Marketing through message boards?

Kassia Krozser from Booksquare posted today about using social networking sites to target consumers.  One of her main points is that users are wary of the obvious pitch.  Although that’s not really news to any of us, it’s something we’re often thinking about and a similar issue came up last week when Rachel from DK gave an informative and entertaining presentation about O’Reilly’s Tools of Change conference.  Someone asked about the value of message / discussion boards in promoting a book since she said she would be inclined to listen to a recommendation in such a forum — I would have to agree, having run right out and done a book trade for (which is pretty much buying when you work in publishing) a book someone mentioned on a message board I used to frequent.

We all agreed that it’s impossible for a corporate entity to use message boards without completely turning off users.  That doesn’t mean, however, that an individual author with expertise in a certain area can’t become a member of a community with such a message board (and perhaps mention his / her book in the process).  The key to being listened to on message boards is being a genuine and longstanding member of the community — many discussion boards have ranking systems for posters and even on those that don’t, members will only recognize / respect posters who have proven their interest and expertise over time.  So forget about the sleek marketing pitch and tell your authors to start planning ahead if they want to go down this road …