Did you know you can post a business question and get the answer online from platforms like TopTenWholesale Answers? Say you need a quick answer to a business question and you post a query on a business answers community. These communities offer free access and promise a fast response. For instance, the description of LinkedIn Answers states, “Get fast and accurate answers to your business-related questions. Receive business advice from hundreds of thousands of experts.”
Our answers community at TopTenWholesale Answers is dedicated exclusively to the wholesale/retail trade and covers a range of questions and answers specific to this vertical.
Some companies use their email newsletter to solicit questions answered by a community of experts online. Internet marketing services company More Visibility solicits questions in its monthly “Ask the Expert” newsletter feature, later providing the answers on its website.
Create Your Own Answers Community
An answers community is a place where experts answer questions for the exposure and an authority link, while other business folks ask for advice. You can create your own answers community to create new business, gain recognition and get more traffic. Below are the benefits of creating an answers community as an extension of your site.
Create New Business. If you’re a wholesaler or manufacturer, you can answer the many questions retailers have about your products, including queries about sourcing, dropshipping and other service you provide. When you answer these questions, it can bring you new business since retailers want to do business with companies that have industry knowledge and share their expertise.
Gain Recognition and Traffic. Experts who provide answers get traffic to their own site as a result of being helpful online. They gradually become known as industry experts and are listed on the Answers site with an outbound link to their place of business. This can generate traffic that later converts.
Online Answers are more effective than forums and discussion boards because the communities are live, dynamic and responsive. Additionally, users can connect to social media sites, resulting in content that can appear in search results. As more company personnel take the time to share their knowledge online, this participation becomes an SEO tactic that can make the company more visible in search results.
Starting Your Business Answers Community. There are many things to consider when developing an answers community. Below are a few tips that can help you get started.
• Define your objectives for starting an answers community
• Ensure buy-in and involvement, starting with management on down
• Define clear goals and identify metrics for measuring performance
• Allocate a budget and support personnel to set up your community
• Build a team of committed experts to answer questions
• Acknowledge contributions of the answering experts
• Make adjustments or improvements as necessary
Hosting Your Community. You can develop an answers community as an extension of your existing website or under a separate URL. It’s also possible to develop a community on existing social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Hosting the community on your own site might be better since you will get the traffic and can still reach out to your target audience on Twitter and Facebook to extend your exposure.
Building Your Audience. You can’t expect to “build it and they will come.” You must conduct a publicity campaign ahead of time to announce your Answers community to build membership. Use the same advertising or promotional tactics necessary for launching a new site. That includes email marketing, press releases, search advertising, blogger support, in-house ads, etc.
In summary, you can follow the tips in this article for starting a business answers community. Your project will develop gradually or quickly, depending on the resources dedicated to its development.
