Jordan Hardy

Marketing on Forums

Posted on: October 2, 2009 by Jordan Hardy Comments Off

I often find it interesting how useful vs. useless forum posting can be as a marketing strategy. For example, one of the message boards / forums I run has quite a large number of people that apply to become members each day. Of these applications, I find that 92% have no intention of posting relevant content. They just want to market their product in categories that are not relevant. I deny these people becoming members as clearly these days there are online tools to see who is going to be a real participant on a forum. These tools search existing forums to see if particular members, based on their email addresses, are relevant or not.

My thought on the best way to market on forums is to not waste time. If you have a product to market and want to talk about it on forums, have something to say. Sure, SEO strategy and keywords can help, but most importantly have a point. By posting on forums with relevant helpful information to others, a link to your product can be clicked more often when trust is built. People figure things out. If a person is just thinking they will be smarter than everyone and find clever ways to sneak in selling, it will rarely work. Conversion rate will decrease, other members may not interact as much with you, and the message board moderator may even remove any member that is detracting from the point of the message board.

I’ve posted on forums over the years, testing conversion with many techniques. Although quite a lot of strategies help, a base belief in adding to the forum is needed for success.

Views on Leadership

Posted on: April 27, 2009 by Jordan Hardy Comments Off

For more than 15 years, I’ve managed teams, trained and hired, and done public speaking. In that time, I’ve managed teams of 2 vendors to over 50 employees at each company. I’ve often asked myself if I managed because I’m good at it or I love managing. I believe the answer is both.

To be a great manager, I believe it is important to:

• Have experience
• Be open
• Care about people
• Like being around people
• Be able to sell, whether internally or externally
• Read and take classes about leadership constantly

My view on ideal leadership of a team is to lead by example. It is not to worry about an employee ever moving up and taking your position. I believe in training employees, and most importantly letting them have great quality of life. In my experience, if an employee wants to work late or on a Saturday rather than having to do so from guilt, there is a huge difference in the quality of work just from their mindset. It is important to be clear on goals, their next steps to take, and expectations. Having employees that all feel they have been given the tools to succeed, balance their lives, learn, and grow can bring ideal results.

I feel the least effective form of leadership is one of insecurity. Letting employees feel they may be laid off any day, or that they cannot move up over time, can very much change their motivation. Not being clear on what needs to be done for a project, or playing games with employees, can hurt morale and just isn’t fair to do to them.

In the past, my leadership has built teams that help grow a business and also start work in the morning refreshed. This isn’t just something I can do, but rather something so many leaders out there do when they are secure in treating others well, with integrity.