Insights from an Internet Marketing Guru
Clem asked:
I noticed that some answers can contain links to sites selling products or services. Of course, there’s a relation between the answer’s theme and the business (i.e: “Use this product to improve your language skills…”) but isn’t there a risk of buzz marketing, using the word of mouth from Yahoo! Answers. The problem is that it might deteriorate the quality of answers.
Popularity: 100% [?]
Looking at some of the questions from consumers (not businesses) it seems that there is sometimes a need for a “buzz” answer. How many times do you see a question that asks if there are real affiliate programs or work from home opportunities? A question like that almost demands an answer from companies that fill the need.
Will this be abused? Yes, of course it will be. There are already many “insider secrets” type offers circulating that tell you a great way to get extra web site traffic is to come here and become a category expert so that new people will respect your answers and use your products.
Yahoo will eventually tighten guidelines but in the meantime the borders will be stretched.
It can and already has. Quite sad really.
Yeah, look at how bad Yahoo chat has gotten because of advertisers.