Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [216]
It is not rare to find a very active discussion forum that is gaining members and actively growing. In addition to the membership, most discussions on a forum are publicly available. This means the topics, discussions, and information are all open to the public. The search engines are also able to find, index, and publish forum information in the search engines, which adds to the visibility of the topics.
Although a forum may have thousands of active members, the reach is far beyond the members. Most forums have an active readership that does not participate; in fact, many do not become members because they have no desire to participate in the discussion. They only want to read the information and keep up with it. These nonparticipating members are called lurkers, because they hide in the shadows but do not want to be a visible participant in the exchange of information.
Forums contain some of the best user-generated information of any social media, mainly because of the length of time many of the forums have been around, the number of members contributing, and the types of information that is shared. Because I have an affinity to old VW Beetles, I tend to read forums for advice and information when I am troubleshooting a problem, and that is when I am able to find great information and links to specific vendors and products that can assist my search (see Figure 18-2).
Figure 18-2: A sample of the types of personalized information and recommendations that discussion forums produce
Because of this information sharing and the level of nonmarketing influence, discussions tend to be very grassroots. For a business, this is a very solid source of research and insight into the niche customer. The typical concerns, hesitations, and objections discussed in this venue can help a vendor or a business formulate a solid strategy simply by reading and “listening” to the community.
As with any online community, there are a certain set of rules. As a marketer or a business, it is generally frowned upon for you to register as a member at the forum and immediately begin marketing yourself or your business. The forum is made up of people who like to discuss without being marketed to. Push too hard, and the forum owner will most likely disable your account, sometimes without warning. If you find a forum in your particular industry or niche, take the time to read the information posted for vendors and businesses. It is better to be informed of the forum’s particular policies and understand the expectations rather than create a negative image of your company.
Media Sharing
Media sharing, simply put, is the sharing of video, audio, images, and other media. From vacation photos to videos of a blender to podcasts about grammar usage, people are placing large amounts of multimedia content online through media-sharing social media.
Video Sharing
Media sharing is currently dominated by the darling of social media, YouTube. As cited in one of the other books in this series, YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day (Wiley, 2009), YouTube is the second largest search engine, ahead of Bing and Yahoo!, even though it is not considered as a search engine. That is how extensive YouTube has become.
YouTube, which was founded in 2005, burst on the scene as a video-sharing service. Prior to YouTube, online users were sent videos through email. Offices would share emails throughout the office and with their friends, resulting in an amazing amount of bandwidth being used to share quick, silly, or amazing videos.
Along came YouTube, which allowed users to create an account, upload videos, and simply send a link to the video, rather than the video itself. Without having to actually send a file, the speed of sharing increased significantly, as well as the access to the videos. To make the perfect combination of events, Saturday Night Live’s “Lazy Sunday” (which NBC decided to remove from YouTube in attempting to direct visitors to the NBC video