Online marketing

There are many techniques you can use to market e-Consultations to the online world.

• Search engine optimization (SEO): submission of e-consultation websites to Top Search Engine and directories.

• Electronic Joint Venture (JV): Initiate joint venture with other public (i.e., government), private (i.e., sponsors) and NGO websites making your e-consultation weblink available on their site.

• Blogs: e-consultation champions should start to blog and make their presence felt in the electronic world (e-world). For example, see Steven Clift at http://dowire.org/notes/

• e-Forum & e-Community: the e-consultation group can use already established e-forums or e-consultations to tap into their existing customers and solicit ideas and input to questions posed in e-consultation.

• Use Meta-tags in web-building: to get to the top ranking in Search engines. For example, <Meta name = “descriptions” content= “e-consultation study group research project”> <Meta name = “keywords” content = “e-consultation, econsultation, e-consult, econsult, e-participation, eparticipation, e-democracy, edemocracy”>, and so on.

• Use data-mining technology or Webstats: to monitor the traffic to the e-consultation website. Refine the keywords and also understand the behavior of the user of e-consultation site to better understand their movement in the e-consultation webpage.

• e-Mail strategy: e-Mail marketing is the most cost effective way of marketing on the Internet. e-Mail marketing tactics can be used to build relationships with existing database customers and prospects.

• e-Newsletters: Send e-newsletters to users in the e-consultation website to inform them about the latest happenings/news in the e-consultation projects.

• Security and Privacy: Ensure the data protection act (1998), which includes security and privacy information, is clearly stated on the e-consultation website.