Online Schmoozing: to work a chat room, newsgroup, and more, polish your Web marketing etiquette

Home Office Computing, July, 1998 by Carol Leonetti Dannhauser

JEAN SANTINO HUNKERS OVER HER KEYBOARD, best friend to the wired. From her home office--a corner of her Connecticut living room--she electronically blesses a prospect's triplets and concurs with a potential client's political views. The fact that she couldn't care less about politics and triplets is not the point. Her mission is to court customers online.

Santino, who sells annual reports to artists seeking buyers, spends a couple of hours each day chatting on newsgroups and posting to bulletin boards. But before she signs off, Santino makes certain that she leaves her calling card: her signature file, including her business name (Cara's Creations) and her URL (members.aol.com/jeansant).

For entrepreneurs such as Santino, the Web is a networking and marketing expressway--a direct route to the homes of millions of customers. But with so many online offerings honking "buy me" and spam-wary consumers loathe to embrace the unsolicited, what makes a prospect open the door to your services? The key is to schmooze before you sell. Here, we profile three entrepreneurs who've mastered the art of cyber-marketing.

Boot Up and Be a Buddy Santino spent a couple of years selling her artwork nationwide to buyers large and small. Not long after, she realized that her knowledge of who bought what pieces could be more lucrative than hawking her own creations. So Santino called art buyers, asked what they were shopping for, and compiled the information into a report for artists trying to sell their works. Although the artist-turned-desktop publisher figured prospects would be knocking over their canvases to buy her $14.95 report, she couldn't reach them. The problem: Santino's target customers are often by day "engineers or attorneys, but at night they're freelance artists," she says. This made marketing her report a challenge.

Her solution is to regularly visit online gatherings of artists and breezily chat about the current topic of conversation as if she dropped in for coffee. The goal isn't to promote her product, but to leave behind her credentials on potential customers' desktops. In newsgroups for artists and chat rooms that allow solicitations, on the other hand, her sales pitch is more direct. "I tell what I've found in my research or my experience and, if allowed, I plug the report," Santino says. Her online marketing generates anywhere from $250 to $900 in sales weekly.

Wire the Webmaster When Jeff DeLong launched his greeting card company three years ago, he mistakenly spammed his product to the virtual world (a previous bulk e-mail experiment for another venture made him think he could successfully reach potential customers). "We drummed up a lot of business, all right. But we also got responses that were terrible," he recalls. "People [responded with words] I don't want to repeat." After a few days, DeLong was kicked off his e-mail service.

Still eager to market online, the Klamath Falls, Ore., home-based business owner deployed a more tactful alternative. "I e-mailed Webmasters directly from their sites," he says. "I contacted at least 300 Webmasters a week for a year straight. I wore my keyboard out."

How does the founder of C-ya Greeting Card Co. warm up to Webmasters via e-mail? "My name is Jeff DeLong. I've reviewed your site and feet your customers would be interested in my product. Would you consider linking my site, www.cya.com, with yours?"

Because DeLong's unique cards are designed to help people end relationships--as in "C-ya" to significant others and spouses who've done their partners wrong--he had to scout for related sites that might be interested in promoting his wares. He began by typing "singles" onto a host of search engines, then personally reviewing each site to avoid linking with smut. Today, DeLong buys targeted site lists from search engine companies and continues to write to Webmasters whose sites share his market niche. Sure, he doesn't hear back from everyone he contacts. But when a Webmaster replies positively, DeLong's business profits. C-ya Greeting Card Co. is linked to roughly 75 sites, helping him move 2,500 cards a week.

This online marketing strategy is right on the mark, says Joe Vitale, author of Cyberwriting: How to Promote Your Product or Service Online (without being flamed) (Amacom). "The number-one thing is to find where people are gathered who'd be most interested in your product or service. You don't want to blanket the Internet," he says. The key to successful online networking, Vitale continues, is to respect the culture of the medium and, as with any marketing effort, to target, target, target.

Focus on Your Know-How Want to know how to work at home and raise a family? Log online and one name--besides that of this magazine--that's sure to pop up is Lisa Roberts. This Connecticut home-based business owner spends as much as four hours a day answering questions from surfers on the subject. As the author of How to Raise a Family and a Career Under One Roof (Bookhaven Press), a forum leader on AOL's Mom's Online, and a contributor to a handful of listserves, the work-at-home mom regularly dispatches her advice to like-minded surfers. Sure, her suggestions in chat rooms and on bulletin boards are free, but Roberts profits by subtly spreading the word about her book and PR firm.