Do online question-and-answer (Q&A) forums like Yahoo! Answers, LinkedIn Answers, Answers.com – or the recently launched Business.com Answers – offer a significant opportunity to better engage with prospects and customers, generate leads and drive revenue? Yes, they do, but success depends on following social media best practices.
Q&A forums should provide an excellent place for people with specific questions to connect with experts or others who have direct experience in that area. For example, participants in our recent Business Social Media Benchmarking Study described the benefits of Q&A forums this way:
“I was trying to fix something with one of my products for weeks. I searched Google for hours looking for an answer. I finally broke down and asked the question on a forum site that I use. Within a day I had three answers, all of which fixed the problem. Since then I ask the question first and Google second.” - Owner, 1-4 employee company, Food & Beverage industry
“I gained a new client from answering questions on LinkedIn.” - Head of Marketing, 5-9 employee company
“When first trying to grow our social media following, the moment we shifted to answering questions instead of just broadcasting links was when things really took off for us.” - Manager, 20-49 employee company, Telecommunications industry
Q&A forum success stories are also evident in the forums themselves, such as these examples from Business.com Answers:
Pam, a regional manager at Nutrition Research Group, posts a question on Business.com Answers looking for a wholesale sports nutrition distributor in Washington or Oregon to sell their products. Anthony Mercurio from Advantis Nutrition responds, Pam visits the Advantis Nutrition web site and requests more information about distribution opportunities.
Sharron, business development/sales manager at The Esmeralda Inn in North Carolina, question asking for advice on marketing the hotel for overnight workshops and meetings. The same day, Gina, the owner of publisher Serendipity Media Group in Fresno, California, responds that she’d be interested in setting up a writing seminar at The Esmeralda Inn.
However, many business experts with the most valuable answers to share do not yet participate in Q&A forums or, like these Business Social Media Benchmarking Study participants, find that Q&A forum participation has been less fruitful and/or more challenging than they would like:
“I believe the LinkedIn answers I have provided have been nothing but a waste of valuable time.” – Sole Proprietor
“On Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers it is hard to find questions related to our industry and to keep consistent searches going so we can answer in a timely manner.” – Individual Contributor, 100-499 employee company
To help companies get the most out of Q&A forum participation and drive business results, we just released the latest report in our business social media benchmarking series, Social Media Best Practices: Question & Answer Forums. This free, 42-page report provides a unique holistic perspective on the use of business Q&A forums from the combined insights of both Q&A users – over 1,100 people who currently turn to Q&A forums for business information or advice – and Q&A ‘Experts’, over 800 companies participating in Q&A forums as a way to build awareness of company products or services, attract web site visitors and generate leads.
Visit http://www.business.com/info/social-media-best-practices-q-and-a to download this free report and we’d love to hear your Q&A forum success stories (or horror stories!) in the comments section below.
I think they’re very helpful. It allows people to view a number of answers and take bits of information from each to implement their own solution.
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I have some questions about the “Social Media Best Practices: Question & Answer Forums” report Business.com has published. This report is very well done, and I am just trying to hone what the report is telling the Business.com audience.
> Generally speaking, how do CONSUMERS decide to use a Q&A forum rather than simply using Google?
> Do you have any sense for what percent of companies ARE using social media – and how many are NOT yet using social media?
> On figure 18 in the report (the NPS ratings), do you have any comparisons to 1) other social media options (i.e Twitter), or 2) other channels (such as Google search, print ads, etc.)?
> In Figure 20, I do not see Q&A forums mentioned at all. How do Q&A forums compare to Google search, for example. Based on this figure, it seems to say that Q&A forums are NOT part of the general mix of tools used by businesses (but almost 50% of companies using social media use Q&A forums???).
thanks,
–michael