Darren Rowse (Problogger) asked me to share a few of my best tips on contributing to social media groups & community forums, so here’s a post I put on his site.

Sharing it here, as I’m sure some of you guys may get something out of it too.

My post is going to be about driving traffic to an eCommerce site – not just a blog. Here goes!

… Back in the day (1998-2005~) when I first started my eCommerce business – Warcom, I would quite literally spend 4-5 hours every single day on community forums.

Sites like Atomic Forums, OCAU, Whirlpool, Sitepoint, Tomshardware – all of them.

Over the course of doing this for a solid 2-3 years, I built that business into a seven figure business.

I had about 5-6 staff working for me & I was making bucket loads of cash.

At the time, this was pretty much the only advertising I was doing. There were no Adwords, no Facebook, nothing back then! Heck, I didn’t even have a newsletter list.

Fast forward 10 years …!

I’m still speaking with people on forums, on social media, still establishing myself as the authority and it’s still working for me.

(I run an Australian business owner group with thousands of people in them).

Needless to say, I’ve learnt a thing or two about monetizing communities over the last 10 years.

Here are some of my top recommendations:

1. Be a producer, not a consumer. (Make your own content, don’t recycle everyone else’s. I mean this, come up with your own methods, be unique).
2. Deliver knowledge based value. (Share EVERYTHING you know. Don’t hold back on the good stuff). Hint: You will never run out of stuff to share, so long as you keep learning yourself.
3. Don’t advertise, well – … not much anyway. (People will seek you out naturally & buy from you if you appear as the authority).
4. Be humble, approachable & polite. (No one likes a d$^k).
5. Be personable. (Just because you’re running a million dollar business, you’re no different to the people you’re speaking with, unless of course they have 20,000+ posts on said forum, in which case they probably don’t leave the house all that much & are more than likely quite unique individuals).
6. Stand up for yourself. (You’re going to get haters who try and shut you down, it always happens. Many ‘old people’ hate young successful people. Beat them with your knowledge & personality, but don’t let them get to you. This isn’t an easy craft to master, but I can share some more info on this another time if anyone is interested).
7. Be friendly with the mods, but don’t be a sucker. (I always liked to stand on my own feet, away from the mods & admins. It gives you a slightly different persona on forums and the members seem to dig it). Hint: Most mods are power trippers, so if you’re seen as a huge authority, it just drives them mental trying to tell you off.
8. Organise meetups for people you meet on the forums & social media. (Most people who spend all day long on forums, are dying to make new offline friends). Hint: Just be sure to do it in a safe and central place!

———

Now we get into some of the below the line stuff:

1. Make sure you have plenty of friends on forums who can help you fight battles. (You can make ghost accounts, but they’re hard to maintain & real people are much easier to manage & help you push your agenda).
2. Contribute to the Popular/Most Viewed threads. (You want to make an impression quickly? Go where the people are).
3. Occasionally pick battles. (If there is something you believe in and feel needs attention (in my case it’s usually an expensive supplier or a bad service provider), call them out on social media.
4. …. Build your own groups & recruit brilliant people to help grow them. As James Shramko would say “Own your own race course”.

I could probably keep this post going all day, but ‘alas I’m running out of time!

I hope you all get something out of this. If you have any questions please feel free to throw a comment below & I’ll reply.

Cheers,
Paul.