Contributing Content to Forums and Communities

Let’s talk about Forums and Communities. People talk all the time about how difficult it is in Forums and Communities. I don’t get it, I’ve gotten some of my best traffic in the world from Forums, and I’ve had clients that have done amazing well with Forums. Yes, it’s mindless work. Yes, it’s a matter of finding the right post to respond to. Yes, it’s a matter of becoming a trusted poster so that you can put a squeeze page in your signatures. No, that’s not easy. Yes, it takes 2 to 3 months to do. And if you’re not willing to invest 2, 3 months in building a source of great traffic, then Forums and Communities are not for you.

You’re posting great content with a few videos, and you’re posting in a forum or community. Now layer on interviews. Where do I get interviews? Here’s the thing, if you write enough articles, people will ask you to be interviewed. I get interview requests a lot. I turn most of them down, because I just don’t have the time anymore. In fact, I wish that I had found a way to do them all, I really do. But, if all I did was interviews, I couldn’t create trainings like this. I couldn’t do all the other things that I hope add value to the world. If when you’re starting out, you write a few hundred articles and put them on your website, and you write a few hundred more, and you get them posted here and there, and you start ranking in Lifehack, and you start ranking in the websites in your niche, and you start ranking in the forums… I can almost guarantee you’ll get interview requests.

You may say, how do I figure out if it’s a good interview or not? Do them all! Do them all until you’re overwhelmed! Then we’ll talk about when to cut back. And then you start noticing things, cut back. Here’s what you do, when somebody interviews you, you’re going to post that interview. The first thing you do when someone asks you to interview is, you ask, “can I have the right to record it as well, and use it in my marketing the same way you’re going to use it in yours?” They’ll almost always say yes, and if they say no, say no thank you. Unless it’s obviously somewhere you’re setting out to be interviewed by.

When they interview you, you record it as well, and you put it on your website as the interview by so and so. It creates instant credibility for you and you share it on Facebook, you share it on G+, and you get instant credibility. And when 50 different people over the next year interviewed you, and all of those are showing up on the front page of your website, and they’re starting to show up in Google, what’s going to happen? You’re going to have instant credibility.

Before we go any further, I’m going to touch on about three more things that I want to give you. Some of you are still asking, where’s the 1-2-3 formula? THERE ISN’T ONE!

Hopefully by now you’ve got this idea that you’ve got to know what your website is going to look like, you’ve got to know how you’re going to change the world, and you’ve got to start changing the world right there on your website, and then tell everybody that you know about it.

One thing I’ve talked about in the past is, you’ve got a list of 100 Facebook friends. And most of you probably have 100 Facebook friends. You should be able to post a post on your Facebook page that says, “hey, as you know I’ve been working on starting my own business, and I’ve started one. How to create a scrapbook is my new business, and I know you’re probably not interested in scrapbooks, but could you please tell everybody you know that might be interested in scrapbooks?” Here’s the thing, if anybody unfriends you, because you spammed them on Facebook, because you told your friends about your personal pet project. Do you REALLY want to be Facebook friends with that person?

If you’re scared to tell your friends about your business, maybe you need to create a business that your friends would like. Or maybe you need to reevaluate some of your friends. I’m serious! Your friends should be the #1 people that are supporting you. You say, “well, so and so doesn’t support me,” maybe you just need to unfriend them for 3 months. I don’t know what the answer is, I don’t know all the social etiquette rules, I don’t know if you unfriend somebody that your kid goes to school with and they won’t speak to you anymore, and your kids can’t play together. I don’t know how all that stuff works. You’re going to have to figure that out on your end, I’m not a relationship expert.

What I’m saying is, if somebody dislikes the business that you’re building so much that they want to unfriend you? I question their friendliness.

I believe you should be able to tell everybody. I believe that you should be able to go get a business card made up that all it has on it is your website name, and your logo.

And any time you meet people in the grocery store, and you’re talking, and you say “hey, what do you do,” and they tell you, and they ask you what you do, you pull out your card and you say, “I run this website.” Doesn’t make any difference if you started 3 days ago, you run that scrapbooking website, right? Great, “I run this website, and let me ask you this, do you know anybody that’s interested in scrapbooking? Here’s another card.” You may not want to be that aggressive, but I’m just trying to give you the point, you can do this offline as well. This should not be some secret project that you have online. Do you think that Dropbox was a secret project? Do you think that Taskrabbit was a secret project? Is Google a secret project? Is Facebook a secret project. Is Business Insider a secret project?

NO! They’re not secret projects, they’re social projects!

When you take your website and allow it to become a social project, you’ll find that amazing things are going to happen.