During the Search Engine Strategies conference, I attended a panel concentrated on SEM with regards to online groups – with a particular center around deli. cio. us and Wikipedia. Members of the panel shared several great ideas about how to market in a neighborhood atmosphere, with out alienating contributors of the community or being perceived negatively as a marketer. Aside from the obvious points about transparency and honesty – several other tips emerged as a good guide for sellers since tapping into the facility of these groups to get feedback and start a discussion with buyers, in addition to using them as advertising channels.
Jeff Watts, Search and Community Manager for National Instruments shared a great example of his adventure in adding the term “LabView” to Wikipedia several years ago with a 40 personality advertising description. Within 20 mins, the post were edited, and now has a couple of pages of dense content on Wikipedia and appears highly on search consequences on Google for Labview. It is an excellent example of how dealers can jump start the advent of third party content that ends up being a gorgeous promoting and advertising and marketing tool – assuming you are in a position to release manage and let the bigger community take over.