LinkedIn Answers: Another Channel for a Linkbait/PR Push

A quick post on returning from Tahoe…more to come.

Introduction
In the past, I wrote LinkedIn had entered the “Questions & Answers” space, which has helped boost Yahoo!’s standing (with Yahoo! Answers) and being followed by Amazon, Microsoft and others. As a marketer, “Questions & Answers” is an obvious channel for promotion, asking consumers/clients/etc questions on why they like a certain product or service, or a contest on a audience-targeted trivia (i.e. hip-hop trivia to promote a hip-hop internet radio).

Kevin Lee, of Did-it.com and ClickZ Author, has taken a stab at using LinkedIn Answers as a channel to promote an article written by his business partner. Kevin posted a question “Is SEO Rocket Science? What do think?”, which while being a good question to pose to the LinkedIn community also acts as a vehicle to promote an article by Dave Pasternack (Partner at Did-It.com). Dave’s article sparked a slew of discussions debating how “Rocket Science” is SEO. (Kevin also mentioned an online contest relating to the debate, as well as, mentioned that the contest award goes to a charity.)
See Kevin Lee’s question here (Signing-In to LinkedIn Required).

Questions

• The Big Picture: What is Kevin Lee doing on the example above?

• Is this online PR? Social Media PR? Word-Of-Mouth? Social Media Marketing?

• Ok, as an Agency which of the term are your Clients most likely to understand and buy into?
• Do you go with the term your client knows? Or educate them on something new?

• What is the diminishing rate of return on how effective these tactics are?
• What communities are more open to these types of tactics? I’d assume LinkedIn (being a business community) would have a higher tolerance.