{"id":296,"date":"2015-07-09T04:51:17","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T04:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulwarren.com.au\/blog\/?p=296"},"modified":"2015-08-19T05:33:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T05:33:03","slug":"14-ways-to-dominate-social-media-forums-in-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulwarren.com.au\/blog\/14-ways-to-dominate-social-media-forums-in-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"14 Ways To Dominate Social Media & Forums in 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Darren Rowse (Problogger<\/a>) 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.<\/p>\n

Sharing it here, as I’m sure some of you guys may get something out of it too.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My post is going to be about driving traffic to an eCommerce site – not just a blog. Here goes!<\/p>\n

… 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.<\/p>\n

Sites like Atomic Forums<\/a>, OCAU, Whirlpool<\/a>, Sitepoint, Tomshardware – all of them.<\/p>\n

Over the course of doing this for a solid 2-3 years, I built that business into a seven figure business.<\/p>\n

I had about 5-6 staff working for me & I was making bucket loads of cash.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Fast forward 10 years …!<\/p>\n

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

(I run an Australian business owner group with thousands of people in them).<\/p>\n

Needless to say, I’ve learnt a thing or two about monetizing communities over the last 10 years.<\/p>\n

Here are some of my top recommendations:<\/p>\n

    \n
  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).<\/li>\n
  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.<\/li>\n
  3. Don’t advertise, well – … not much anyway. (People will seek you out naturally & buy from you if you appear as the authority).<\/li>\n
  4. Be humble, approachable & polite. (No one likes a d$^k).<\/li>\n
  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).<\/li>\n
  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).<\/li>\n
  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.<\/li>\n
  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!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    ———<\/p>\n

    Now we get into some of the below the line stuff:<\/p>\n

      \n
    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).<\/li>\n
    2. Contribute to the Popular\/Most Viewed threads. (You want to make an impression quickly? Go where the people are).<\/li>\n
    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.<\/li>\n
    4. …. Build your own groups & recruit brilliant people to help grow them. As James Shramko<\/a> would say “Own your own race course”.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      I could probably keep this post going all day, but ‘alas I’m running out of time!<\/p>\n

      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.<\/p>\n

      Cheers,
      \nPaul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,41],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n14 Ways To Dominate Social Media & Forums in 2015 - Paul Warren<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/paulwarren.com.au\/blog\/14-ways-to-dominate-social-media-forums-in-2015\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"14 Ways To Dominate Social Media & Forums in 2015 - Paul Warren\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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. 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