In recent weeks I’ve heard the same question again and again: how can a forum help my business to grow?

I think the real question isn’t how forums can make your business grow, but how they can make your community, or user base, grow. Users equal customers, and customers are what all businesses want.

Forums provide an immense amount of value to any web site by allowing customers to engage with your business on their own time, at any time, even when your offices are closed. The content your customers create in discussions remains available for searching and indexing. This information can be extremely valuable in a myriad of ways, such as helping new customers solve old problems, not to mention illustrating for new customers that your business has an active and vibrant community to which they can belong.

There is no single correct answer to this question, but having used (not to mention created) many forums over the years, I’ve come to understand that there are five simple steps you can follow:

Keep it simple

Simplicity is paramount in every product, but even more so in discussion forums. Look at most multicategory, sliced-content forums out there, and know for a fact that our moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas don’t know how to find the discussions, let alone take part in them. I’ve literally watched users close windows on forums because they don’t understand where to find the discussions that are relevant to them. Keep your discussion categories to a minimum, especially when you open your doors. In a forum’s infancy stages, there’s rarely a need to have categories at all. You can always add categories as your forum’s popularity increases and your content grows.

Be a member

I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to be a member in your own community. This means more than just creating an account. It means getting involved on a daily basis. Set aside 30 minutes each day to check out the new discussions, answer people’s questions, and discuss their ideas. This will quickly become a fun part of your day, and your members will value both the forum, and your product or service more for having you there.

Avoid censorship

If you find that members of your forum are voicing opinions that you don’t like, or are simply trash-talking your product or service, do not ban, delete, or in any way hinder their ability to express their opinions. Chances are that if your users are upset, there is a good reason for it, and a strong negative opinion should be just as important to businesses as a strong positive opinion. You should be listening to what the users are saying, and attempting to find a solution that will please them. Even if you are not going to change your business in a way that will make them happy, they will respect you for engaging them with your explanations, and allowing them to speak openly about their issues.

Listen and respond

Pay attention to what your users are telling you, and make changes to your business to reflect their wants and needs. If a person decides to spend time on your forum, they have most likely used your product or service a great deal. I’ve found that it is not uncommon to discover users who know just as much about the product as you do. Their opinions matter, and you show them this by listening to their suggestions and reacting accordingly. Of course, you steer your own ship, but if someone makes a great suggestion, implement it, give them credit, and thank them!

Use the tool

Most forums are loaded with features, options, and plugins that you can take advantage of to help build your community and it’s unique language and culture. These features can vary from things such as discussion polls to comment voting. Benefits like this will keep your community fun. Your users will want to return every day, and, truth be told, so will you.

• customers
• discussion
• forums
• membeers
• user base