Beyond mainstream social media with Dmitry Shesterin

Beyond MainstreamSocial Media

Forums and Listservswith

Dmitry Shesterin

IntroPragmatic: Management Consultant Startup Advisor for Seed & Round A VP, Product Management VP, Marketing Large Capital Project Sales Manager

Academic Executive MBA BA, Intercultural Communications

Likes Theory of pricing Being a geek

© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 2

Beyond MainstreamMainstream

• Facebook

• Twitter

• YouTube

• Google+

• LinkedIn

• Pinterest etc

Often Overlooked

• Forums

• Listservs


Forums

Why Bother?


Why Forums• Established communities fused by common interest• Your functionally pre-determined ideal target persona

• Well indexed by search engines• Boost your domain authority with inbound links

• Great for:• Monitor customer and prospect sentiment

• Competitive intelligence

• Recruit beta participants

• Collect customer feedback

• Announce events of significance

• Build your email marketing list


Tech Forums In Numbers*

*Data collected on March 26, 2013 via respective sites and big-boards.com

Forum Threads Posts Members AlexaReach

AlexaLinks

GoogleResults

techsupportforum.com 650,489 4,018,373 948,905 6,088 2,104 1,890Kforums.techguy.org 1,015,367 8,462,026 686,738 3,008 984 2,410Kbleepingcomputer.com 2,918,348 590,304 5,410 5,587 1,150Kforums.whirlpool.net.au 1,860,525 38,082,213 556,340 1,547 1,921 13,200Kforums.techarena.in 204,908 1,074,338 457,737 50,588 1,064 615Kgeekstogo.com 2,239,680 372,353 19,177 1,888 465Kforums.anandtech.com 2,298,094 34,776,027 324,133 2,279 688 5,900Kneowin.net 10,835,034 306,950 4,204 9,749 6,340Kcybertechhelp.com 203,587 1,234,494 129,409 150,775 493 133Ktechspot.com 174,368 1,239,950 124,584 3,589 7,373 503K


Forum Bonus Numbers:)• OS Platform Specific

• Mobile Platforms

• Computer Security Hubs

Threads Posts Members AlexaReach

AlexaLinks

GoogleResults

ubuntuforums.org 1,941,211 11,938,966 1,797,940 1,820 14,704 1,150Kmacrumors.com 1,469,635 16,496,393 802,611 762 2,785 5,640Ksocial.msdn.microsoft.com 1,413,482 6,595,909 22 2,566 876K


AlexaLinks

GoogleResults

forums.crackberry.com 659,227 7,814,436 3,760,140 3,245 598 9,350Kandroidforums.com 588,068 5,522,481 1,420,064 2,221 5,756 4,280K


AlexaLinks

GoogleResults

wilderssecurity.com 208,187 1,967,940 127,383 22,449 1,599 502Kdslreports.com 18,162,983 66,131 3,995 7,712 7,110K


Non-English Tech ForumsGermany• ComputerBase

• Forum de Luxx

• gulli:board

• Giga.de

China• IM286

• Et8

• Cfan

France• Hardware.fr

• Presence PC

Russia• RU Board

• IXBT BBS

• SysAdmins.ru

• Habrahabr.ru

Brazil

• Forum GDH

• Techzone

• Baboo Forum

• Forum PCs


http://www.big-boards.com/rd/518/











Forum Etiquette• Complete you profile and indicate that you are a vendor

• Introduce yourself and state your objective

• Be quick with responses and authentic in messaging

• Don’t pitch

• Don’t bash competition

• Always stay positive

• Use your signature wisely, include a link to your site

• Use Personal Messaging to remediate problems

• Hint that acknowledgement of resolution is welcome but not required

• Stay away from flame wars

• Keep someone responsible for monitoring your forum landscape


Marketing In A Forum• Develop relationships with frequent posters and moderators

• Feed breaking news before mainstream PR

• Crowd-source tier 1 support via avid fans and users

• Establish dedicated sub-forums devoted to your products

• Optimize SEO in all your responses and threads

• Always link back to your site for more or technical info


ListServs

Why Bother?


What Is Listserv?• ListServ is an electronic theme-specific mailing list

• Once subscribed and added to the list, you can email that list and receive responses

• Yes, it is still well and alive:) Still actively used by:• Librarians

• Technology Coordinators in public education (K2-20)

• Geeks


Lurking Is For Vendors• Social Listening for vendors at its best

• Open posts to a list by vendors are thrown upon

• Identify and monitor all listservs that are used by your target personas

• Listserv users know that smart vendors are listening

• If problems are reported or help requests are posted, reach out directly for immediate resolution. Put your best people on it.

• Hint that acknowledgement of resolution is welcome but not required

• Keep someone responsible for monitoring all listservs.


Lurking cat by ~FloatingUkukuon deviantART

Why ListServ• Great lead generation tool. Majority of posts include

signatures with direct extensions and titles.

• Unfiltered and unbiased customer-to-customer feedback

• Competitive intelligence

• Save on mystery shoppers, list subscribers identify operational and product problems early

• Rich source of feature ideas (evaluate carefully)

• Identify and put your Mavens to work(Gladwell’s Tipping Point)


Research Example• Evaluated one year of content from three listservs

• 80,000+ messages from 3,500+ subscribers

• Identified 122 listserv mavens• 51 affluent posters are existing and loyal customers!

• 60 posters are customers of a competitor!

• 11 posters are joint customers!

• Based on received data promotional activities, content generation, collateral production and product positioning were adjusted.


Good Luck!

Email [email protected] for template files and frameworks

Connect on LinkedIn at linkd.in/shesterin

Follow me @dscheste


Beyond mainstream social media with Dmitry Shesterin

Business

Transcript of Beyond mainstream social media with Dmitry Shesterin