What is crowd marketing?

Crowd marketing is a marketing strategy based on interaction with the target audience on external online platforms.

It includes posting natural recommendations and comments on various web resources such as:

• social media;
• blogs;
• forums and others.

In simple words, it is a technology for increasing brand awareness. It brings great benefit to all kinds of businesses, especially online stores, as well as content projects. Its working principle can be compared to "word of mouth", where satisfied customers recommend products or services to other people through organic publications.

Crowd promotion is also an effective way to increase natural link activity and improve search engine rankings. This approach is an alternative to purchased links, which are currently being fought against by search engine robots. A properly organized strategy can generate conversions to the target site from third-party resources and significantly increase its traffic.

Goals of crowd marketing

This strategy has benefits in both SEO and marketing.

In SEO:

• Building link profile dynamics. The more you can get crowd links to the site, especially from reputable and quality resources, the better will be its position in the search results.
• Getting traffic and diversity of links. Placing backlinks on various platforms allows you to expand your audience and increase the number of conversions. In addition, the diversity and naturalness of the link profile is considered an important factor in search engine ranking.
• Improved reputation and credibility. The more positive mentions and links to a website, the higher its reputation and credibility with search engines.

In marketing:

• Increasing brand awareness. Crowd marketing on forums contributes to increasing brand awareness and recognition among potential customers.
• Creating a positive image. Positive recommendations and reviews from satisfied users help create a favorable impression of the company.
• Reputation management. Thanks to the ability to monitor discussions about a brand and respond to reviews or comments, you can manage and maintain a company`s online reputation.

How does the promotion of the site by crowd-links work?

The mechanism of hidden online advertising works like this:

• Selection of resources. It is necessary to select thematically appropriate sites with the possibility of commenting, excluding inappropriate contexts.
• Publication of responses. Creating natural posts with a mention of the promoted product or service. It is important to make the crowd-link as natural as possible, so that it does not stand out among other comments.
• Registration and interaction. It is essential to regularly appear on these platforms, keeping active and demonstrating your expertise in the issues discussed.

Scheduling crowd marketing helps you control the timing of postings and avoid omissions.

Where to place crowd links

Let`s take a look at the most popular platforms for crowd marketing:

• Forums. These resources remain in demand among customers due to the ability to index messages and the importance of links from them for SEO. Despite the opinion that forums are losing their relevance, they are still a place of active discussions of many topics, regardless of the competition of social networks. Therefore, placing crowd links on forums is always a great idea.
• Blogs. Some publishers maintain informative columns, which makes it important to actively participate in comments. You can also post quality comments on informational sites to draw attention to the promoted product or service.
• Question/answer services. These sites allow users to ask questions and receive answers from experts or experienced users. It helps establish trusting relationships and promote products.
• Social media. These platforms are also used to post crowd links. There is great potential for working with comments and groups on social networks, which contributes to increasing brand awareness and attracting new customers.

Examples of crowd-marketing

We offer to familiarize with some examples of crowd-marketing:

• reputational - aimed at improving the company`s image through posting information from neutral users on web resources with reviews;

• selling - this crowd increases traffic and conversions by actively publishing information about the product in discussion threads and Q&A sites;

• increasing link mass - its purpose is to raise the number of backlinks to the site by publishing on reputable web-resources.

It is important to choose platforms with maximum involvement of potential customers.

How to search forums for crowd-marketing

To find them, you can use search commands:

• To order a computer on a forum, use the command "inurl:forum" to find pages where the topic you need is discussed and the URL contains a mention of the forum.

• To search for online dating in Ukraine on Ukrainedate, use the command "online dating site:ukrainedate.com". Internal search on large forums can sometimes be ineffective, so it is better to use Google search.

You can also analyze crowd links of competitors using services such as Ahrefs, Serpstat. You can filter the forums where they were posted with their help and use them in your strategy of crowd-marketing on your own.

Another option is to automate the process with Google Alerts (a free tool).

As an alternative, you can consider sorting through online sites manually with your team using:

• website rankings;
• search engines;
• web site databases.

Using the listed tools of crowd marketing, make a catalog of sites and proceed to the creation and development of the account.

How to choose platforms for crowd links

Choosing suitable online sites for crowd links is similar to choosing resources for link building, but there are some important aspects to consider:

• Regional linking. It is important to choose resources for posting where topics related to your niche are actively discussed. For example, if you are promoting accounting services, it would be more appropriate to participate in discussions on sites where users are interested in accounting, rather than on forums about gardening or cars. Before placing crowd links, it is also important to keep in mind that regional linking is not necessarily tied to location, but rather to the topic and interests of its readers.
• Traffic estimation. Understanding the level of traffic on a website and the sources of its traffic is a key point when selecting web sites where users will look for crowd links. It is necessary to analyze how actively the site is visited by the target audience, and how much this audience meets your needs. You can use various tools for traffic analysis, such as Alexa, Similarweb or Google Analytics.
• Site liveliness. It is important to consider the activity and liveliness of the platform. It means analyzing the number of comments under articles, the number of active discussions on forums, the amount of online users and the time of the last content update. If a site is inactive or hasn`t been updated in a while, your crowd links may not be effective.
• SEO metrics. You should evaluate SEO indicators such as website credibility, spam, content topics and link types (dofollow/nofollow). It will help to identify how satisfying the crowd marketing results will be when using this online platform.

How to get crowd links to a website

There are three main approaches in the context of using links in crowd marketing:

• Creating a new topic immediately with the inclusion of a link. It is very easy and fast, as only one account is necessary. However, there is a high risk of the topic being deleted as inorganic, less chance of indexing.

• Adding an url to an existing topic via a search engine. The pros of this approach include the fact that the topic is already indexed, only one account is required, and it`s quick. Minuses: your crowd links for promotion may not be the only ones on the page.

• Creating a new topic with multiple accounts. With this option, there is a high probability of indexing, there will be a natural discussion, and a higher position of the crowd link is guaranteed. However, you will need more time and several accounts.

In practice, combining all three methods for diverse and organic link building is effective.

In addition, a fourth method should also be mentioned. You can place crowd links in forum signatures. However, this method requires a high-quality profile and demonstrates effectiveness mainly on large and reputable online platforms.

How to evaluate the effectiveness of crowd links

Crowd marketing works gradually, and the results are not immediate. It usually takes some time after the introduction of special links before they start to influence the increase of traffic on your web resource. A significant increase in traffic usually becomes noticeable after 3-4 months of active use of this promotion strategy. 

You can evaluate the effectiveness of crowd for a website by considering the following key metrics:

• increase in the number of visitors;
• increased interest and demand for a product or service;
• raising the position of the website in the search results.

When placing posts on external resources, it is important to take into account their attendance, the content of posts, as well as the naturalness of the inclusion of advertising links. To make crowd marketing for SEO more effective, it is recommended to cooperate with the owners of accounts that have a high status on forums and other online platforms.

Applying this strategy requires a lot of effort and time. Therefore, you can turn to special agencies, crowd exchanges or freelancers.

Look for even more useful content on the Contenthub blog.