing, sites with PRs of 1, 2, or even 3 get cut too. I can hear Mike Grehan slapping his forehead as I type these words, but hey. When you’re faced with analyzing 1,000 sites and you’re spending your clients’ money on your time you’ve got to draw lines using some kind of metric :)

The other important metric of course is how many of the top sites each of these hub sites link to. If there’s a low-PR site that happens to link to a bunch of the top sites then there’s a reasonable chance that this site would be a good one to get a link from. Further, if we’re talking about an uncompetitive keyword then there’s more reason to throw the PR metric out the window as a starting guide.

Once you’ve trimmed the list at the bottom you can trim it at the top too by cutting out Google Answers and all the DMOZ clones out there. You’ll find lots of unreachable-for-now type of sites like CNN and others that you needn’t worry yourself with at this stage of the game. A link from a major site would be awesome, but for now you should focus on the easily attainable!

4) Determine Your Strategic Direction: Content Creation, Link Requests, Link Purchases, Content Distribution
By this time you should start seeing some interesting link possibilities emerge. For one thing social media sites will start to appear – you’ll start to see the ones that may have some bearing on the keyword(s) you’re trying to rank for. Give these their own list and make time to set up profiles in them and see about finding a few friends within them.

You’ll also see directories that appear to have bearing on the rankings for your keyword too. Mark these down as potential submission points and places to potentially buy a link. Some sites sell links and even regular banner ads. If it’s a niche site it could well be worth buying some actual advertising!

Finally, the blogs, forums and other relevant and influential content publishers will emerge, and these are the sites that I focus on with my creative efforts.

For me, the content sites, blogs and forums are a creative revelation on a number of different levels. As a writer these sites show me what kinds of content will earn me publication on their sites, or links from their sites. They’re also a sneak peek at what kinds of content are most relevant to this demographic (as sliced by the target keyword). Whether I’m creating content and requesting links or creating content and requesting publication with link attribution, this list of sites helps me understand what kinds of content (how-tos, opinion, entertainment) work in this space.

Further, these hub sites are often focal points for communities, or are even forums. This kind of a link dig is an awesome starting point for beginning your “conversation marketing” and community outreach because it reveals the influential community sites for a given keyword.

5) GO! GO! GO!
Write articles! Submit to publishers! Write tailored, custom link requests! Conduct interviews for targeted link exchanges! Buy links! Go! Go! Go!

It’s easy to get caught in the analysis paralysis of link digging. It’s exciting to find 100 potential sites to link to you. Excitement is great but I’ve had a hard time getting grocery stores to let me exchange it for their food. The point of this hub identification exercise is to better target your link building efforts on the sites that will make a difference to your rankings. Good luck, God bless, build links!

6) Oh Yes, By the Way…
I’m currently seeking link building clients :) Shoot me an email: gfrench@gmail.com or call me at (919) 696 4225 to discuss!

Here are my favorite tactics for creating content and links – some of which I’ve tested, some of which I’ve observed in action.

1) the Group Interview
You will be blown away by Sugarrae’s Five Link Development Experts: A Group Interview.

And not just by the content. The mechanics of this content creation idea are so clean that they can be lifted out and fit into almost any industry and they work especially well if you’re not a subject matter expert.

The Raw Mechanics:

1) Ask five experts in email what are the two hardest questions they would ask other experts.

2) Send your list of ten questions to each of the experts. Edit their responses into a monster article.

It helps if you’re known or in the community. If not you might should target lesser-known experts or prominent forum members.

The incentive for the contributors here is demonstrating value with notable peers on a site with guaranteed distribution and great link value.

I will definitely be looking for ways to fold this concept into my ongoing content creation efforts for clients.

2) the Contest
One of my favorite examples is Andy Beal’s first SEM Scholarship contest.

Update:It appears that Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest 2 launched today!

Here are the mechanics of his first contest (I haven’t studied the second yet):

1) recruit influential and savvy industry experts to judge your contest

2) recruit sponsors to provide the valued prize.

3) distribute through your network – your blog, the recruited experts, your sponsors perhaps even, your blog contacts – the news of your scholarship contest.

4) make your contest require the submission of content for publishing to your site.

5) hope that the judges can make the time to judge and ensure that the contest entrants are judged by quality-qualifying metrics.

What made his concept so brilliant is that it benefited so many people simultaneously. Here’s an excerpt from my write up of his tactic where I describe who benefits:

1) Andy receives links from SEM bloggers and possibly some news stories for his remarkable contribution

2) Contest winners get prizes and industry attention

3) Industry gets new articles

4) Andy earns excellent content for Marketing Pilgrim by paying with distribution and his “personal brand” relationship

5) Current SEM industry experts get opportunity to reinforce their noteriety + learn new ideas

6) Andy reinforces his role as industry leader/godfather by being a moderator and supporter

Again for this one it helps if you’re already known and notable in your industry.

Andy I’d value a comment to let me know the results of this contest – and whether you’ve got anymore in the works :)

2 1/2) Contest Concept 2
Here’s another contest concept for those who are just getting started with establishing your reputation, this one from Existential Ventures. I call this one the Butt Booty Naked Stripped Bare Link-to-Me Contest. Transparency’s always cool with me and I think I can make his contest mechanics work for some of my clients :D

Here are the mechanics as far as I can tell:

1) Identify your favorite/influential/target bloggers (aka linkerati, or Likely Linkers or Lincolns) in a space.

2) Send them emails describing your contest, whereby if they comment in the contest thread they get the equivalent of one entry to win, and if they link to you they get the equivalent of TEN entries to win.

I like the simplicity of this one. If your incentive is right you should get lots of links. If you’re not careful though it could get ugly… I can imagine in one of my primary spaces, where forums are far more prevalent than blogs, that we would have to be careful not to encourage our potential customers to “spam where they sleep.”

It’s not going to brand your expertise the way Andy’s contest concept 1 above does, but it will definitely get you and your site off the ground.

Perhaps, Broc, you’d comment this post to tell us about the goals and results of your contest so far?

3)Surveys + Research
Surveys – if you can find distribution required to get a decent sample – are a great way to create interesting content, especially if you work in some research that give the actual results more substance.

The keys to surveys are good, exciting and interesting questions that will make great action-oriented titles. Further, I suggest you get started with your surveys in forums. Read my Guide to Creating Link Worthy Content Through Forum Participation for the process.

Further, forums are a great place to test how exciting or interesting your chosen subject is and will tell you in short order whether or not you’re on the right track for a larger link bait piece.

Here’s my mechanics for surveys:

1) Ask questions in forums – without asking too often – and see which ones start good conversations. Be upfront that you plan to potentially “cover this thread” in your blog… otherwise it’s no go and forum members will shun you or boot you when they find out what you’re doing.

2) When a forum thread blows up and a lively conversation starts and everyone’s submitting, say, the best deal they’ve ever gotten in their lives, you’ve got a winner.

3) Wait for the thread to cool and then tabulate your results. Consider participating in more than one forum and posting elsewhere when you get a live one.

3 1/2) I have not tested this, but I think that you should consider buying PPC ads to get more people to take your survey. The more voters/contributors the more weight your finished piece will have.

4) Write your article based on your results and add research + great links out to make the article more of a resource.

5) Contact your bloggers to let them know what you’ve written – if they’re sharp they’ll recognize that by linking to your article they’re in effect linking to these forums which is good for community. Plus your resource is so dang good that they’ll feel compelled to link anyways right? ;)

Extending the survey + research concept:
For added weight for your surveys you can start by asking them of established bloggers.

Here are the mechanics:

1) Ask an established blogger to first answer your question/s. Something like: “what is your fondest memory relating to this topic that’s contextually related to my sales cycle?”

2) Offer to mention that you will be linking to this blogger from your survey points, whether that’s only on your site or also in the forums you participate in.

3) Further, you could combine this with concept 1 above and discover the 10 best questions from your 5 experts and then bring these questions to forums for answering, pulling in more traffic, potential links, and better content through crowd wisdom.

There you have it folks – creating linkable content through group interviews, contests and surveys. There are far more methods than these of course. You’ll read more like these in the future from Conversations Monetized… along with an upcoming guide to the mechanics of incenting content submissions and links!

I’d love to hear your thoughts or ideas related to creating content – send them to GFrench@gmail.com. Oh yes – and I’d be happy to discuss with YOU how Bold Interactive can help you create link-worthy content for YOUR site :)

Over the past two months through my strategic participation in two of these forums I’ve generated brand awareness, created content that’s won valuable links from important sites and blogs in the space, increased targeted organic search traffic to our site and developed an unexpected fondness for the community as a whole.

In researching to round out my thinking on this piece I found Jake McKee’s blog, CommunityGuy. He worked with online communities that formed around his employer, Lego. My approach to community is directly in line with his, but my primary intention was to create a sustainable and community-centric content stream to help thicken a formerly thin affiliate site.

In Lessons in Branded Content Creation Through Community Participation I wrote about what I learned from recent forum criticisms. This article covers with far more depth the approach to community interaction that I’ve taken for this project, with an emphasis on sustainability through aligning the content creation process with my community’s values.

Here’s what’s covered:
1) Forum Content Distributor vs. Forum Correspondent
2) Guidelines for Gaining a Workable Level of Acceptance
3) Your Value Proposition to Forum Participants
4) Getting the Conversation Rolling
5) The Unexpected Benefits
6) The Continued Dangers
7) Six Closing Remarks

1) Forum Content Distributor vs. Forum Correspondent
My participation is far more involved than simply distributing content through forums, that is, publishing blog post links directly in forums where I know my target market congregates (though I have done this).

Instead I try to be more of a forum correspondent and make connections between our site visitors and forums as well as BETWEEN the forums themselves, which are often siloed.

When a thread I start gets popular in one of the forums I know I’m on to something that I can turn into a popular article, and something I can request links to from bloggers and other websites.

All of this content goes into our biweekly email newsletter too.

In many ways this is something of an extension of the kind of editorial work I did at WebProNews, where I sought always to generate content through audience interaction and connecting questions with experts.

2) Guidelines for Gaining a Workable Level of Acceptance
The hardest part for me is remaining hyper conscious of the fact that I’m a marketer and will always be perceived with a level of mistrust. I’ve gotten seriously flamed on at least three occasions so I want to start with some basic guidelines for people who are interested in generating content and community in this way.

a) Contact forum owners first.
I emailed forum owners and in one case called a forum mod to ask for permission to post in their forum. Winning approval from mods and owners doesn’t mean you’ll be welcomed with open arms by the community though. Cover your bases anyways.

If they don’t respond then take a shot at starting a thread – some forums are very Second Life in their attitudes regarding marketers and leave it up to the marketer’s ability to gain community acceptance.

b) Be prepared for the first round of bristling anti-marketer reaction.
If anyone makes valid criticisms of you, what you’ve said in the forum thus far, how transparent you are about your intentions, the font on your website or how you have a stupid name then address them point by point.

Be laboriously and thoroughly transparent about everything you intend to do, especially if it involves republishing their thoughts on your own website. You may find that humor works well for you. I’m not typically funny when my continued participation in a key forum feels like it’s on the line so I lean towards transparency. It’s worked for me so far.

As has my willingness to make nearly immediate site changes based on valid criticisms.

In The Customer Interaction Manifesto Jake McKee writes that you must “learn to take a good beating.”

This goes at least double in forums, where folks aren’t necessarily your customers at all. Sometimes you’ll find that your greatest detractors will end up giving you the best suggestions though and can even end up as allies.

3) Your Value Proposition to Forum Participants
Why should they let you keep asking questions and publishing their wisdom on your site? Your permission and acceptance will ultimately be based on your willingness to promote and champion the community’s best interests. Period.

As a “forum correspondent” I looked at it as my job to understand, as quickly as possible, the values of the community and build content based on these values that still align with our marketing goals.

Your value proposition is that you’re helping care for and promote the ideas and feelings that are most important to their community.

In one case I found a forum member who’d written a how-to journal he offered to his community for free. I helped promote this by writing about it in our blog, email newsletter AND in other forums.

And finally there’s the simple fact that you’re driving traffic to their sites and letting people know through your channels that their forum is a great place. Individual members may not be particularly moved by this, but it’s worth mentioning.

4) Getting the Conversation Rolling
Once you’ve made a few friends by demonstrating how openly, honestly and levelly you can handle verbal assaults, it’s time to start asking questions.

I got rolling with questions from our site visitors… because I had no idea what the answers were. In fact, I started threads by posting the question plus the answer I had drafted based on Google research. Then I learned how off base I was after asking for critiques in forums.

This went quite well, and some ensuing threads became quite popular. That’s when I started asking my own article-oriented questions. Some that I found that worked were:

1) What’s the Best Deal on X that you’ve ever gotten?
2) In your opinion what’s the Most Dangerous X known to man?
3) Which practitioner of your art was the most influential on you?

All of these questions translated quite well into content that converted into links (after emailing link requests to bloggers) and has become trusted by search engines as well, considering the 25-35% increase in organic traffic we’ve seen over the past month.

Again I want to emphasize the importance of being transparent about publishing what’s said in a forum on your site. Though it may be well within fair use, copyright laws don’t mean jack snap to someone who feels like you’re profiting on his words against his will.

This is something I had to learn the hard way. Be upfront and overt that you’d like to republish ideas and quotes that come up in a thread you start.

5) The Unexpected Benefits:
a) An understanding key lingo and jargon – a window into community values.

b) I’ve found allies. These are folks who started out as strong, vocal critics. These are folks who defend me against others in the forum now. These are people whose suggestions I take above all others for future content ideas and they’ve been invaluable to me as participants in how I’ve shaped our content footprint.

c) A fondness for the community. This is one of the biggest benefits – it forces me to ask if what I’m about to write or post as a forum thread will really benefit my community.

d) A strong editorial sense of content that will be popular. I’m not a practitioner of the passion, but I’m starting to develop that crucial editorial sense of whether a subject will be a hit. This means that I’m more likely to write content that will generate links organically.

6) The Challenges
a) It’s always precarious, and a false move WILL bring you harsh condemnation. You’re a marketer – you have ulterior motives and some people will always criticize you. Accept this going in.

b) You may stand accused of taking advantage of unwitting forum participants to get valuable and unique content. This will actually be true unless you stay focused on championing your community’s values, its individual members and promoting the sites where they congregate.

c) It takes a long time and a lot of hard work, especially if you’re starting from zero with industry or community knowledge. Even with community help and direct participation I still spend HOURS putting large pieces together and making them “sing” per Andy Hagans.

7) Six Closing Remarks
1) If you happen to have communities built around your brand I assert that much of what I’ve written will be useful to you, especially in regards to generating content through interaction and the general delicacy with which you must approach the initial conversations. Your marketing communications should be chock full of proof of your community interactions.

2) I mentioned nothing about mapping out your community’s habitats. I used Google and followed lots and lots of links on sites. I think Andy Beal’s Online Reputation Monitoring Beginners Guide is a great place to start ferreting out your community’s favorite hang outs if you don’t know already. If you’re starting from scratch you will just have to start pulling threads and see where they lead you.

3) To build our current blog contact list I looked in Bloglines at a popular blog’s subscribers. Then I looked at what else THEY subscribed to.

4) You don’t have to necessarily ask questions in forums either… you can simply provide forum coverage the way that SERoundtable does and generate a great sustainable content stream. In my current project I’ll be leaning this way more soon so I can lighten up my presence a little.

5) I left off a section for conversions. I currently aim for subscribers to our email newsletter and traffic from profit-generating search terms.

6) Are you looking for ways to generate steady, community-based content and become a more meaningful presence in your online communities? Send me an email for a free initial consultation: GFrench@gmail.com.

These lessons became crystallized, back lit and tightly focused today after I posted in a forum that has been a key source of knowledge, traffic, community acceptance and links thus far. Though I’ve been very successful developing content here in the past I recognized today that false steps can open the banana can faster than a hungry monkey.

One key difference is that I opened a forum thread to DISTRIBUTE content rather than to ask a question and start to GENERATE content. I did ask a question at the end of the thread, but my intention was partly to get a quick shot of traffic which in my rear view mirror now looks like a bad idea.

But only because I didn’t follow my new rules :)

So today I wrote out some guidelines for myself for future content creation on this current project and wanted to share them. I think they’re a great starting point for the development of a branded content aka link bait aka flagship content conversation.

1) Content must arise from a community need or passion.
Ideally this arises through your conversations with the community – I suggest you lurk in target forums and slowly start to participate by asking questions.

Once you can post questions – survey types of questions that get people chatting with each other – that get LOTS of responses you’re hitting on a hot topic that you should develop into content.

Be wary of taking something that’s popular on your site and pushing it at the forum though – these may be the same audiences but you may find there’s a world of difference in what’s valuable in those two worlds.

2) Content must provide value to the community.
And don’t guess or assume that content will provide value, or that by assembling a list of resources that you’ve created value.

The piece I tried to push recently was a huge list of links to resources that my audience found worthless, sort of like if I gave you a huge list of directories to submit to that don’t pass link value.

Live and learn of course, but if you can, test your content ahead of your link begging blitz… or before you push it to an audience.

3) Content must incorporate, cite, interview and/or champion key members of the community.
Ideally you’re creating content through surveys, interviews or other quotations of your target audience. Get permission if you’re quoting individuals who aren’t marketers or who aren’t naturally inclined to being quoted.

People like to see their names in print, plus they’re more likely to support you in general if they were involved in some way in its creation.

When possible, be a champion for content that’s buried in some way in the forum (or blog), or not getting much distribution. Look for ways to help folks achieve publicity or distribution goals that may also be interesting enough to get others to link to you.

An interview or survey can add enough to your piece to really generate attention.

There are MANY verticals that don’t have their very own SERoundtables that cover forum discussions and there are MOUNTAINS of great content that’s not getting distributed.

You will have to “edit” it by organizing it and adding resource links… and you will be better served if you are a participant in the forum/community because you will be a little more trusted.

4) Content must incorporate the language of the community (but not too much).
You will learn how to speak like your market by interacting with them. Don’t over do it, but DO look for jargon or slang that you can start to pepper into your site, article titles, and even your paid search campaigns.

And always ask about terms you don’t understand – let your ignorance be your guide if you’re new to a space.

5) Ask for permission AND forgiveness.
Mea culpa, humility, proof of change – those are your only tools when valid shit storms start. And always be upfront and transparent about EVERYTHING.

One note – learn to determine the stark line between valid criticism, as strongly worded as it may be, and abuse. The necessary response to valid criticism is change.

The only necessary response to abuse – name calling, slander, even cruelty, is to get yourself and your brand away from that person and possibly the forum as a whole.

More to Come
In follow up articles I’ll be writing about content distribution, link begging for your work (phone calls are acceptable :), submission to appropriate social media and bookmarking sites for quick links and traffic trickles and whatever else has happened in the intervening weeks :)

trend involving consumers moving communication beyond a mere exchange of information to facilitate an exchange of content, ideas, and entertainment within an online social context.

I’m still grappling with how to describe the marketing services I practice, as they are part PR, part SEO, part community participation.

I won’t be selecting “communitainer” as a term to describe what I do, but thought I’d share the MediaPost article describing this “trend.”

I found compelling Jaffray’s description of “Usites” (MySpace, YouTube, etc…): “Usites are the Internet’s democraticized version of the reality TV trend with users placed in control of content creation.”

Mostly because that’s the best Jaffray could come up with to describe YouTube and MySpace. But also because it got my wheels turning just a little :)

One perspective they’re severely missing here – and this is because MediaPost and Jaffray are writing for the Fortune 500 – is how MySpace especially has become a marketing/communication platform for local underground or grassroots commercial enterprises. Such as Roller Derby, dive bars, tattoo shops and of course bands.

I think local marketers too should pay particular attention to MySpace and video.

By Garrett French

Your market – whether you’re in biotech or biotech software development – is deep in conversation online.

Here�s what that conversation looks like:

• Industry journalists documenting your marketspace through interviews with your peers and competitors and news analysis.
• Industry practitioners, pundits, and your employees and coworkers publishing opinions, questions, advice and analysis in blogs, forums, social networks, podcasts and video.