Part 1: Social Media Marketing – An Introduction to Yahoo! Answers

photo credit: koka_sexton

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

One of the best and most efficient ways to promote your product or service without spending a dime is to offer people a solution to their problems and to let them explore this solution on their own. As we know, most people don’t respond well to a pressuring situation and in the case of advertising, seeing as all around the world people are being bombarded by advertising at all hours of the day, they have built up a certain level of immunity to it.

Yahoo! is one of the top ranked websites for traffic in the world. The shear volume of traffic makes it one of the most attractive places to be in terms of expanding your brand. Yahoo! Answers is a free, profile-based bulletin board where users can ask questions on virtually any topic they wish which the rest of the world may answer. Users who provide the best answers receive points, effectively boosting their profile stock, ranking, etc. It offers opportunities for businesses and professionals to gain exposure, improve branding, and acquire web site traffic, and Yahoo! is perfectly fine with using the service this way, as long as you work within the site guidelines.

Yahoo! Answers is a natural fit for any business where knowledge and expertise are your main sales tools. Providing helpful answers that benefit the community is a great way to brand yourself and attract new visitors to your web site. Retail businesses are less likely to gain much traction on Yahoo! Answers, although there are some categories in the Yahoo! Answers system where knowledge of certain product types can be shared.

The system relies on community moderation to support the community guidelines. Consider it a ‘neighborhood watch’ of sorts. Of particular note for marketing purposes is that the community guidelines do allow link dropping in some cases. Like most social sites, you’re allowed to include a link to yourself in your profile. The link is ‘nofollowed’, meaning that the link will not count towards your overall search engine ranking but it still allows users to find your website through your Yahoo! profile. Keep in mind that Yahoo! Answers is not a link building network but it is a great way to get some extra attention to your business.

There’s only one thing you can say to that…

A detailed written explanation on what is appropriate is available at the Yahoo! Answers help page at

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/answers/abuse/guidelines-10.html

Next week we’ll take a more in depth look at how to properly utilize Yahoo! Answers to leverage your website traffic.