Two Strategic Techniques – YahooAnswers
If part of your social marketing strategy involves answering questions and positioning yourself as an expert on YahooAnswers, consider these two methods to make your efforts more profitable.
Be The First, Every Time
As discussed on the top tips for YahooAnswers, it is beneficial to be the first to answer a question. Here’s an easy way to do so without spending your day on the site. This technique helps you answer more questions before others by subscribing to the RSS feed for your chosen keywords or phrases. You then receive a listing of recently asked questions that are still open and available to be answered that are related to your chosen niche markets, as they’re posted.
Here’s how to set this up:
Go to the “Advanced Search” page as discussed earlier. Search for your specific keywords (primary ones that best describe your niche) and view the results page from your search.
At the very bottom of the page in the left hand corner, you will see the option to add that search query in your RSS reader, as shown below:
Once you have added this feed to your RSS reader, you will receive updates of new questions relating to your niche market (based on the keywords you just entered).
This makes it easy to be the first to answer new questions!
Repeat this process selecting keywords for each niche market that you are involved in and wish to receive notifications of.
Use The Answers To Build Your Website
As a Yahoo Answers contributor you will begin to see a pattern emerge where the same types of questions are being asked over and over again. This is a great way to learn about the current topics that people are interested in and if you are clever enough to see the value in this, you can utilize these topics to create interesting blog posts that will capture attention and receive comments.
You can use this knowledge in other areas of your marketing and promotion. For instance, if article marketing is part of your promotion strategy write articles based on the questions that you review. Submit these articles to EzineArticles.com and other directories to generate even more traffic. It’s an easy way to research various niche markets and see just what people are interested in and/or need help with!
To make things easier, you can choose to keep track of specific questions that you plan to address by clicking on the “SAVE” option under each question. You can save it to your RSS feeder or to your private watch-list.
Making the Most of YahooAnswers Involvement
Once you get into a routine with YahooAnswers you ‘ll find that every day you log into your account, view the open questions from the RSS Feed you’ve set up (above) and type out well-crafted, helpful answers with perhaps a link back to your site as a resource or continued learning on the topic.
Dependent on your market, you might find that you are answering the same question – posted by different people – repeatedly. This is why I keep a swipe file on my desktop with the most common questions I answers.
Create A Yahoo Swipe File and Targeted Landing Pages
By creating a swipe file of previously answered questions you will be able to cut and paste your answers and cover more ground. Be sure to modify your answers whenever required so that the person posting the question believes you have answered it exclusively for them.
While this is a time-saver and a method used by a lot of Yahoo Answers marketers, be careful not to simply paste the same answer repeatedly. Every question is different and you need to ensure that you modify to your answer or change it up a bit from time to time, depending on the nature of the question.
My swipe file is a Microsoft Word document of 20 answers which I cut and paste into a question’s answer box, rewrite to keep it personal and address any particularities of the question. A question then, that you’ve grown bored with answering becomes a 30 second marketing task that moves you up in the ranks at YahooAnswers.
Consider as well the strategy of your source link for repetitive questions. You could create one page for each specific question that you answer. That page will be loaded with more (keyword-rich) information, with a link to an affiliate product or subscription form, that Yahoo will index and your readers will feel was written with their needs in mind.
