Nothing promotes a business online better than staying in touch
with prospects. The more interactive the continued contact, the
more of a relationship that is built with a potential client.
This business principle of continued contact and business
relationship building has given rise to the popularity of online
business forums, and of course, "theme-related" online forums.
Online forums quickly establish empathy, set forum owners up as
"experts" in the eyes of visitors, and serve as a promotional
vehicle for other products and services that forum owners seek
to sell.
While online forums are popular and the perfect method of
relationship building, starting a forum and maintaining one can
be challenging, especially in the beginning when members can be
"few" and "far between". The challenge for most new forum owners
is to get beyond the initial start up phase and move onto a
phase where the forum members themselves promote the forum
simply by posting.
Although each forum is individual and personal, a few general
guidelines should be followed or at least kept in mind when
starting and maintaining an online forum. These are as follows:
1. Take care when choosing the type of forum and forum script or
software that will be used. The forum should be easy to access,
easy to use, and come with "visitor- friendly" features. All
visitors should be made to feel welcomed and find the
navigability of the forum, user friendly. Forum scripts and
software, especially "free" varieties, may be overburdened with
ads from the parent company and lead to a poor experience for
visitors.
Some recommendations:
http://www.phpbb.com/ http://www.vbulletin.com/
2. The forum should have a good number of interesting and
focused topics. The content should reflect the interests of the
target audience, and every care should be made to have
well-written and informative content that is updated regularly.
This not only helps attract new members, it keeps older members
from losing interest and defecting to other forums.
3. The forum should be Search Engine friendly. High activity
forums, like popular blogs, provide a great reason for Search
Engines to visit them frequently as they are brimming with fresh
content all the while. Dynamic urls, session ids, etc. used by
most forum software can be very detrimental to the forum health
from Search Engine point of view.
When selecting a forum software, check if they are Search Engine
friendly. Open source software like phpbb, have mods
(modifications) developed by third party sources, to enhance the
forum in many ways.
Here's a great mod for phpbb to make it Search Engine friendly:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/about15132.html
4. The forum needs to have a clear list of rules, a disclaimer,
and most of all, good solid moderation. Visitors will quickly
become frustrated with forums that have no clear guidelines, or
feature rude, obnoxious, or overbearing members. Good manners
are required as much online as offline.
5. Promotion, especially in the early days, will take
considerable time and effort. Forums can be difficult to start
(members generally are "shy" when there are only a few present),
and the more posts that take place, the more individuals will
join. This is a "snowball" effect of forums, so marketing must
be done consistently, day in and day out, until the forum
becomes more self-sustaining.
6. The owner of the forum should take an active interest in the
forum and SHOW this interest by contributing regularly. Above
all else, people join forums where they feel they will learn
from the owner of the forum, and if the owner is never present,
they quickly lose interest in the forum.
7. The forum should be targeted, yet diverse, encouraging older
members to contribute, without making newer members feel
uncomfortable. Cliques can form in forums, and this type of
behavior should be discouraged by the owner and moderators.
Every effort should be made to answer questions or comments by
all members as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
8. As with all other Internet related ventures, care needs to be
given as to hosting and maintenance of the forum. A forum that
is always experiencing "downtime", will lose members quickly,
and a forum that has many coding mistakes will quickly frustrate
visitors. As with Web sites, "cheap" providers of hosting and
maintenance are not always "better".
All in all, online forums can be a great way to generate income,
develop a good reputation among clients, and provide
entertainment and instruction for many individuals. Like with
everything else, however, they take marketing savvy, and a great
deal of time and attention to detail. The old saying, "You only
reap what you sow" really applies to the world of online forums.
About the author:
Vishal P. Rao is the editor of
http://www.home-based-business-opportunities.com - A website
dedicated to opportunities, ideas and resources for starting a
home based business. He is also the owner of the
http://www.work-at-home-forum.com - an online community of folks
who work at home.
