Lessons from Hard Knocks University – College of On-Line Marketing

My friend and partner Garrett French recently wrote this post about lessons learned form recent visits to Hard Knocks University over at the Search Marketing Standard Blog. He mentions and links to a story about a post in which he was getting flamed for flagrant marketing during some recent forum participation on behalf of a client of ours.

Well, that story was informative, but the real story was how we earned our forum participation stripes when we first introduced ourselves to that same wonderful group of fellas.

At the time, the site we were working on was still in development, we had some static pages all linking to amazon and didn’t even have a blog. Furthermore, we weren’t even completely up to speed on how all of the free shipping, price match guarantees and other value ads worked.

Everything we were doing was exploratory into a space we as of yet knew little about.

My goals for the forum participation campaign were as follows: (Garrett’s goals may vary slightly)

• Gain access to smart people who can help us answer tough questions from our users and customers.
• Bring enough value back to those communities so that we will be seen as members of the community rather than outsiders trying to exploit it.
• Use our interactions with the community to fuel and inform valuable content for us to blog about and to bring additional value back to the forums.
• Work all of this into the rest of our marketing with high quality links and traffic.

In the beginning:

We had a nice honeymoon in one particular forum that boasts about 17,000 members. Not a small fish by any means. We had asked about 4 different questions on behalf of site users and gotten great feedback and fantastic input to take back to our users.

Additionally, we made sure to let the users know where we got the answers, urged them to join the assisting forum and made sure to let the forum know that we had done so.

Remember, we didn’t have a blog yet to show them how we were using their feedback.

The lovers quarrel.

Then one day, on post 4, the trolls showed up.

It started with someone posting about how we were just using them for customer service. After some more back and forth one of the forum members went on to our site and ripped it limb from limb with a series of harsh-but-true criticisms.

Reading it, I felt like I was looking into one of those magnifying mirrors women use to see into their pores. It was not a pretty sight by any stretch of the imagination.

Denial – Anger – Bargaining

All three of these stages went by pretty quickly as we realized how true of a text lashing we had just received. We knew what was on the line and how important these forums were to us. We also knew that we would face these problems in every forum we were breaking into.

We thought about ignoring them, giving the forum time to cool off, telling them the site was still young, we would try to change it later and all kinds of other wrong moves. We even considered pulling out of the forums all together like dogs with our tails between our legs until the new site was launched and we had something to show for our effort.

Depression

For the rest of that day G an I were beaten. We didn’t know what to do. Our cred was slashed and our next move had to be the right one. In order to address all of their criticisms I would have to make a couple of days worth of edits to the site as we couldn’t find references to some of the advertised features on Amazon we were being ripped into over.

Additionally, this was not the only forum we were beginning to get push back in.

We slept on it.

Acceptance

That previous evening, we were both up all night and somewhere in there, time gave us back our motivation. The next morning we researched all of the feedback and made a list of way to handle or remedy each blow dealt to us.

For the rest of that day, I made site and messaging changes, added pages and made other alterations to shore up our defenses from further attack.

During this time, Garrett crafted our response to be firm, slightly apologetic but mostly to say “You were right. Look, we fixed it.”.

In retrospect, that was the only wining response we could have come back with and our response informed and helped us smooth over the push back we were getting in other communities.

Victory

Our reply was well received, the site changes and apology/site response worked. We showed this community that we wanted to belong, we were willing to change, we are open and responsive to criticism and that we were serious about this relationship.

If this is beginning to sound like your marriage, it should.

The path forward

Sense then, we have tweaked our approaches, launched the new site and started blogging like gang busters. Because of our relationships with forums, we have had a steady supply of great ideas and feedback to inform useful blog posts and some killer link bait.

The site is breaking traffic records every week and Google alone is now responsible for 35% of our site traffic up from 10% 4 weeks ago. In that same 4 week span, forum traffic as become our is our biggest referral source and before the Google organic results hit a couple of days ago, referral traffic had made it’s way up to 50% of our total site traffic for an entire week after publishing some great linkbait.

Mind you that the linkbait was informed and written with the input of the forum relationship we had saved through an open and honest response to harsh-but-true criticism.

Follow Up

If you would like to learn more about forum participation and how to become part of the conversation in your marketplace, check out the great articles Garrett has written recently.

The Community Correspondent – A Guide To Creating Link Worthy Content Through Forum Participation

Lessons In Branded Content Creation Through Community Participation

Still want more?

Give us a call or email us to see how we can help you become part of the conversation in your marketplace.

919-451-8983
adam@boldinteractive.com

Samuel W. Wolfson High School class of 1997, 10 Year Reunion

So, if you couldn’t tell by the title of this post my high school reunion is coming up in a few months and this post is my way of helping out my friends who are planning and organizing it

I created a MySpace page for the Wolfson High class of 97 reunion with messaging and links to to the Wolfson High School c/o 97 reunion site and am asking for my fellow class mates to add the profile to their top friends. After day one, I have 5 friends and one of them added the profile to their top friends.

Update: The profile has now befriended over 85 Wolfson Alum and at least 25 of them have added the Reunion profile to their top friends.

I also made this cheesy little badge.

Visit the web site for more info.
Update your contact information

If you are a fellow alum from Wolfson high school, class of 97, and you have a site or a blog, please add the badge to your site. Just view source and paste it into a post or your sidebar, the image is being pulled from MySpace so there is nothing to upload. Don’t forget to include the links below the badge too. Those are important.

I am about to slip into full on, spammy seo copy mode so that the post might rank for anything having to do with wolfson, class of 97 reunion, wolfson high school c/o 97 reunion or wolfson 97 10 year reunion.

Finally, if you are an alum and have come across this post, here is all the info you need about the Class of 97 Reunion from Wolfson High School.

Greetings Wolfpack!

10 years have gone by and its time for the Wolfson Class of 1997 10-year Reunion. We are working hard to get ready for the big event and need your help.

Click Here to visit the web site for more info.

Click Here to update your contact information

Please email or call as many alum as you can and let them know about the site and the need for everyone to go there and update their contact info.

Here is the vital info:

www.wolfsonclassof97reunion.myevent.com

Location:
Casa Marina Hotel & Restaurant, Jacksonville Beach, FL

Date:
Saturday, August 18, 2007, 7 p.m. – 11 p.m.

So mark your calendars.

A new blog for the productivity minded professional

If you are a professional with a pencent for personal improvement in the realm of time management and personal productivity have I got a great blog for you.

The ADD Executive.

You will find some great resources, success stories, life hacks and most importantly, a place to share your experiences.

Full disclosure: I am helping to put this blog together and if all goes well, I and my partners on this project will share ad and affiliate revenues.

Thank you.

Thanks to everyone who commented last week with the wonderful advice and information for those who were recently laid off from MSI.

I have already heard about quite a few individuals who have already been scooped up into new positions much better than the ones they held at MarketSmart Interactive. One such friend of mine has landed a spot as the Media Director for a local Ad Agency.

I have read the commentary from Evan, Garret, Cord, JP, Stephen, and Andy but I wasn’t ready to share my thoughts on MSI just yet.

Basically, I can sum it up with a statement I made to Cord Silverstein in a chat we had Friday afternoon.

“The best thing I ever did for my career was to leave MSI, but the second best thing was to start working there.”

At MSI, the people I met, the experience I earned and the knowledge I gained would not have been possible at any other place. It was an amazing ride for all it’s ups and downs and has changed the direction of my life for the better.

They say that its not what you do during the happy times in life,but what you do during the tough times that show your character and help you grow as a person.

In my 2+ years at MSI, I matured (arguably) personally and professionally more than I ever thought possible.

Furthermore, I am grateful to all the XMSIers who had shared that journey with me.

As far as reasons why the company failed. Well, I actually think it is more simple than anyone has mentioned to date, but I will cover that in another post.

For now, all my past comrades in arms, whether you left months/years ago or if were a part of this most recent release of talent into the world, let us know where you have landed in the comments of this post.

If you haven’t landed yet or aren’t happy where you landed, comment your linked in profile here.

If you know of good companies hiring talented on-line marketers, comment here.

For my part, Garrett and I are building a preformance marketing /on-line holding company called Bold Interactive.

MSI Floods Local Market With Amazing Talent! Help is needed.

Hey Gang,

The news is out. MarketSmart Interactive just decided to flood the Triangle market with some amazing, just to name a few, PPC managers, Project Managers, SEO Copywriters and Online Marketing Consultants.

Without getting emotional, there are alot of completely fantastic people that need new jobs.

Please use the comments section of this post to announce local companies that are hiring for these types of positions or non-local companies that are hiring for this area.

Also:

If you are looking for a local position now, comment your skills and the kind of job you are looking for.

If you are hiring, lets us know what positions and where to send resumes.

PS. I will delete any non-helpfull comments.

GarrettDance.com is live (because I know you were waiting for it)

Literally, it’s a video blog of Garrett Dancing. That’s it.  We will figure out how to monetise it later, for now, it’s just fun.

GarrettDance.com

A new mullet genus is discovered close to home

Hey guys, this is not some 50x removed pic I found randomly searching the interwebs.

This new mullett belongs to a friend of mine, he shares some space with me at my current base of operations. (Cassell Design) I am also going to be working with him on some non profit initiatives he introduced me to. His name is Phill and he is not a cross dresser. It was just this once. (Well, thats what he says).

 WARINING – not for the faint of heart – will cause confusion and mild disbelief.

So without further ado,  I introduce you to a brand new genus of mullet.

— THE SUPERCROSS DRAGAMULLET —