Forum Communities: Back To The Future

Writing by Brick Marketing on Thursday, 3 of April , 2008 at 7:36 am

I was reminded today of what a double edged sword forum communities can be. On the one hand, niche related forums can be a great place to hang out and build a reputation. However, as we mentioned in a previous post, push to hard or work to fast and you will find your reputation management strategies have been totally wasted.

Forum communities have been around much longer than any of the current social bookmarking sites, some are older than the world wide web (www) itself. Used judiciously, these forums can be very beneficial, particularly if you have a highly specialized web sites.

It is quite a paradox when you consider normal bricks and mortar business communities. They tend to spend most of their time trying to outdo each other; trying to get that business edge that brings the customer to their door rather than yours. With forum communities it is almost the opposite. Rather than seeing each other as commercial rivals, members of these communities relate to each other with a true community spirit - perhaps a legacy of the traditional pre www forum days.

With this in mind, your approach to any forum needs to be on the basis of participation. Forum communities are a great source of information particularly when it comes to product problems (and their solutions), current trends and corporate gossip. You would be surprised at how many product recalls are started because of problems identified by members of a forum. Listening to corporate gossip, while generally just that, gossip, can at times give you a head start on your commercial rivals.

Whilst most forums provide you with profile pages similar to bookmarking sites, forums often also allow signatures where you can place information such as your web address. These signatures are automatically added every time your post a comment or ask a question. Social bookmarking sites rarely allow such blatant promotion.

Other major benefits include the question and answer processes. Forum communities exist primarily as information tools. They are ideal places to canvas solutions for problems you may be experiencing in your particular field. It is similar to having a team of experts in a room. Throw in a problem and sit back and watch the debate. Eventually you will have a range of solutions most of which have been tried and tested. The more reliable participants talk from experience.

Once you start participating in these debates, you will find two things happening. First, you can become hooked. Secondly, if you talk from experience and can demonstrate a knowledge of the topic, you will be looked upon as an equal who can be trusted. From there, the benefits of belonging to forum communities will truly come to the surface.

Forum communities could be considered old fashioned. The results can be slow in bearing fruit however the amount of fruit eventually gathered could be equal to, or greater than, many of the social bookmarking sites. Don’t brush them aside to readily - fruit is fruit.

Website Design Price Quotes – Compare and Save!

Category: Forum Communities

• Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg

No comments yet.