Know-How Exchange : Our Forum

I'd like to have the poster fill out a questionnaire rather than enter free-form text for a question posting. The tagline questionnaire (for example) would have blanks for business name, website, region, target market, market problem, etc. All the questions that we need answered to better help.

I'd like to have a way for us to follow up on the actions the poster has taken (call it a mini case study), so we all can learn what they did, why, and what worked (and didn't).

Dave

Thanks for posting this question – it’s extremely healthy to see a debate about the future of the KHE Forum and how it relates to the plans of MP as a company – in particular, what we can do to retain and enhance the membership.

I think that it is worth re-iterating my earlier point on another posting that whilst we are loyal members of the KHE, we are not the owners of the site, and the founders and current shareholders presumably have a business plan (It would be a bit odd for the world’s leading marketing site not to have one!). It was set up with some fairly lofty ideals “Where Marketing professionals meet Marketing professors?) But it has not lost its way ethically as many other member sites have.

It has never been a social service site for the benefit of the dispossessed and clueless of marketing. Whatever we can do has to fit in with the objectives of the owners and to that end, it would be helpful to know what these are. The objectives and timescales may well be too commercially confidential to be discussed on an open forum, but now having Beth Harte as a point of contact, such potential conflicts can be managed to everyone’s benefit.

Looking at the home page of MarketingProfs, the forum is mentioned only once and that is in the forum icon at the top right of the page. There used to be a further box explaining what the forum was and what the benefits of using it are, but when I looked 10 minutes ago, it had done a disappearing act.

Such a lack of visibility on the home page could imply that the KHE is regarded as having little value to the site in comparison to all the other offerings – or it could simply have ended up like this by default – in other words with no one to champion the forum internally, other more persuasive MP team members have ensured that they win more space and more publicity for their own areas, such as tweets and the blog.

The paid-for items deserve a high profile because they and the adverts pay for the running of the site but it would be worthwhile analysing where the visitors actually come from and what the acquisition cost is per member. I would bet that in the past the forum has been the least expensive and most effective driver of traffic, but I doubt that it is so now.

In my view there is a bit of quid pro and quo needed here. Without getting a lot of hits, traffic, the site loses value for those who have invested in it. Without a sizeable registered membership, the site again loses value. Because the subscribers have all given their email addresses and permission to mail them things, this must represent a valuable piece of real estate to the site. How many websites have access to and can use a mailing list of 325,000 people who are all involved in or interested in the things which make the site buzz and make it pay.

That’s where the forum members have potentially a strong role to play in enhancing the value of the site through attracting or recruiting membership. The greatest value they have to the site is the sheer potential they have to bring new members to the site. That enhances the owner’s value through making advertising more attractive (A bigger audience) whilst also enhancing the value of the site which arises from having a large, active and ultimately contactable membership.

As I said in my posting to NuCoPro’s question:

https://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstID=29429

The value which could be derived from the forum members could be very great – greater than all other means of attracting membership put together. I think that by looking at what can be done in terms of partnership with the KHE Experts is something which could be pursued to the benefit of the site, the forum and the reputation of the professional marketers who make up the forum.

I’ll cap what I say for now because without having access to the statistics, I could be barking up the entirely wrong tree, so it’s over the MP management to let us know what the stats are and where they can, what their strategy is.

Best wishes


Steve Alker
Xspirt

Hi Shelley,

Yes, I have noticed the tweet button and have clicked on it several times. works great!!

What's the background on adding this feature?

Steve

Dear Shelly

I mentioned the re-tweet button in Gary’s posting – It is a double edged sword as it tweets only a synopsis of the header and a link. Thus when my friends go to FaceBook, they see a number of incomprehensible snatches of a marketing dialogue. I can’t imagine that they have the time to look up the original.

Also, professional tweeters use this service to extremes. I get about 20 tweet posts a day – more sometimes from Thomas Powers, the chairman of Ecademy telling me what he’s just signed up for, telling me that Michael Jackson has died, telling me that he’s having a coffee telling me –telling me. Now I respect Thomas and what he and Penny have achieved at Ecademy but:

The last question Thomas posted on his blog to which I responded was re-tweeted all over the place. It concerned how he and others who aspire to be a networking guru like him, could handle the 50,000 or so people in his network to everyone’s advantage. I’d surmise that if he overloads everyone who “knows” him with this tweet-tripe, then he’d pretty quickly have an answer to his big number problem by losing half his network.

I couldn’t resist telling him that as we’d got 320,000 people in the MP network, if he wants any advice about handling large networks, he’s always free to talk to any of us here!

Best wishes and no, I am not re-tweetifying this!


Steve Alker

Dear Telemoxie,

The significance of responses to questions raised on this forum is, I think, similar to the significance and purpose of a headline in a piece of copy: it's there to get someone to read the next sentence, and the sentence after that.

And so on.

Why is this relevant?

Because the previous element (whether it's a sentence or an answer to a question) needs to be interesting enough to create intrigue and curiosity to make the reader want to read more from the person giving the answer or supplying the sentence.

I'm talking here about the importance of contextual significance.

When there's no significance (no link) to any previous context, or when there's no real incentive to connect an existing answer to a future contribution, you have no connection—and because you have no connection, you have nothing solid on which to build any kind of relationship.

And in marketing, if you don't have a foundation on which to build a relationship, you don't have anything of substance and you might just as well be whistling in the wind for all the impact it'll have.

So, how can we make our forum better?

We can contribute more, and do so because we want to, not because we feel we need to or because we have to in order to get something in return.

When we give—freely, openly, and willingly—our giving comes back to us, often multiplied by factors of ten, a hundred, or even higher.

If contributing to this forum becomes a chore, suddenly, it stops being fun and it becomes—gasp!, shock! horror!: work.

And if it becomes work, it becomes something that people either want to put off or don't want to get involved in at all because they think they're never going to see any return on their investment—then, "Houston, we've had a problem!"

The problem with the perception of ROI is that too often, people equate it with money. That's normally the answer to the question "What's in this for me?".

The investment of time anyone gives to this forum doesn't just have to be monetarily-based in order to have some lasting effect. Any monetary returns ought to, I think—come as a result of participation being seen as the sprinkles on the icing, not as the cake.

To make things "better" contributors might need to employ a mind shift: a total disconnect from what's been expected or inferred in the past.

When you change you mind, you change your world.

There's an old saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Me? I think that's crap. If something's truly broken (and I DON'T believe that's the case with the KHE), then perhaps it needs to be pulled apart, adapted, and significantly improved. OR, perhaps the contributors need to be pulled apart, adapted and significantly improved.

Hence my wondering if people need to change their mindset.

How can this forum be improved?

By members urging their clients to ask more questions—question that forum members are then encouraged to respond to ... because they want to and because they are genuinely INTERESTED in the outcome, and in helping people.

Referrals are a great way to build rapport and this approach could go a long way to assuring clients of the value of their investment in marketing. But whatever happens, I don't buy into the notion of this forum fading away.

Here's why:

I started contributing to this forum eight weeks ago on May 2. In that time I've clocked up almost 21,000 expert points, I'm half way up the "Top 100 Experts" list, I've received several e-mails telling me how much people enjoy reading my contributions, and I'm currently working on a plan for a new client.

How have I done all this while holding down a full time job, writing a book, working on two information products, and putting in time to start my own independent consultancy? By getting off my butt, pulling 18 hours days, and by making a committed, determined effort to get involved.

This forum is only ever going to be as good as the input of its contributors. By saying this I'm NOT claiming any high ground.
But for questioners, the feeling may always be WYSIWYG, and if the answers that are appearing are not thought of as being high enough in terms of quality, some of the people thinking this are also some of the ones who can fix the issue by getting involved.

If the feeling exists—or if it's permitted to grow on the part of people asking questions—that the calibre of answers is sliding, that somehow, it's not worth their while to ask a question, the perception will be that there are few reasons to ask decent questions because there are few people offering answers.

And as fewer people ask questions, even fewer people will answer them. And down things will go in an ever tightening spiral until Ann Hadley pulls the plug.

Why?

Because there was perception that the forum was dying when in reality, no such thing was happening, at least, not from where I stand. And as we all know, in marketing, perception is EVERYTHING.

So, to save this forum, let's see more people answering questions and let's see more people being encouraged to ask questions.
(Not that I have any strong feelings on this you understand.)

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA
Contributor since May 2, 2009

1. There should be a clear link to the responders profile
2. While I appreciate closing questions and equally distributing points...there should be a better way to award points to the best answer...do those asking questions get a reminder to close questions?
3. The points of the responder should show up by their name
4. I agree that there should be some form of follow-up on how effective the answers were
5. Maybe MarketingProfs should randomly twitter the form or responses?

that's all for now...

Dear Telemoxie,

I have been on this forum for quite a long time, mostly as a mute reader lately. From last yr and half I have seen so many queries that make no head and tail, like - 'Hi am doing a new prod launch, what should be an effective way to market. Am a novice in advert but have a good prod to sell.' Queries like this with no information are rising and I have seen people just ignoring them lately. I agree with BARQ here that in case the person is genuinely challenged, then it makes sense to help out. But what I see is that such kind of people just never check back on answers and points get awarded by the 'caretaker'.

Then there are students who copy paste the assignment questions which is ridiculous. We need to sort them out to make sure we are reaching to right audience and giving them a positive after their visit on the forum. After such wayward questions, I myself feel that the premium tag of forum has lessened a bit from what it was when a friend introduced me here 2.5yrs ago.

Regards,
Jas

I was very confused by this post - I originally saw it as a Tweet from Shelley Ryan (a MP Staff member).

So I got REALLY excited. I thought...hmmm. Pro marketer asking the community how to improve the MP forum.

(Of course words are everything and humans want community so forum is a crappy word - lose it.)

Since I don't participate in this entity...it took me awhile to decipher KHE...it remeined a secret secret for about an hour. I was reading KHE in the comments and all I could think was "What the hell is that?"

Straight-away Barb's opening comment is spot-on. (We could end this story right there.)

Some of these other comments blew me away - SO MUCH INFORMATION about MP, its shareholders, its business plan - my goodness, why would a nonentity of this company take on such a responsibility--or the seeming responsibility as mentioned above.

Since when are people who post here responsible for the success/demise of this webpage? (I don't believe that would be a message out of the mouth of MP by the way.)

I dunno. I'm a subsriber of the Dali Lama "Do not take on the suffering of the world."

It was a very different take for me to see that the ? was NOT posed by MP...it was Retweeted (remember emotions sell. So first I'm helping out MP who I've been reading since the first MP post and now I'm responding to strangers - people I dunno who are speaking like they own this forum - and very well may.)

I've been reading pages here and hands-down after more than 1 hour of solid review: I've gained nothing.

What's the payoff for points - Betty Crocker coupons or free food (I'll take the latter except that the point system, well, sucks. 1 person racked 250 for one low-level non-info answer to a ? while somebody else got 250 after answering 5 questions. Don't get it, don't wanna get it doesn't sound/look like fun).

Definitely the level of knowlege exchange is either not up to snuff or one has to search to find maybe 1 jewel (ain't gonna happen).

All the above comments say this.

No/low-cost changes (I think somewhere I read about marketing this, no $$$ for new design - don't know that this section needs new design to be more interesting, compelling and attractive...that's called redundancy :-D).

1) Make this a community by firstly calling it a community

2) Add member's photos to profiles (none that I saw including Shelley's has a photo. C'mon...community with no photo? Ain't gonna happen).

3) Feature a profile daily on the Community LP.

4) Write out 10 senarios of how 10 different people might use and benefit from this community - and act on those

5) Add an easy peasy poll (radio button 3-4 choices and after we choose just show the graph results)...a poll that we can learn from: Which headlined pulled best poll Give right right answer or similar

6) List of most-read or hottest topics

7) The only way to engage this user would be to segment the community into student/career pros up to a certain year/seasoned professional 10 years+ in the business (this of course may never happen and it's an honest easy answer).

8) I can think of about 20 useful concrete ideas that are working well for other community sites...and certainly nothing is keeping anyone from expending the same research, brain and professional power to apply same.
Just can't think of a reason why to do that right now.

8.5) Have contests win stuff partner with people.

Peace and profits,

Tia Dobi
Hypnotic copyriting and niche marketing that sells more

https://www.twitter.com/tiadobi

P.S. For MP: Give us a point/counterpoint weekly write-up on a topic by PROS (PROS PROS PROS too much of the content on MP has become watered-down over the years, it seems to me. Of course, I am not at the Premium Level. A week-in-review email rather than sooooo many.)

tiad, you write: "Barb's opening comment is spot-on." I can't find a post from "Barb" and I'm wondering if it might be another question she answered. Since the comment is clearly an important one in understanding your point of view, could you let us know which comment you're referring to? Thx.

And thanks too for your contribution. It's really helpful to have input from someone who isn't part of the "establishment" on KHE. (And, yes, the KHE designation is hard to figure out if you haven't been prowling this beat for awhile.)

Michael, guessing here, but I think tiad may have meant BARQ, not Barb.

So the relevant comment is "I'd like to see SOME way to hold new members accountable for their forum posts. Too many questions are from folks who just joined the same day as their post, ask for answers without providing ANY relevant input, and provide no email address on their profile."

Well, amen to that thought. It's something we've wrestled with since the beginning. We even coined the term "Drive-By Questioners" to describe their behavior.

Here's the dilemma: EITHER make it harder to sign up by placing more barriers in the way of a new member/questioner, with the aim of increasing the quality of participation. OR minimise the barriers in order to increase the quantity. MP picked the latter - make it easy, and let's face it, Drive-By Questioning is not as bad now as it has been in the past.

This is a really good question, and I thank Telemoxie for placing it. (Dave, I owe you a phone call, I know! I will call when I'm online and it's not some horrible time in your timezone.)

I hope we can keep it running a while to get more input from relative newbies to the forum. I think a lot of the older hands here think we have a pretty good thing going on with the forum/community, but we need a reality check on relevance to up and coming young marketers. I'm going to bookmark this thread and revisit from time to time over next few days.

Talking of which - where is young Carl from NZ these days?

Cheers all

ChrisB

Thanks, Chris. It never occurred to me that BARQ could be "Barb." Maybe that's it.

BARQ, for those who don't know, is Jeff Rothe's dog ... and the mascot for his consulting business. The line on his website is "Brand's best friend."

Phil, Greg, Stephen ...

A few reactions:

1. The vast majority of people who ask a question here don't bother to check the archives. Too much work/effort required, I suspect. And they probably don't even know about the How-To Guides or other articles on the MProfs site that could really help them. They just want to ask their question and get instant answers.

2. We developed a series of input forms for different kinds of questions last year, but we never really used them. I'm guessing that they would scare off most of the newbies, because they ask the hard and relevant questions ... objectives, marketing strategy, target audience, etc. We know that many/most people skip that stuff and just want us to use ESP to get the answers so we can tell them what they want to know.

3. The idea of inbound links to MarketingProfs KHE is probably a good one. Even without that, however, I've found that serious clients (and especially prospective clients who are conducting due diligence) find this stuff on their own. I had one client who actually read more than 1,000 of my posts before retaining me for his company/project. Another read all my posts in one or two categories (branding and strategy, I think). Small sample, I know, but still demonstrates the principle.

None of this really speaks to the original question, of course.

I agree with Gary mostly, but I kind of like the idea of referring folks to Taglines-R-Us. (That's one of my websites! :-) )

BTW, that website gets a fair amount of traffic, but most folks who take the time to inquire are just looking for free help. Sound familiar?

Hi Dave,

I think your post has been very useful in getting our brainstorming juices going. There have been many solid ideas proposed , like encouraging first time posters to fill out their profiles and provide more information without the need for khe’rs to ask for more information.

I also like the idea of re-starting the google discussion group again. I don’t remember why it was discontinued, but this seems like a great time to have an ongoing forum available for those who continue to be interested in the forum’s growth.

Steve

One more thought, since social marketing by whatever name is such a hot topic, maybe the forum could add it as a category, and then promote it. What would be a good name ... social marketing, social media, social networking, SMO for social media optimization?

Can’t believe I posted a name question :0

Steve

Dear Gary R.

I need to clarify something from your response to my post above (about the 'problem'), because it might have been taken out of context.

It wasn't my intention to sound critical of forum members (least of all you). I have no point of reference for previous years contributions, and I agree that questions need to be encouraged. That's why I suggested forum members encourage people to send in questions.

I hope this clarifies things.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

One of the things we realized when we were planning 911 Marketing Help is that most marketers, most of the time, don't have a question that needs expert (or even not-so-expert) attention. Any given marketer may only have a question appropriate for this forum once or twice a year, if that often.

As a result, promoting a service like the KHE is likely to be very inefficient. You advertise or promote to an audience of business people, or even marketing people, and you know going in that only 1 out of 10 people in your audience is really a prospect -- maybe only 1 in 100. There is no medium that really targets our ideal question-asker.

As a result, the best way to pick out our candidates is with great search engine optimization, so when they search for their question they get referred to the KHE. And if they are referred to a page where we've already answered a question just like theirs, they read the answers and leave. (No new question.)

The challenge is to find a way to reach just the people who have a question and for whom the question is important enough to invest some time to give us the relevant background. Not easy!

I've noticed a marked drop off of questions coming to KHE. It seems that there are less business folks looking for help these days.

Part of the problem is the way the Experts Exchange is lost on the marketing profs home page. Who the heck knows what www.marketingprofs.com/ea means. I agree, we need more banner ads on the main landing page, and make them blatantly obvious: got a business problem? Get answers here!

Another issue I have is it looks like Microsoft has stepped into 'our' turf. Anyone notice this web site pop up one day?

https://businessonmain.msn.com/default.aspx

They offer a knowledge exchange. Not nearly the same as here (I like MP's KHE format much better), but it rather scary seeing a heavy hitter like MS step into the arena (Watch out MS we gonna kick yer @ss!).

I wonder if question askers have become more shy these days? Perhaps folks would like to ask their question in a less public way? These days search is finding all kinds of obsure posts...who might want their inexperience popping up on page three of a Google Search? Might have a loss of face in front of their competition?

Then again, most of the folks who have found my answers helpful, have expressed they really would like more 'one on one' after they get an answer. I think perhaps folks might be looking for more support after the answer...like help to impliment the solution. Of course, there is post a project...but that is a pretty formal gap to gulf....perhaps something in between would be nice...like finalist answers go onto second round support to implimentation stage...should the asker want it.

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network

Hi in response to:
Posted by: mgoodman Staff Response
7/4/2009 1:46 PM (CST)

tiad, you write: "Barb's opening comment is spot-on." I can't find a post from "Barb" and I'm wondering if it might be another question she answered.


The opening comment (a synonym would be "The first comment in this list") is:

Posted by: BARQ Member Response
7/3/2009 7:08 AM (CST)

Trust that helps.

However, I'm more confused now because next to mgoodman are the words "Staff Respponse" and when I clicked on mgoodman name link, didn't see any reference to employment by Marketing Profs.com.

(Am I missing something?)

take care

Tia Dobi, Los Angeles, Ca.

Tia, I am an independent marketing consultant and have done some work for MarketingProfs that required that I have administrative access to certain sections of their website. Because of the way it's set up, that causes my posts to be shown as "Staff Response."

Be assured I am not an employee of MarketingProfs. I do refer people to content on the MarketingProfs website when I think it can be helpful in responding to their questions, but I'd do that regardless. I do the same thing with books that might be helpful, or other websites, blogs, etc.