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Prospects and customers often ask similar questions. Your Q&A page not only gives people answers they may be looking for, but it lets them know they aren't alone. Others have same needs and questions they do.
3. Schedule online events. These can be online chats or streaming audio broadcasts. There are a number of services that provide free chat rooms. Live365.com will let you do free audio streaming.
The event can be a guest expert answering questions, an interview with a popular author, or even a meeting of your distributors or franchisees. Be sure to announce your online event well ahead of time. Give it plenty of promotion. Mention it often in your newsletter, on your site, even in your advertising.
4. Start an email discussion. Email is by far most popular feature of Internet. Some experts believe big increase in people using Net has been caused by massive number of people who use email several times each day.
You can harness power of email to build your online community. An email discussion is simply a system that shares email messages between everyone in group. Messages can flow freely or be edited, approved, or rejected by a moderator in your organization.
It only takes a few minutes to get your email discussion going. Yahoo Groups and Topica.com provide excellent and reliable free service.
5. This final idea is extremely simple, but very powerful. Post good comments from customers. Customers often aren't sure what kind of results to expect from your product or service. Expectations of "good results" can vary widely.
By posting customer success stories, you can help other customers understand what to expect and what is possible. This goes a long way toward building customer confidence and better understanding of your product or service.
Online community is becoming more and more important as Web matures. People increasingly get online to check with a few communities they belong to. Make sure you have a community available for your customers and prospects.
Ron Sathoff and Kevin Nunley provide marketing advice, business writing, and promotion packages. Join their promotion discussion going on now at http://InternetWriters.com Reach them at mailto:service@InternetWriters.com or 801-328-9006.