Select about 12 groups related to your topic and monitor these groups for next 2 weeks to get a feel for them.

Then after this time, if appropriate, post a message offering your free article.

Include a link back to your web site where your free article is located.

2. Signature Files

A signature file or 'sig file' is a message at bottom of your email. For example one of my simple sig files is:

Regards David McKenzie http://www.brisney.com

It does 1 important thing. It tells people who receive an email from me who I am and how to find out more about me. By having a link back to my web site people are inclined to click that link.

You can also use your sig file to give away your free articles. For example:

Regards David McKenzie For a free article on writing articles on internet go to http://www.brisney.com/internet-writing.htm

That way people can go to your web site and read your free article.

These are just 2 of free marketing techniques available for marketing your free articles. Use them and you will increase readership of your articles.

How Do I Start?

The first step in launching a successful web-based market research survey is to decide who you want to study and why. Of many uses for surveys, I’ve given three scenarios where this tool provides important, actionable data. Putting together a clear statement of purpose first will become invaluable as you write and order your questions. Your statement should include who you are surveying, why you are surveying, what data you hope to accumulate and what business decisions data will help you to make.

Next, how do you want to present data? Are there concepts or ideas that you want to compare? Do you want to compare data from two different demographic groups? If you plan to present data, choose formats and software that make graphing data easier (or graph data automatically).

Write your questions. Keep questionnaire short and on topic or you will lose your audience. Longer, more complex surveys do not necessarily give you enough incremental data to justify potential frustration of tabulating responses – or decreased response rates. Avoid adding questions that don’t have particular bearing on your business decisions. For instance, if your product or content is not gender-specific, you don’t need to ask respondents’ gender.

Decide how you want your respondents to answer. Choose single-choice, multiple-choice, agree-disagree or sliding-scale reply formats. Do you need more information? Add a block for a verbose response to an open-ended question. Thinking through response mechanisms clearly will facilitate tabulating your data. Remember, you can always launch a follow-up survey, if necessary.

Publicize your survey. Decide whether you want to have survey appear as a pop-up window or if you want to send out e-mail notifications. If you send e-mail invitations, you can also send follow up reminders to encourage responses. If you send out e-mail invitations, make certain to use BCC (blind copy) field in your e-mail for all of addresses. You can reinforce confidentiality by keeping all of your audience from knowing who else has received invitation.

Receive and analyze your results. Unless you have chosen a user-friendly program, this may be most complex and frustrating aspect of your research program. As mentioned earlier, graphing results will be very useful in analyzing and presenting them. Conclusion

With current, accurate data at your fingertips, you can make winning decisions about programs that you implement. Using tactical surveys regularly allows you to adjust your messages and strategies quickly to meet a changing market. You can know who your customers are, what their needs are and whether your company is meeting them – and you can show objective data to your colleagues to support important decisions you need to make every day.