Internet is all about communication between people. Those
people belong to some groups. People with similar interests
form groups where they are able to discuss about their area
of interest, to help each other and to learn more about other
members. One of the most used ways for communication between
like-minded people are web forums. How this can help to your
business?
In order to have success on the Internet you have to have
repeat visits. In order to people visit your site on a regular
basis you have to constantly make your content fresh, to
make regular updates. You can post articles relevant to your
business, you can post the latest industry news and you can
have a web forum.
One of the main advantages of web forums over before mentioned
techniques for having a “sticky” web site is
that after some time, web forums are “self going”,
at least in some way. In other words, you won’t have
to spend your time in creating fresh content – your
forum members will do that instead of you! This doesn’t
mean that you won’t have to do anything. Depending
on the size of the forum, there are people called moderators
who take care that the discussion is going on the right way.
Companies have management, web forums have moderators. Some
popular web forums have more than 50,000 members, and anytime
you can find at least 200-300 people online. Corporate forums
don’t have that many members but you will also need
at least one person who will be responsible for your forum.
Web forums are great because this is one of those ways that
help you to stay in touch with your visitors and customers.
Visitors need to complete the registration form so this way
you will have their names and email addresses. This way you
can offer them to subscribe to your email newsletter. Like
in subscription forms for email newsletters, don’t
require too much information from your visitors. Every member
of your forum will have an unique username and a password.
Web forums are consisted of categories. So if you are in
Internet marketing business your forum can have categories
like Email Marketing, Search Engines, Domain Names, Web Hosting,
Web Services and etc. For the start, it is better to have
fewer categories that will be more general. Later you can
make more categories that will be more specific. Every category
should have a moderator who is usually very knowledgeable
person about that category who will start interesting discussions
and, therefore, engage other members to post their answers.
The most important thing in having a successful web forum
is quality of posts and then number of posts. Quality and
only after that quantity. When you start your forum, you
will probably have a low posting activity. That’s why
you will have to “persuade” your forum members
to be posters and not only lurkers. This won’t be so
easy.
At first, in lack of discussion, maybe you will need to
post interesting news about your industry and to post smart
tips that you know that are of interest of you members. Later,
with increasing your forum membership base you will have
more and more posting activity. In order to build your membership
base you can ask your members to invite their friends to
join the forum. Also, you can offer a contest based on quality
and number of messages. For example, you can start with choosing
the Member of the Month. Winner will be chosen by other members
based on quality of his/her posts. It is great for increasing
loyalty. Another good thing for increasing your forum activity
is to say, for example, that people with more that 30 posts
will get an e-book and members with more than 100 posts discount
on your products. Usually web forum software categorize members
in groups so new members with less than 10 posts can be in
Newbies group, with less than 100 posts in Juniors category
and with more than 100 posts Addicts. Forum software usually
offers a so called Avatars feature so your members will be
able to place an image below their username. There they can
place their photos, too. Also, quality web forums software
offers that members rate posts.
Web forums are great supplement for articles and email newsletters,
for getting a better feedback. For example, when you post
an article on your web site or in your email newsletter,
at the end of your article you can make a link to a discussion
about that article and topic on your web forum. Also, you
can include subjects of your most popular threads on your
main page.
Having a corporate web forum is a value-added service to
your visitors. If you build a quality web forum they will
appreciate it very much because you are the one who provides
them with source for gaining new knowledge. Also, with web
forums you are building ongoing relationship with your members.
Some of them are your clients and many of them can be your
clients. It is up to you. With providing great answers in
your forums you will increase your credibility that can persuade
your members to buy your services. People buy from companies
they trust.
Web forums are very useful for companies in one more way.
For example, if you are a software company, you can (and
you should) make several categories in your forum for your
products and services. There, your members will be able to
ask about your software, to give tips for maximizing its
possibilities, to give suggestions for future upgrades… So
this way, many of your forum members will serve as your technical
stuff. Did I say free of charge?
Quality web forum makes the web site very “sticky”.
People are coming back to read new messages, to check if
they have private messages, to post new messages… They
will be notified each time someone replies in thread they
watch, if they chose that option.
Actually, the only disadvantage of web forums is the amount
of time to get it up and running, to have an ongoing conversation
and good members activity. Later you will have to spend your
time for moderation, in order to make sure that members post
appropriate messages, that they are not spamming and that
the discussion is on the right track. However, good news
that your reward will be higher profit, as well.
There are quality free and fee based web forum software.
Recommendation for free forum software goes to Simple Machines – http://www.simplemachines.org and
for fee-based forum software for vBulletin http://www.vbulletin.com.
Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta
is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet
easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending
highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software
for email tracking. For more information visit: http://www.infacta.com
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