Credibility comes from providing useful information to your target audience. Each time you participate in an online discussion group, you gain visibility and credibility for the few days when your posted message will be read by others, but then the spotlight goes out and you fade back into darkness. By holding an online conference, you can demonstrate your knowledge and establish credibility with an audience that has chosen to listen to you, and you'll end up with a transcript which can be published and promoted for months in the future. Here's how to do it.
1. Find a forum on an online service or bulletin board where your customers are likely to congregate, and then contact the forum administrator to find out exactly how to propose a conference on that forum.

2. Monitor the forum for several weeks or talk with the moderator about previous forum topics, so you can choose a topic that's new and compelling for the forum's members. Choose a topic like tax planning, holiday shopping tips, or summer vacations that is tied to a specific time of year or a commonly-known event to help boost the interest level.

3. Prepare a one-page proposal for your own conference, and then e-mail it to the forum administrator or conference administrator. In the proposal, explain the topic, why it's of interest to the forum members, and why you're qualified to do the conference. Express your qualifications in terms of specific achievements or previous fame you've gained, not just experience. For a conference about home landscaping, for example, it's better to point out your having won prestigious design awards than simply saying you've been a landscape architect for ten years.

4. After the pitch is accepted, prepare an introduction for yourself and a list of suggested questions for the conference moderator. This gives you a chance to make sure the key marketing messages you want to convey will come across during the conference. Moderators often refer to question lists like these to jump-start the discussion at the beginning of the conference and later on if audience questions taper off.

5. During the conference, just be yourself. Pretend you're talking to one customer at a time, and don't worry about making typos when you respond to questions--everybody does it. Don't exaggerate, don't lie, and don't try to fake it if you don't know the answer to a question. It's better to admit you don't know something and offer to find out the answer later.

6. After the conference, find out where the transcript of the conference has been stored. You'll win further credibility by mentioning that you did the conference in future discussion group messages, and by telling others where to get the transcript. You can also edit the transcript into a document that you can then publish in related forum libraries, excerpt in discussion group messages elsewhere, publish in your online storefront, or distribute via e-mail as part of your marketing materials.