In a post about using social media sites for networking a few days ago, I mentioned a website called Geni.com. As a result of the post I was contacted by someone at the company and they have now offered to send me some fun branded swag. It was never my intention to get cool free stuff by writing this blog, however I’ll take it.

Why should anyone care?
FREE PUBLICITY!
This type of thing happens every day by good companies. It is called a follow-up. As I offered positive publicity for the company in the form of a review, they felt compelled to thank me, and rightly so. They now have more publicity (this post), and if I get something great like a sweatshirt / t-shirt / jacket (hint – lol), I’ll roam the streets wearing their brand on my chest. On top of that, I’ll probably write yet another post about this once I do receive the swag, if it is indeed something cool, and bring even more attention to the company.

What is the lesson we can take away here?
The lesson is not “If you send me cool things I’ll write about it”, but is that if you effectively follow up with your users you do much more then you know. Another prime example of this can be seen in a post I wrote yesterday about a company that failed to follow up with me on a problem I had with their website. Instead of putting out positive energy for the company, they now have a nice scathing review. Even despite the post, they have not to this point gotten back to me.

To build a strong and effective marketing campaign, you must keep your follow-up in mind. Failure to do so can become your downfall . . . be careful!

There are tons of different techniques for promoting your business or website, and one of the more popular ones is by using article marketing. Simply put, article marketing is the act of writing articles about a topic with the goal of getting the readers to contact you or visit your website. I will cover article marketing in more detail in another post, but I wanted to talk about an experience I’m currently going through with a very popular site called Ezine Articles.

Like many other article submission sites, this site relies on authors to log in and submit articles which are then published on site. Anyone can use the article on their site, provided it is not altered and provided the byline is included.

The Failure of EzineArticles.com
Back on March 30, 2006 (YES, LAST YEAR!) I signed up and submitted an article to the site. As I’m a busy guy, I forgot about the article, but came back to the Ezine site recently in hopes of submitting another one. To my shock, I noticed a bright red notice: PROBLEM – Not Live. Trying to figure things out, I saw in tiny font, a notice “Problem: General Error – Please contact us to find out more.” Of course, I contacted them and waited.

It has now been over a week! Despite a message telling me that I’d be “contacted shortly”, I have not heard form a sole. The irony is that they have an autoresponder sending out the following message:

Hi,

Thank you for contacting EzineArticles.com’s author support center.

Every email is human reviewed and our normal response time is within
24 business hours, Monday thru Friday.

Thanks!

http://EzineArticles.com/

Looks like there is a lack of humans or something over there!

Now, I’m just another angry customer. The people running Ezine Articles have failed to establish an efficient customer service platform and people like me have fallen in the cracks. Instead of getting free positive publicity from me about how great their site is, they now have to deal with this post, telling people how they have failed to do what they set out to. People sometimes say “any publicity is good publicity” – that is certainly not the case here!

As the famous quote from Cool Hand Luke goes, “What we have here is a failure to communicate”!

What is the lesson to be learned?
Customer service is #1! If you can’t keep your users happy, especially in this day and age, the backlash can be quick and extremely powerful.

BTW – I sent a trackback to the company’s blog and the blog of the guy I think is in charge. Lets see if they have a response now . . .

Forums (aka. message boards or discussion boards) are incredible resources. Not only are they helpful for learning and helping others, but they can also be valuable tools for marketing your business or website. There are two approaches you can take in using forums for marketing; the direct approach, or the indirect approach.

The Direct Approach

Some might call this the SPAM message of forum marketing . . . I certainly do. The direct approach is basically the hard sell. You go to forums that are in the niche you want to market to and pitch your stuff. Have a gardening business and want customers . . . go to a gardening forum and post a few messages telling people what you do and sell yourself. Everytime I see someone do this, they post multiple messages around the site that are all sales pitches; on a good forum, these posts are typically removed very quickly as is the member posting them.

Is this method effective?
It depends. If you happen to catch people who are looking for someone like you, then it probably is. On the other hand, people don’t like things shoved down their throats. The hard sell typically turns people off. Many forums have rules forbidding such behavior outside designated thread areas for that exact reason. The hard sell is ineffective mostly because there is no long-term way to sustain it. You can’t keep posting ads on a forum without being asked to stop.

Would I recommend the direct approach?
Absolutely Not! Many forum administrators consider these posts to be SPAM. Posting ads on forums can get you banned very quickly in most reputable discussion boards.

The InDirect Approach

The indirect approach is more of a soft sale technique. The premise of the indirect approach is by participating on a site and helping others, you will gain the members’ trust. Eventually, you will be seen by those people as an expert in your area and they will start flocking to you. I witness this every day on my real estate forums. Many of our members are extremly helpful to others on the site. They spend their time giving advice to anyone who needs it. Soon, buzz around the site starts flowing and that member begins to get extremly busy. We have members who have built their businesses through the goodwill they have generated on our forums.

Is this method effective?
The indirect approach is simple and effective. I have used it to build traffic for many websites that I run, and see people use it on our forums as well. Don’t believe it? Try it out yourself!

How do I implement the indirect approach?
To effectively use the indirect approach, just follow the 9 Steps To Growing Your Business Using Forum Marketing.

Technology can be a blessing and a curse. In terms of networking, it is absolutely a blessing! Over the past few years I have connected with so many people from my past and I owe most of that to social sites I’ve participated in on the ‘net. I thought it migh be nice to share some of these and how they can be used for networking. Note that this list is not comprehensive – it just covers many of the more popular (or useful) sites and how best to use them.

Mainstream Social Sites

Myspace

While teaching high-school, there was nothing more annoying then to see the students trying to sneak on to MySpace to talk to their friends. While the site is deeply flawed (we all know about the drama), it has been a great networking tool. Many people use it for marketing, but if you ‘re not looking to SPAM the universe and simply want to reconnect with people from your past, it is pretty helpful. I’ve used it to get back in touch with high-school and college friends, and keep my eyes peeled for new people worth reaching out to.

Networking Rating: 4 out of 10 (good for friends & past acquaintences)
My Myspace Profile

Facebook

Facebook is very similar to MySpace, but I have found the interface to be much easier to use and much cleaner looking. It has also been a great resource for finding friends from my past, but in terms of business affiliations, I have not found it to be of much use.

Networking Rating: 6 out of 10 (good for keeping up with former friends / fellow alumni)
My Facebook Profile

Business Networking Sites

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has, in my estimation, the most promise as a business tool. It is focused on business networking, and has tons of features that make keeping in touch and finding new affiliations/partners/employees very easy. It seems that your LinkedIn profile is becoming something like your online calling card. I love searching for people with interesting resumes to see how we’re connected . . . “linkingup” with them becomes really easy, and you know that people who reach you from the site are looking to keep it professional. While there is still room for improvement for the site, it really has become the standard for all other social sites in terms of business networking.

Networking Rating: 9 out of 10 (great for business networking)
My LinkedIn Profile

FastPitch

I just learned about FastPitch Networking from Rich Swier’s Startup Florida just yesterday. I know very little about it and have yet to do more then just play around on the sites main page, but I definitely see some promise in the site. According to Rich, the site is “a premiere destination for business professionals looking to market and network their business.” As I learn more, I’ll be sure to share it!

Networking Rating: ??? (great potential for business networking)

Using Blogging Networking Sites

MyBlogLog

It is hard to find a blog today without the MyBlogLog widget, showing the recent readers of that site. While it is fun to see who has been on your site, you can also use this little widget for networking. The great part about it is that you can then go and find out more about these people by seeing their profile. If you encounter someone interesting, you now have a great in. I’ve used MBL to link up with quite a few people, some of which I continue to stay in touch with. It is really all about creeating opportunities, and this is just another tool to have in the shed!

Networking Rating: 9 out of 10 (great for common interest networking)
My MyBlogLog Profile

Event Based Sites

Meetup.com

Truth be told, I have never attended a Meetup, but I’m starting to see the value of the site. While it seems great for things like making friends or finding people to play with (sports and the like or otherwise if that’s your thing), it is designed for networking. I think most of the value is in attending events for people in your business niche. Want to meet programmers – go to the local programmer meetup . . . looking to link up with entrepreneurs – go to the entrepreneur meetup. I’ve signed up for my first meetup and hope to let you know how it all goes . . .

Networking Rating: ??? (not sure yet)
My Meetup Profile

Using Non-Traditional Social Sites for Networking

Geni.com

I found Geni.com while doing some research on my genealogy. This site is not only a place to build your family tree, but also a hub for family networking. I started my tree less than a month ago and there are now over 1800 members in it. The site allows users to create profiles and like most social sites, to communicate with one another. You never know when that 3rd cousin once removed is going to turn into the lifeline on your next business venture. I’ve already used it to link up with family I’ve never met after moving to Colorado. It is an absolute addiction and worth checking out!

Networking Rating: 10 out of 10 (perfect for family networking)

Here are some useful and very cool tools and resources for any webbie:

Maki, author of the extremly cool blog (which I just discovered today) Dosh Dosh writes an extremly thorough article aka The Ultimate Guide on How to Get Your Website Listed in Wikipedia which really is what it says. If you’ve ever wondered about getting some link love from the uber-encyclopedia Wikipedia, this is the place to find out how to go about doing it.

Ever wondered how popular your site really is? There are plenty of sites that measure different metrics, but the new Popuri.us (1169 diggs and counting) helps consolidate all that data. Just enter your url and find out: Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Compete Rank, Quantcast Rank, Google BackLinks, Yahoo BackLinks, Live Search BackLinks, Technorati Links, del.icio.us Bookmarks, Bloglines subscribers, WHOIS Info, and DNS Info. If possible, I’d somehow find a way to integrate feedburner info to this, as it has become the de-facto metric for measuring a blog’s success.

There must be hundreds of lists on how to get others to link to your website, but Wendy Piersall guest blogging at Darren Rouse’s Problogger finds the best of the best in The Ultimate Guide to Getting Lots of Link Love. Broken down into categories including The Best of the Best, Link Strategy, Linkbaiting, Relationship Building, and Buying Links, the list covers pretty much anything you could ever think of when it comes to getting links. This will surely help newbie webbies!

Lastly, I wanted to share with you a site I learned about from the self-proclaimed evil one, John Chow’s frequent guest blogger Michael Kwan (that was a mouthful!). I have to admit that I no longer use Yahoo or MSN to do any searches, probably out of laziness, but Google has been my SE for a while now. That might change . . . the new search engine / social engine YouAnimous or AfterVote (calls itself both I think) combines the results from Yahoo, MSN, and Google with stats and the ability to vote on results. It is really cool and I believe, has a lot of promise. Search engines use algorithms to calculate ranking, but that ignores simple human logic. By adding the human element, it seems that results should be more relevant. Check it out and let me know what you think!

What is going on with Alexa and DMOZ. Both have been having problems for weeks now.

Alexa simply does not load most of the time. Are they in the midst of a major update? I’m shocked that they have not addressed the problem publicly! So much for PR.

DMOZ has had problems with their submission engine for some time now. I’ve heard from editors over there that even they are unable to log in. I’m currently getting a “404 Not Found” error when visiting the site!

So . . . are two of the busiest websites in the world down for the count, or are they working on something really BIG? Either way, they are losing the respect of many people by not coming out and letting everyone know what’s happening.

Spin control anyone?

Most SEO experts will likely agree that gaining inbound links is one of the most important steps in growing your website. The methods for gaining those links continue to evolve with time. In the old days, we used to email other webmasters and request reciprocal links. That faded as the ‘net grew and people started to SPAM every site around in an effort to get some links. People used link farms and uncounted other techniques to get links. With the advent of blogs and forums, building links has become somewhat easier, provided you have something useful to say.

As the search engines have improved their algorithms, they have maintained one factor in ranking that still stands true:

Links from “trusted” sources are more important than links from newer, unknown sites. With that in mind a quick tip from Darren at Problogger.net explains an easy to get backlinks from these trusted sources. He explains that links from sites with .edu and .gov extensions help increase search rankings.

To get these links, just find forums or blogs with the extension and get involved in the discussion. You will naturally create backlinks to your site with forum signatures and your blog comments. Locating good sites is easy too! Just search for:

“keyword” forum site:.edu
“keyword” blog site:.edu
“keyword” forum site:.gov
“keyword” blog site:.gov

Replacing keyword with the topic you’re interested in, and start posting!

While this is a great “trick”, be sure you don’t start spamming. Any trust you may gain from “respectable” inbound links will quickly be lost if you start pissing everyone off and being spammy.