Use An Online Community To Create A Free Sales Force

So you've got into facebook, and myspace, and powerful intentions, now it's time to create your own community.

You should be starting to think about or have already created your own group at Facebook, MySpace, and Powerful Intentions and invited your new friends to join you.

This email is about looking at other places you can setup the same group and where you can use the same content, outside of these networks.

There are a lot of free software tools out there that will do the work for you. They range from Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups to PHPBB and Drupal.

I recommend PHPBB or Drupal if you have your own domain and want to create them on your site, but if your site is new, then getting people there, is going to be a problem, so that can be done after a while when you've established yourself at the facebook, MySpace, and Powerful Intentions and either Yahoo or Google.

Yahoo! Groups is probably the most widely known and easiest online community platform out there. Although it has a limited number of features, the large majority of internet users will be able to manage to read online messages and join in the discussion by posting a message. Another benefit of Yahoo! Groups is that it allows users to specify to receive every individual message in their email, receive a daily compilation digest, or just read messages while logged in to the community.

A slightly more difficult but still familiar and easy to use option is Google Groups.

Both Yahoo! and Google Groups are so-called 'email communities.' Users can join the group and then receive all postings as individual emails or compiled in a single email sent out daily.

Because the whole idea of a community is to discuss with other people, how do you start from scratch? If there's no one in your community, then no one will like to join that community and if no one will join, there will never be anyone in your community - so how are you ever going to have a a large vibrant community base to benefit from?

The easiest way to overcome this problem is to mass-market your new community to all your users at the same time. Market your online community actively in one of your newsletters or in a direct outgoing email and make sure to give it a prominent place on your site in these first stages.

Online communities can be used to:

• create word-of-mouth buzz
• create trust - which boosts the conversion rate of your site
• solicit testimonials
• get valuable feedback on improving your site
• allow customers to help other customers with support issues and save you time
• Here are some things to include:
• Clearly convey information about your product, its uses and your users
• Think of the keywords people would use to search for groups on your topic and include these in your description
• Include the URL of your website and hyperlink it to your site
• Include a link to your website as a footnote in every message posted

Just follow the steps outlined in this tactic. Get a substantial subscriber base, set up a community, put in some work in the beginning and you'll be up and running in a matter of weeks.

Make use of the great viral marketing that an online community can create to your advantage, and to that of your subscribers!