The two most powerful assets a marketer can posses are knowledge and connections. These days much of that knowledge is discovered online and many of those connections are built on the Internet.
Beyond reading the popular blogs within your industry, most of the juiciest news and tactics may not be published in the open. The best stuff is often shared within small online communities that most people aren’t even aware of. If you’ve been learning everything you know from simply reading blogs you may be missing out.
As well, if your learning experience has been mostly passive, you are missing out on doubling your efforts and building a network of online contacts while you learn. These online communities allow you to share and build your network, which can potentially be more valuable than any information you could learn.
To get you started, here are some places to find these hidden communities.
Forums
One of the oldest and most reliable ways that communities forms on the Internet is through forums. Their simple and universal look and form makes it easy for anyone to pick up the conversation and become involved.
A great way to find forums is to simply search Google for the topic you are looking for and append “forum” at the end. Once you find a few forums, you’ll want to check and see how many posts there are, how active the forum is, and of course, if the discussions on it meet your needs. Here are a few of the best ones to get you started:
Web Master World
Warrior Forum
Blog Networks
Another exclusive group within Internet Marketing are the bloggers. The popular bloggers within each niche read each others blogs, respond to articles they read, and share each others content to their readers (whether on their site or through the social media channels). But there is also a lot of private emailing and such that goes on, and this is often where you can score some really good contacts and strategies.
This community does however have the steepest entry fee. You have to make a blog, write really powerful articles on it regularly, and demonstrate that you are an avid follower of your fellow bloggers before you can even begin to think about breaking into that inner circle. But once you have put enough time into your blog reach out, see if you can do a guest post or share a hot tip that you haven’t written about yet.
LinkedIn/Google/Facebook Groups
I think this group is really one that few people are taking advantage of. And truly, by sharing this tip, I hope to only make these communities stronger and more useful.
LinkedIn Groups, Google Groups, and Facebook Groups are all community organizers that serve as a group discussion for industry professionals. Simply log into each site and search around their groups section to find a group that shares your interests (for Facebook, simply use their search bar and start typing the industry name). After joining the group you can have the discussion forwarded to your email so you are always in the loop.
You can also search around the web for other sites that host groups, but unless you find one that is really industry specific, the participation beyond the big three is often limited.
Trade Organizations
Most trade organizations that require some level of difficulty to join also have a private members email list. These lists are possibly the most valuable in sharing information and understanding the concerns of the rest of the community.
With Internet Marketing, the main way to find organizations with good emails lists is to look to the trade shows. Trade shows are usually the arm of an organization that is looking for members, and membership can often gain admittance to a private discussion list. I’d ask before dropping a lot of money on membership if this is your goal however.
Reddit has long been known as a news aggregator (which it is). But is also home to some of the most active communities on the Internet. You’ll have to learn the rules first (or the discussions you start might not see much traction), but once you do these communities can be warm and very informational.
For Internet Marketing here are a few “sub-Reddits” to get your started:
Reddit Marketing
Reddit SEO
Reddit Blogging
About the guest author: Frank Anderson is an marketer and blogger for all things Internet and technology. Frank also works with Web Hosting to keep the Internet up and running.
This is an original article published on SEO Desk with exclusivity.
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