I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written. We have just passed the two year anniversary of losing everything in the house fire. It has been a long haul of hard work, sorrows and exhaustion with, and I’m being brutally honest here, very little joy. Under-insured we found ourselves in some tight predicaments and it didn’t help that once my family was emotionally settled, I slipped into many days of dark depression.

Some days, I’m still there.

Today, however, I’m on fire and excited about online marketing again. Web 2.0 properties still get me excited over their power in every aspect of promoting a business online.

You see you can only walk away from your online business for so long until:

1. your search engine rankings slip,
2. your strength of presence on Web 2.0 sites slip,
3. and with that, your income slips.

That’s when you’ve got to pull up your socks and get busy.

Marketing on eHow

If you’ve been with me for any length of time you’ll remember the day I introduced you to Squidoo.

You’ll remember when I taught how to publish and market on HubPages.

If you took decisive action back then I have no doubt that you gained a consistent stream of traffic, an increase in your search engine rank and – as it stands to reason – subscribers and sales.

eHow is a similar story, although much quicker in time to task.

When I came out of ‘the dark place’ I started at square one with my keyword research. Every string of phrases that I love to rank for showed top results from eHow.

eHow is a powerhouse. Tens of thousands of pages on just as many topics and it’s growing in leaps and bounds daily. User generated content wins every time. I talked about this in my 2005 newsletter from the Stampede Secret remember?

eHow Particulars

You can share in the ad revenue (if you’re USA based). I never bother with this anyway. It’s usually pennies on Adsense dollars that aren’t worth all the hard work. I usually leave it all to the Web 2.0 property for operating costs or in the case of Squidoo, for charities.

You won’t get ‘link love’ from them.

The main reason you want to publish an eHow article is for the Resources box. Write a great little keyword-rich article (400 words suffices), that references your site as the authority. Sure, google may not give you any rank for the link but the spiders will take note and humans will click it.

The best part? I’m in the #1 position in google for my three word key phrase. Not the eHow article. The page referenced in my resource box.

Giving Your eHow Pages An Adreneline Shot

Once I wrote the article it sat in my queue for 3 days until admins made it live. Once live, I pinged the page and RSS Feed at Pingoat (under 1 minute). For a little extra juice I submitted the RSS feed to 3 other feed directories. 2 minutes.

This strategy is what I call “promoting the promoters” and it has worked everytime I’ve done it. Whether you are linking to your money sites from a Facebook Fan page, a social bookmarking account, an article directory or any other Web 2.0 property – submit the promotion and the search engines will follow the links and do the rest.

Feel free to ask questions or comment below.

Get busy. Gain rank. Love your business.

This is especially true if you own a retail shop or are marketing books that you’ve authored, but it is also true for service oriented companies on a local level. Think about it – you’re the expert, people walk into your shop, stop you on the street or call in to ask questions all the time. They’re considered a ‘warm’ prospect at that point.

Now imagine an online location where all of these potential prospects can be found, asking questions that you could be answering – all the while positioning yourself as the expert on a global scale. Utopia, yes? In fact there are more than 21 million unique users in the U.S. and 90 million worldwide using Yahoo Answers right now, just waiting for your help. In return you’ll be rewarded with rank, traffic, sales and subscribers – whichever you’re after – or all four.

This social marketing strategy will be presented in a step-by-step format that you’ll easily be able to incorporate into your existing marketing hours. In fact if you put all the other stuff on automation – Twitter updates and campaigns, and bookmarking-syndication-commenting-voting – you’ll have time to manage an hour of day of this very hands-on approach. You should also see results quickly – seeing just how powerful this strategy is when analyzing your traffic and seeing just how much Yahoo Answers sends. YahooAnswers is, after all, the largest knowledge-sharing community on the Web.

Step One: Open a Yahoo Answers Account

You will need a Yahoo Answers account to be able to answer open questions. You will be able to create your account using your current Yahoo messenger account if you already have an ID.

Step Two: Complete Your Profile

Once you have created a Yahoo Answers account and are logged in, you will be able to create or edit your profile. You should take a few minutes to fill out as much as information as you would like to share and then save your information.

You can choose to allow Yahoo Answer members to contact you via messenger, or keep this information private. You can also enable “email contact” if you would like to receive comments via email, or you can choose to disable all contact other than through the questions that you answer.

When you edit your profile it is recommended that you add a photo or customize an avatar. It’s important to brand yourself and this is an easy way to make your profile more memorable as your photo will appear within your answers.

Step Three: Get to Know Yahoo Answers

From the main Yahoo Answers page you will see categories listed on the left hand side. This is where questions are posted and grouped according to their subject matter. This is also where you will go when choosing the different types of questions that you would like to answer, and depending on the niche markets that you are involved in, you might find yourself answering a variety of questions from different categories and groups.

You’ll find the question and answer screens wonderfully organized into topics such as:

• Arts and Humanities

• Beauty and Style
• Business and Finance
• Cars and Transportation
• Computers and Internet
• …and so on, with many sub-level topics.

It should go without saying that before you begin answering questions you should have an idea of what you plan to promote – this isn’t always clear to marketers who have their hands in many markets. It would be wise to create a profile for each market you delve into to avoid confusion and maintain focus in your efforts as well as your prospects view. Each time you answer a question, you can include a “SOURCE” in a secondary box that accompanies your response. This is an easy way to promote your websites and direct people to find out more information about the topic of their question.

You should also browse previously answered questions so that you can get a feel for the way other people have answered and addressed different questions, paying attention to those answers that were selected as being the “TOP” response.

As you begin answering questions, you may run into a series of questions that are no longer open. Here is a breakdown of the life cycle of a question from the time it is first posted:

Questions that are “Resolved” are typically closed from receiving future follow ups while questions that are marked “Undecided” have not yet received a “TOP” vote.

Questions are open for only four days but the original poster can extend the period for a few extra days or if a question has been resolved, they can close it before that time period has ended.

It’s important to answer questions as thoroughly as you can and avoid spamming your websites within your answers. In fact, there are few times where including your website URL within the answer is acceptable at all. If those viewing your response feel that it is spam you will not receive votes and your answer may be removed entirely. Therefore, you should try to keep your websites within the “Source” box only. Those who liked your answer are likely to follow your link to find out more especially if you are careful to answer questions that pertain to your niche market.

Start Promoting!

Due to the large number of people answering questions every minute of the day, it is important that you are quick when responding to open questions. As mentioned above, you must also do your best to answer the question as thoroughly as possible and be sure to address the person who posted the question by name (whenever possible). This has been known to increase your chances of being voted as “best answer” since the original poster feels that you are taking your time to address them personally.

Quick Tip: There is a built in spell checker available. Use it whenever possible to minimize spelling errors.

Remember that the ultimate goal is to be selected as the best answer (Top Answer) because the more often you are selected the more exposure your answer, profile and website will receive.

The Points System

As a member of Yahoo Answers you will earn points for each question that you answer. You will also discover that there are limits on the number of questions that you can answer each day until you build up your levels.

Here is a breakdown of the different levels that you can reach depending on the amount of points you receive every day. (For the first week you will be focusing on building up your levels so that you can answer more questions by increasing your daily limit. Those who reach Level 4 can answer an unlimited number of questions every day.

When you start out you begin at Level 1. You are able to answer 20 questions every day at this level. In the first day it is possible for you to earn 140+ points by answering 20 questions and you will earn more for every answer that is selected as the ‘top choice’.

You will be able to view your Points and Level on the main page of Yahoo Answers (on the right hand side) under your name. Here is an overview of how the points are accumulated.

When you begin answering questions you should focus on targeting your main niche until your levels increase and you are able to answer as many questions as you like. That way, you can start driving traffic to your site right away, despite being limited to only 20 questions a day.

Locating Specific Niche Related Questions

To find niche-specific questions that are still open for answering, click on the “Advanced Search” link to get started. You will find this at the top of the Yahoo Answers website once you are logged in.

Once you have loaded up the Advanced Search page you will be able to enter in keywords that are relevant to your niche market. You can also minimize any time wasted by being certain to only search for questions that are still open for answering.

Enter in your specific keyword that best describes your niche and set the “Keyword Match” to “Questions” as you are searching for questions to answer right away.

Next, choose “ALL” when selecting your categories as sometimes questions may appear throughout different groups.

Be sure to filter out the questions so that you are searching only for questions in your primary language unless you are able to understand and respond in alternative languages.

And finally be sure to set the status of your search so that it generates a list of “Open Questions” only. There is no sense in searching for questions that have been resolved (or are closed) from receiving additional responses.

Once you have completed this step you will generate a search results page that includes multiple un-answered questions found using your keyword(s). To begin answering questions, simply click on the links to load up the “Question and Answer” page.

The social marketing strategy behind YahooAnswers is to answer questions that target your niche market and include a website link that provides additional information – if the resource is your own website then you’ve generated direct traffic within a few minutes time and if the question is a popular one, hundreds (even thousands more) clicks could follow, even if your answer does not end up being chosen as the “top” answer.

Remember as well that Yahoo is the most popular search engine, outranking even Google, so by answering recent questions rather than digging through older ones you are ensuring that your website receives traffic not only from the Yahoo Answer center (and those who view your answer from within that section) but also from the Yahoo search engine spiders as well!

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to creating a social marketing strategy using YahooAnswers. More advanced tips and strategies of this busy directory are available after registration to www.SocialMarketingStrategy.com.

The “Google Video” Video: