Using Yahoo Answers power to market your product or service is not a way to disrespect the community. Just like advertising on any given TV channel is not a way to disrespect someone who’s watching his favorite show. However, there are rules and almost all of them just need to follow what common-sense dictates. Nothing else.

You start by understanding where you at. Yahoo Answers is a community where people exchange knowledge, opinions, know-how. It’s well segmented, so, if your targeted audience is, for instance, “people who play sports”, refrain from wondering in the science or fashion groups – you will be wasting your time. Again, it’s just a question of common sense.

Then, you also must understand what you should do. Your business URL can, in fact, be helpful to the people who discover it. If someone has a need, then its okay to answer it and live honestly by doing so – that’s the name of the game. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can just throw your products and services to the discussion and wait that people just follow those hyperlinks .You must become a member of the community, respond thoughtfully to questions related to your products and services, “marketise” your answer a little bit (use your URL as source) and respect all other participants. One more time – common sense is the main rule you should follow when using Yahoo Answers. It’s not the only, though, but that’s a story for another post…

There are a few definitions of brand awareness, but almost all of them convey in the same meaning: brand awareness reflects the probability of consumers – and, as important, potential consumers – being aware of the existence and availability of a company’s product or service. In other words, brand awareness is that click on the brain’s consumer that, whenever he needs a certain product or service, leads him towards the brand he knows. He’ll know exactly where to go to fulfill that need. And Yahoo Answers can provide that knowledge.

It’s long the debate about if there is a difference between good brand awareness and bad brand awareness (some say that whatever is said about a brand, it’s always good to be talked about). But no matter what side you’re on, everybody will agree that a brand that a customer automatically relates to knowledge, good-faith and respectability has a great probability of augmenting sales. And Yahoo Answers it’s the perfect vehicle to achieve just that, even amongst people that, today, do not seek your product or service. The seed will be planted in the brain of that million long community, and tomorrow anyone can harness the knowledge you planted there and… easily press that hyperlink you left behind.

Creating brand awareness is one of the key steps in promoting a product, especially in a competitive market such as the online market. Chances are that your product and service is not the only one out there. That would be a miracle. Let’s face it – maybe there are a couple of services as good as yours. So, how to differentiate? Through recognition. Bottom-line, the product that maintains the highest brand awareness compared to its competitors will usually get the most sales. Marketing with Yahoo Answers is one of the most efficient and organic ways to achieve exactly that.

When you decide to take some of your valued time away from your business management, and enroll into some marketing work, the urge is to make the most out of it. However, in modern marketing, less can be much more! If you make up your mind to harness the great power of Yahoo Answers, you should be aware of the rules you’re facing. Social marketing is not advertising! You cannot just barge into a community and shout straight at them the qualities of your products and services – you will not be well received and the strict rules of Yahoo Answers will probably result on deletion of your answers. Possibly account ban. That’s the worst way to do it!

Respect for the users is your best asset before establishing a profitable relationship. You do this, firstly, by choosing posts that do relate to the products and services you’re offering. Afterwards, you do not advertise your product – again, you’re inside a community of knowledge, people that seek answers for their questions. That’s what you must give them. The goal is to connect those thoughtful answers you should write with your brand, gaining an invaluable marketing asset – confidence.

Your brand will, from there on, in the minds of the millions that will read that answers (through Yahoo Answers or directly from Google search engine), enjoy a positive response – a feeling that can be easily translated in an action, just by clicking the hyperlink you should also leave in the source of your answer. It’s not an easy procedure, it’s time consuming and demands some professional know-how to achieve maximum efficiency, but it can be very, very, profitable.