Many people want to enter the conversations going on in the blog world and see if they can establish themselves as an expert or build a social media following. One way to do this is to identify target blogs or other forums where people that you want to converse with are congregating. If you want to be in the conversation and not just be one of the 90% of people online that mostly just read and listen then you might want to follow a few simple guidelines.
- Always be helpful to the person/blog/audience first. It is about them, not you so much.
- Be the expert, do not hesitate to use some basic credentials. "I am a chemist and have formulated and evaluated fuel additives effectiveness for 10 years."
- Be succinct and to the point - but not crap like 'great post' or 'thanks for the info'.
- Follow the blogs/forum rules - this will tell you whether leaving a link to your site is allowed - I would default to adding your name, email and company URL as a signature unless told not to
- Try to find a few blogs relating to your area of expertise that you can follow and comment on regularly - blogs have followers and they will get to know you
- Use Google Alerts to identify blogs to follow and monitor (I use Google Reader to watch about 100 blogs every day - it takes about 15 minutes to go through them and pick out the posts I want to read).
- Always be interesting and develop a style - this will take time but try to develop your voice
- Be polite, kind, nice - no flaming, no overt tearing down of competitors - remember, your comments will live on and be searchable in the blogosphere for eternity.
- Watch grammar and spelling.
- Enjoy the process - think of it as a learning process, you are listening to prospects and understanding what the market is saying and what problems they are having which is the foundation of successful marketing.
Topics: Marketing
