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Every day, millions of people from all over the globe enter a virtual community that they share with others who are interested in the same topic. These people are brought together by their common interest in the topic of discussion. While they are in this virtual community, only that specific topic is discussed.
These virtual communities are called Usenet newsgroups. They have their own section of the Internet. There is the Usenet newsgroup part of the Internet where discussions are taking place about many different topics. Usenet has been defined as follows:
Usenet is the Internet's public forum, comprising thousands of newsgroups, each of which is devoted to the public discussion of a narrow, chartered topic such as microbrews, baseball cards, arthritis research, travelling in Africa and so forth. There are three types of newsgroup visitors: people asking questions or advice; people providing answers or advice and people who read the discussion without taking part.
Visitors to these virtual communities or newsgroups can "post" messages. These messages may be questions or comments or answers to other participants' questions. Everyone who visits the newsgroup views these "postings".
Benefits of Newsgroups
There are many ways online marketers can benefit from participating in newsgroups:
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Reaching prospective customers. You can immediately reach thousands of your targeted potential customers with a single message.
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Communicating with existing customers. You can provide your loyal customers with valuable information.
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Market research. You can use newsgroups to find out the latest trends, customer needs, what people are looking for, and what they are talking about.
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Reputation building. By answering people's questions and helping to solve their problems, you will build your reputation as an expert in the field.
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Increase traffic. You can direct people to your commercial website if you do it in an informative way.
Newsgroup Categories
Newsgroups are organized into different types of discussions or categories. The major newsgroup categories include:
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alt - Discussions on alternative topics.
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biz - Discussions on business topics. You may find groups that allow advertising here.
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comp - Discussions on computer hardware and software related topics.
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humanities - Discussions on fine arts, literature and philosophy topics.
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misc - Discussions of miscellaneous topics that do not have their own categories such as employment, health and other issues.
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news - Discussions on Usenet news and administration.
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rec - Discussions on recreation topics like games, hobbies and sports.
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sci - Discussions on science.
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soc - Discussions on social issues.
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talk - Making converstion.
Each of the major categories has a number of subgroups and each of the subgroups has a number of sub-subgroups. For example, under the rec major group you will find a subgroup rec.sports. Under the subgroup rec.sports you will find sub-subgroups and sub-sub-subgroups as shown below:
rec.sports
rec.sports.basketball
rec.sports.basketball.NBA.OtherSubgroups
As you can see, the longer the name, the narrower is the discussion that is taking place.
Newsgroup Resources
Google - The source for Internet Newsgroups
http://groups.google.com
The Website where you can read, search, participate in, and subscribe to more than 50,000 discussion forums, including Usenet newsgroups.
Liszt of Newsgroups
http://www.liszt.com/news
A complete listing of newsgroups organized by different categories. Has listed over 30,000 newsgroups and is the largest directory of newsgroups on the web. |
