by Claudia Bruemmer

If you have a large wholesale, manufacturing or retail website, you can attract more traffic and search visibility by building a Business Answers community within your site. Answers communities are gaining in popularity, having evolved from message boards, discussion lists forums and social networking communities.

Social Networking Communities on the Web

Message Boards and Discussion Lists were early precursors to Social Networking. Business executives used these tools for discussing and solving business issues in the 1990s. Eventually, they evolved into Industry Forums for discussions and announcements. In 2001, Internet communities like Friendster and Orkut were started and quickly became popular. These social networks gave users with common interests of any kind a way to interact and share information. Social networking became a phenomenon with MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, which are used for communicating on everything from business and politics to friends and family.

Business Networking

The latest way to discuss and solve business issues and get information quickly is by asking questions on a reputable community Business Answers site where “experts” provide answers.

Industry forums run by a moderator were popular for discussing business issues over the years, and some forums even charged for access. Forums are structured as topics and posts rather than questions and answers. They aren’t as popular today, perhaps because users must wade through a lot of irrelevant posts to find needed information.

A more expedient solution to getting an answer to a business question quickly is to post a query on a Business Answers community where experts provide the answer. These communities offer free access to users who either post or answer questions. One example of an answers community is Business.com Answers, where users can find a broad range of questions and answers on all aspects of business.

Another answers community is TopTenWholesale Answers, which is dedicated to the wholesale B2B industry and covers a narrower range of questions specific to wholesale/retail trade issues.

More Visibility, an Internet marketing services company, provides answers to users via its newsletter where an “Ask the Expert” question is provided each month with a link to its site for the answer.

Branding and Creating New Business

An Answers Community is an excellent vehicle for branding and creating new business. Wholesalers and manufacturers, for instance, can answer the many questions retailers have about their products, shipping, exporting and the like. This would bring traffic to their sites and possibly more business as their customers realize this company is an expert in the field because they excel at answering complex questions or easy questions on the fly.

Experts Respond to Questions for Recognition and Traffic

An answers community won’t have difficulty producing experts ready to respond to business questions because the experts know their participation brings the opportunity of getting a steady stream of traffic to their own site as a result of answering complex questions and being considered an industry expert. The answers site usually lists the Top Experts along with the number of points they have earned. The expert’s name links to a page showing the question and answer, in addition to the expert’s photo, business information and a link to their site, generating traffic and conversions.

Answers websites are more effective than forums because the communities are live, dynamic and responsive. They also connect to social media sites. More and more companies and executives are taking the time to share knowledge from remote corners of the universe, making answers communities visible to search engine spiders and thus helpful for gaining SERP visibility.

Starting Your Own Business Answers Community

There are many issues to consider when developing an answers community. For instance, you can start planning as follows:

• Define a clear area of business need on which to start an answers community
• Get management buy-in and solicit management involvement
• Define clear goals and set metrics for monitoring site performance
• Allocate a budget and support resources for setting up your community
• Build a team of committed experts ready to answer questions within your staff
• Acknowledge contributions by using a point system or some type of reward
• Be prepared to adjust the way your answers community works based on what you learn

Finding a Place Your Community

You can develop your answers community under its own URL, develop it as part of your existing website, or develop a community on existing social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Having it on your own site might be more advantageous as you can still reach out to your target audience on Twitter and Facebook, extending your exposure.

Building Your Audience

You can’t expect users to automatically come to your community from the get-go; you’ll need to publicize it in advance to entice members to join your community. Conduct all the advertising and promotion tactics necessary when launching a new site. This can be done with email marketing, public relations, search advertising, blogger support, and by posting house ads throughout your site. Encourage your staff to participate and offer them incentives. If you’ve defined your goals and set metrics for performance, it shouldn’t take long before you start seeing results.