Making Your Mark On the Web

With today’s growing Internet marketplace, business owners are surrounded by an abundance of “how to’s” in establishing an Internet presence for their company. A current popular suggestion is for businesses to create a blog that will provide useful information, establish credibility and utilize keywords and content to drive traffic to their website. Managing a blog, however, can be a time-consuming task for otherwise busy entrepreneurs.

So where does this leave business owners who have a wealth of knowledge, but not a lot of time to share it? One answer is: (coincidentally) Yahoo!® Answers (answers.yahoo.com).

Yahoo! Answers allows users to ask a question, answer a question or read what other users are asking about in a variety of categories and sub-categories. For a business owner, utilizing the “answer a question” feature can provide many of the same benefits of a blog, without the time commitment.

To get started on Yahoo! Answers, a user needs to create a User ID and profile by providing some basic information. It is important for business owners to include a business email address and company website address to facilitate communications and drive traffic to the company website.

The next step is to find questions that you can answer effectively. For example, IT consultants can share their knowledge in the “Computer & Internet” section. Numerous useful and relevant answers will enable a user to build credibility, which is displayed to all users as rating points. Points are awarded for the number of answers you submit; additional points are awarded for “best answers,” so the more you participate the more credible you will appear to other users.

When answering questions, it is important to keep in mind that Yahoo! strongly discourages any form of solicitation or spam. Violations of these policies can result in account suspension. To guard against this, make sure that any informational material you reference or provide is relevant to the questions being asked.