Tourism Internet Marketing U

Effective Promotional Use of Newsgroups

Newsgroups don’t get a lot of attention any more, but they are still effective in promoting a business. If you’ll search online for newsgroup you’ll find more than a handful dedicated to the topic of tourism. And your tourism business is bound to fit in.

People participate in newsgroups by “posting” or e-mailing comments, questions, or answers to other participants’ questions, thus taking part in a conversation or thread. Using proper netiquette is important. To do this, read the FAQ files and rules, “lurk” first, and stay on topic. On the topic of newsgroups, we’ll discuss:

• The benefits of using newsgroups in your tourism business marketing plan
• Newsgroup netiquette
• Reading the FAQ files, abiding by the rules, and lurking
• How to advertise if advertising is not allowed
• Developing your Usenet marketing strategy
• Identifying your target newsgroups
• Participating in the online community
• Responding correctly to messages
• Cross-posting and spamming
• Using signature files
• And everything else related to newsgroups

But first things first.

Newsgroups - What Are They?

So what is a newsgroup? Well, in short, a newsgroup is an online community dedicated to a discussion of a particular topic - like tourism. They are usually arranged in a hierarchical structure and by subject. In other words, under tourism, you’ll find newsgroups dedicated to ecotourism, slow travel, geographic-based tourist locations such as Hawaii, the Caribbean, and South America, RVing, and any specific niche-focused tourism-related topics that fall under the broad subject of tourism. That’s the hierarchy. This type of arrangement makes it easy to find the type of newsgroup that you are looking for.

We will cover newsgroups in more detail later. But that should suffice for now as an introduction. For more detailed information about how to use newsgroups to promote your tourism business, check out my book, 101 Ways to Promote Your Tourism Business Web Site!

-Written by Susan Sweeney