How to Use Yahoo and Google Groups to Generate Buzz Online

Yahoo! Groups

The Yahoo! Search engine offers a groups forum. You can join using the same email address and password that you use for Yahoo! Mail. Once, into a Yahoo! Account you will have various options, and Groups will be one of them. You can browse a category list of Yahoo! Groups if you're not sure which ones you want to join. They have major categories and when you click in they show you the popular groups in that category at the top with the rest listed too. If you don't want to browse the groups by categories, you can also put in a search term to search through the Yahoo! Groups and find ones that are relevant to your market niche. You can join multiple groups and usually the larger groups with more members will provide better exposure.

The way Yahoo! Groups work is that you can sign up to receive individual email updates of new posts or they will send you a daily digest of all posts for the day. You can also choose not to receive any emails and simply respond to groups online. You may have to be accepted into the group by a moderator, if it is a closed group. You generally want to stay within public forums for the most part, though.

You can set up a profile of yourself for your username. There, you can also list your website and other information that might bait someone into visiting your website. Once in, you do have to follow the guidelines for posting or risk being banned from the group.
Google Groups

Google groups are a little more sophisticated with integrated email and customized web pages you can set up as an individual. You can even set up shared web pages where a number of people on the group develop the page for themselves. You're able to change the color and style of the group more than the Yahoo! Groups. You can upload files and really set about to generate interest from various media, not just your written posts. You can search for groups using the search engine and pull up the group you are interested in joining this way. The group directory is far easier to see in one shot. It tells you how many groups are in each category too. Once you get into the group front page, it tells you how many members and a little more about the group. Like Yahoo! Groups, you can set up a profile page for targeted. You are also able to put in your website URL and the address to your RSS feeds online.

Facebook Groups

You have to join Facebook to join one of their groups. Once you build a profile in Facebook, you can start looking through the groups available to join on the left-hand menu on the old interface, and on the right-hand menu on the new Facebook interface. In Facebook, you can see the groups that your friends recently joined as well as the ones that you joined on the front page. You can browse the rest of the groups by selecting the menu link that says "Browse Groups." Then you can see a listing of categories, much like Google and Yahoo! Groups. They have a drop-down menu for the main type which separates the groups into different major categories, and then they have a list that allows you to pick the subtype. Just make sure that you are in the Global network so that you don't limit the groups that show up.
Creator Or Contributor?

Anyone is able to join a group or create a group. There are advantages to either. You can be both a creator and a contributor of different groups. So, you might want to try things out and see how you fare either way. It's usually far easier to contribute to an existing group that is popular and climb the ranks than it is to create your own group and nurture it into a popular format with plenty of members. But, that's not always the case.

If you happen to already be a leader in a civic or social organization offline, then it can be extremely easy to start a new group online and invite these people to be the seed starter group for your online group. Once people see that other people have already joined your group and are knee deep in discussion, they will be more willing to join your group too. And, there are additional benefits to being the creator of a group rather than just a contributor.

When you contribute to a group, there will be group moderators most of the time who take care to make sure no one spams the group or tries to solicit anyone. This limits the activity you can do for your website marketing in these groups to mostly a link every now and then in a post and your signature line pointing back to your products or website. People who are regulars to the group will get pretty used to seeing your signature and soon they won't even bother to read it. So, that's really only effective for newer people who might be wondering who you are. You can get some traffic this way, but promoting your products in a group will not be allowed.

On the other hand, if you are the creator of the group and you have sufficient people there, you have a captive audience for any website or product promotion you want to do because you are effectively the moderator. You can keep people from posting their marketing material, but you have targeted reign to decide what links and posts are allowed so you can use the group to advertise your products too. That's the biggest benefit to being the creator of your own group.