Running Your Own Forum
If you feel that you can attract enough traffic, and of course, if it is relevant to your line of business, you can have a go at operating a forum of your own. It's a feature which can be provided with your website (ask your designer about this), or there's a whole host of free forum plug-ins available on the internet.
From experience however, running a forum can be quite time consuming, as in your part of administrator, it's your responsibilty to provide enough thought provoking, informative posts and activites to keep your users entertained.
From experience however, running a forum can be quite time consuming, as in your part of administrator, it's your responsibilty to provide enough thought provoking, informative posts and activites to keep your users entertained.
A great way to get people to return to your website
Forums are a great way to encourage people to return to your website time and time again, but only if the forum can be made relevant to the business. A solicitor, for example, would make great use of a forum to discuss various legal issues, but a hairdresser may not.
The best way to guage whether a forum would be suitable for your business is to try opening a Facebook page for your business which allows you to open a number of discussions. Facebook is an excellent place to start as most people have active facebook accounts and wouldn't have to open a new account just to post on a private forum.
Once your forum is up and running, try and post a different topic a day, to keep people interested and encourage them to get involved. If no-one takes part, don't fall into the trap of threatening people's memberships or 'having a go' at people for not posting, or encouraging people to 'check-in' whenever they visit your site. If the forum is quiet, it simply means that you haven't advertised it in enough, or the right places. Keep trying.
The best way to guage whether a forum would be suitable for your business is to try opening a Facebook page for your business which allows you to open a number of discussions. Facebook is an excellent place to start as most people have active facebook accounts and wouldn't have to open a new account just to post on a private forum.
Once your forum is up and running, try and post a different topic a day, to keep people interested and encourage them to get involved. If no-one takes part, don't fall into the trap of threatening people's memberships or 'having a go' at people for not posting, or encouraging people to 'check-in' whenever they visit your site. If the forum is quiet, it simply means that you haven't advertised it in enough, or the right places. Keep trying.