Sep 27 2007

Using Chat Rooms in Viral Marketing

Posted by Lyn Leckie-Matassa in Viral Marketing
3 Comment

Spamming chat rooms or instant messaging systems with undifferentiated marketing messages is certainly not a very good idea. But if they are used the right way, these channels can be great to communicate with the market - especially to establish a dialogue with customers. Have you ever been to a chat room and posted a message. If you have then you may learn some free web-advertising secrets on how to market your products and service in chat rooms. Chat rooms are usually broken into categories. You will need to find the right chat room where your targeted audience would gather. If there isn’t one, them you may need to create one. It will be of no use to create one that is obviously for the sole purpose of selling your product or service. Rather, it needs to attract people who would be interested in your product or service. For example: If you sell garden products, your chat room should be on the subject of gardening and not the brand name of the products you sell. Another way to use a chat room to promote your business is to include a chat room on your web site. Host a free online seminar in your own chat room about a subject of your expertise. Use your chat room to meet with your current customers and answer any questions or address and problems they may have. Regularly schedule free events in your chat room and be certain that your customers are made aware of when they will occur. For example, you might have an expert in the field available to answer questions on a certain day and between certain hours. You might, also, host other people’s chat rooms as an expert yourself. You, of course, could charge for this but it might be wise to do it free to gain publicity. Lyn

Popularity: 16% [?]

Welcome If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Don't forget to leave a comment. I * DO * FOLLOW so you get a link back.

TAGS: Chat-Rooms, Viral Marketing

3 Comments on this post

Trackbacks

Chat Guy said:

Sorry for commenting on such an old post, but I’ve been reading and searching a lot on chat marketing lately and wanted to comment..

I like the idea of hosting your own chat, the problem is getting the critical mass of members needed to make it work.. When people pop in to a chat room with just one or two people they tend not to stick around very long..

I think what is really needed is an MLM / Marketing specific server that hosts chat rooms for “free” but allows people to sponsor specific rooms etc. to help cover costs.. Actually, pretend you didn’t read that, I need to go work on something

September 24th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Jonathan McGee said:

Hi Lyn, this is an excellent article and covers the critical issues. One the one hand, chat rooms can be a great way to meet people and connect with your audience and potential buyers. On the other hand, you need to be very careful of spamming. After you form an authentic relationship with someone, letting them know about a product or service is fair game. But dropping into a room and spamming links with no context is a quick way to get banned and generate negative feelings toward you or your product/service.

As one of the founders of Chatroll, a service which lets you create your own chat room and embed it in your website, I have seen both types of behavior, and can agree that while chat can be a powerful tool for viral marketing, it demands a higher level of respect, authenticity and commitment than many other forms of marketing. The most successful people are those that establish credibility first, and offer products/services only to those who have expressed interest.

October 31st, 2008 at 11:21 am
The Viral Script said:

We recently decided that releasing this script to the public probably really wouldn’t hurt us long term. There are so many different niches and approaches that could be used with this, and the internet is such a massive place, that we really don’t need to worry about the competition.

This offer might not be available for long though. That’s not marketing hype, that’s the truth. If these sites even start approaching the point of saturation we are pulling this from the market, no questions asked.

November 16th, 2008 at 10:03 am