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FAQ - Using Infomercials -

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Chris Gunn

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Jun 15, 2011, 7:30:04 PM6/15/11

Advertising on the newsgroups works differently than all of the other
medias. It's interactive and your best marketing is drawing people into
talking about your product or service.

If you are selling books, folks would be more interested in seeing a
weekly book review for something in their industry with a short signature
(sig) at the foot on where to find web pages and what they can find
there. They could also be entertainment books as long as there is a link
to the topic area.

Using an Infomercial approach, where you are giving more informative and
readable content than ad space is generally accepted on most discussion
groups. By giving a little more of your time to the readers and showing
you understand their needs, you put yourself many notches above the usual
advertising copy folks see.

You'll find examples of how to work newsgroups that do not normally accept
advertising using the Infomercial style on the biz.marketplace.discussion
newsgroup. By offering articles on popular business topics, to contribute
to the information content and encourage discussions, you can promote your
enterprise while at the same time staying within the scope of the Charter.

How to compose an Infomercial or FAQ for newsgroup posting:

1. Select a topic you are sure will be of interest to the majority of the
readers. If you write the article yourself, include a copyright
statement like the one at the foot. If you use an article you found
elsewhere, please ensure you have permission to republish it.

2. For the widest readership, format your article using only the keyboard
characters and a non-proportional font like Courier. Set the margins
for no more that 76 characters per line. It may look attractive on
your computer, but please turn MIME off for the biz newsgroups.

3. It's okay to talk about services or products inside your article as
long as it doesn't sound like commercial advertising. Maximize the
"how-2" and "why" information everyone can use and minimize what
folks have to spend money on.

4. A new article about once a week and rotated no more than monthly
should give you good coverage.

5. At the foot of your article, you may place a three or four line
signature (sig), along with the copyright statement, so folks can get
in touch with you. If the sig gets too big or tries to do too much
promoting, then you get back into the advertising category and your
article may be rejected.

Please keep in mind, even if your article seems to meet all of the
criteria above, the final decision is still up to the moderator(s).

P.S. If you'd like to contribute an FAQ, for inclusion with the ones
I auto-post to the biz groups and appear on BIZynet, please drop
me an E-Mail.

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