A brief overview of forums and listservs as social media vehicles that are often overlooked by B2B marketing professionals.

1. Beyond Mainstream
Social Media
Forums and Listservs
with
Dmitry Shesterin

2. Intro
Pragmatic:
 Management Consultant
 Startup Advisor for Seed & Round A
 VP, Product Management
 VP, Marketing
 Large Capital Project Sales Manager
Academic
 Executive MBA
 BA, Intercultural Communications
Likes
 Theory of pricing
 Being a geek
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 2

3. Beyond Mainstream
Mainstream
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Google+ Often Overlooked
• LinkedIn • Forums
• Pinterest etc • Listservs
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 3

4. Forums
Why Bother?
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 4

5. Why Forums
• Established communities fused by common interest
• Your functionally pre-determined ideal target persona
• Well indexed by search engines
• Boost your domain authority with inbound links
• Great for:
• Monitor customer and prospect sentiment
• Competitive intelligence
• Recruit beta participants
• Collect customer feedback
• Announce events of significance
• Build your email marketing list
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 5

6. Tech Forums In Numbers*
Alexa Alexa Google
Forum Threads Posts Members
Reach Links Results
techsupportforum.com 650,489 4,018,373 948,905 6,088 2,104 1,890K
forums.techguy.org 1,015,367 8,462,026 686,738 3,008 984 2,410K
bleepingcomputer.com 2,918,348 590,304 5,410 5,587 1,150K
forums.whirlpool.net.au 1,860,525 38,082,213 556,340 1,547 1,921 13,200K
forums.techarena.in 204,908 1,074,338 457,737 50,588 1,064 615K
geekstogo.com 2,239,680 372,353 19,177 1,888 465K
forums.anandtech.com 2,298,094 34,776,027 324,133 2,279 688 5,900K
neowin.net 10,835,034 306,950 4,204 9,749 6,340K
cybertechhelp.com 203,587 1,234,494 129,409 150,775 493 133K
techspot.com 174,368 1,239,950 124,584 3,589 7,373 503K
*Data collected on March 26, 2013 via respective sites and big-boards.com
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 6

7. Forum Bonus Numbers:)
• OS Platform Specific
Alexa Alexa Google
Threads Posts Members
Reach Links Results
ubuntuforums.org 1,941,211 11,938,966 1,797,940 1,820 14,704 1,150K
macrumors.com 1,469,635 16,496,393 802,611 762 2,785 5,640K
social.msdn.microsoft.com 1,413,482 6,595,909 22 2,566 876K
• Mobile Platforms
Alexa Alexa Google
Threads Posts Members
Reach Links Results
forums.crackberry.com 659,227 7,814,436 3,760,140 3,245 598 9,350K
androidforums.com 588,068 5,522,481 1,420,064 2,221 5,756 4,280K
• Computer Security Hubs
Alexa Alexa Google
Threads Posts Members
Reach Links Results
wilderssecurity.com 208,187 1,967,940 127,383 22,449 1,599 502K
dslreports.com 18,162,983 66,131 3,995 7,712 7,110K
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 7

8. Non-English Tech Forums
Germany Russia
• ComputerBase • RU Board
• Forum de Luxx • IXBT BBS
• gulli:board • SysAdmins.ru
• Giga.de • Habrahabr.ru
China Brazil
• IM286 • Forum GDH
• Et8 • Techzone
• Cfan • Baboo Forum
• Forum PCs
France
• Hardware.fr
• Presence PC
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 8

9. Forum Etiquette
• Complete you profile and indicate that you are a vendor
• Introduce yourself and state your objective
• Be quick with responses and authentic in messaging
• Don’t pitch
• Don’t bash competition
• Always stay positive
• Use your signature wisely, include a link to your site
• Use Personal Messaging to remediate problems
• Hint that acknowledgement of resolution is welcome but not required
• Stay away from flame wars
• Keep someone responsible for monitoring your forum landscape
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 9

10. Marketing In A Forum
• Develop relationships with frequent posters and moderators
• Feed breaking news before mainstream PR
• Crowd-source tier 1 support via avid fans and users
• Establish dedicated sub-forums devoted to your products
• Optimize SEO in all your responses and threads
• Always link back to your site for more or technical info
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 10

11. ListServs
Why Bother?
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 11

12. What Is Listserv?
• ListServ is an electronic theme-specific mailing list
• Once subscribed and added to the list, you can email that
list and receive responses
• Yes, it is still well and alive:) Still actively used by:
• Librarians
• Technology Coordinators in public education (K2-20)
• Geeks
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 12

13. Lurking Is For Vendors
• Social Listening for vendors at its best
• Open posts to a list by vendors are thrown upon
• Identify and monitor all listservs that are used by your target
personas
• Listserv users know that smart vendors are listening
• If problems are reported or help requests are posted, reach out
directly for immediate resolution. Put your best people on it.
• Hint that acknowledgement of resolution is welcome but not required
• Keep someone responsible for monitoring all listservs.
Lurking cat by ~FloatingUkuku
on deviantART
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 13

14. Why ListServ
• Great lead generation tool. Majority of posts include
signatures with direct extensions and titles.
• Unfiltered and unbiased customer-to-customer feedback
• Competitive intelligence
• Save on mystery shoppers, list subscribers identify
operational and product problems early
• Rich source of feature ideas (evaluate carefully)
• Identify and put your Mavens to work
(Gladwell’s Tipping Point)
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 14

15. Research Example
• Evaluated one year of content from three listservs
• 80,000+ messages from 3,500+ subscribers
• Identified 122 listserv mavens
• 51 affluent posters are existing and loyal customers!
• 60 posters are customers of a competitor!
• 11 posters are joint customers!
• Based on received data promotional activities, content
generation, collateral production and product positioning
were adjusted.
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 15

16. Good Luck!
 Email d.shesterin@gmail.com for template
files and frameworks
 Connect on LinkedIn at linkd.in/shesterin
 Follow me @dscheste
© 2013 Dmitry Shesterin. All Rights Reserved. 16