Today, I killed a lot of time in a chatroom that Jim Kukral had set up on Campfirenow.com. Jim was doing a membership drive to his coaching program and was using the chat room as an attention builder. While I was helping out in the chatroom, there are some good marketing lessons here:

1. He is using the law of reciprocity. If you give a lot, others will give back. Jim is providing free help and one-on-one time in the chatroom (which he doesn’t do all the time). And, from the looks of it, he was signing people up today.
2. He was building relationships. Whether the people in the chat room buy today or not, they now have a relationship with Jim Kukral. It builds awareness.
3. He was using Twitter to promote the chat room and some of his contacts retweeted and helped drive people to the chat room.

As I mentioned in the video above, I have seen others use chat as a sales tactic. I’ve seen people embed chatrooms on their sales page for a limited time to build buzz and do the same things. I’ve seen people embed Ustream (video feed and chat) on a sales page. The only thing I think Jim is missing out on by using CampFirenow is that the chat isn’t on his own site which means it is harder for people to make the jump unless he specifically types out his URL.

So, something to think about.

By the way, Jim Kukral knows his stuff. He has a personal coaching program for $1K per month, but he has a group coaching program for only $27/month. If you’re interested in blogging and using social media to make money and improve your business, Jim is a good guy to talk to.