The Clickable Search Engine Marketing Blog

The AdWords Help forum, hosted on Google Groups, is one of the most valuable community resources for search advertisers, especially beginners. To keep a pulse on advertiser trends and give back to the larger search-marketing community, my team at Clickable regularly reads it and lends search-marketing advice to people in need. However, we noticed that Google's own AdWordsPros - full-time Google employees - recently stepped up their presence, often being the first to answer questions on the forum. But this was a problem.

While forum participation with your customers is commendable and usually a wise idea, it also requires restraint. Why? Because a heavy and authoritative presence can become intimidating - even alienating. It can suppress helpful crowd-sourcing by eliminating perceived opportunities for experts to engage with and assist their fellow community members. It can literally shut down your biggest fans and ambassadors.

This issue was superbly explained in the AdWords forum recently by Google Adwords Pro Sarah. Demonstrating transparency and etiquette while confronting the problem, she said: "Dear Fellow Posters, The AdWordsPros met this morning, and, in reviewing the state of the forum, came across a troubling trend. When one of the four Pros post, it seems that the dialog on that thread comes to a halt. And, while we want to help answer as many posts as we can, we don't always want to have the last word."

She continued: "As ‘pro' as we may seem, I think we can all say that we learn a great deal from the people who take the time and invest in this forum.  We would love our answers to remain a small part of the space and encourage you all to add to and correct our answers based on your experience....Keep up the posting!"

At Clickable, we have a similar outlook. As great as we may be, we have just as much to gain - if not more - from listening to our customers' solutions and ideas.  This goes for our online support Community and our products.

(Much of the above was excerpted from a longer column for MediaPost.)