Get the Message Around with Forums

By Anna Precht Traylor

Whether you want to build relationships with your customers, improve site stickiness, or gain insight into what your site visitors are thinking, you can do it all easily—even on the smallest budget—with a site message board. Learn how a message board can benefit your online business and the steps to take to get one up and running.


Discussion forums, or message boards, are online communities where people come together to converse about a common interest. Board visitors (or members, if required) can post a new topic, soliciting feedback or asking a question to the group. Other members post responses, and the entire discussion thread can be viewed from start to finish online. Unlike online chats, message board discussions don’t happen in real-time, and are more relaxed and thought-out, where readers can come back whenever they like to read through topics.

Online communities and message board forums help businesses attract, retain and sell to customers.

Online communities and message board forums help businesses attract, retain and sell to customers. As periodic site visitors become regular community members, they get accustomed to your site and build a loyalty to it. The community is a place where they can discuss a common interest with your particular industry, and they’ll continue coming back to interact, boosting your site traffic. Meanwhile, you can build a relationship with your customers and tap into their concerns, helping you to better target your products in the future.

Adding a message board to your site is simple, and often can be done at no cost.

Adding a message board to your site is simple, and often can be done at no cost. Some available services and programs function solely online whereas others require program download and installation on your server. They come in all shapes and sizes with varying levels of functionality and design options to suit your site. The free services limit how much you may integrate your own branding (logos, headers, etc.) The option you choose will be based on how much you want to spend, the type of business you run, and the level of professionalism you want to reflect to your future community.

If you haven’t participated in a message board community before, the best place to start is by researching different types of forums. Take note of the features you like, and the ones you don’t. Try joining one to get the experience of posting replies and reading threads. Get a feel for the user experience.

• EZ Board offers one of the more popular discussion forum services. Flexible for customizing to meld with your current Web site, EZ Board’s basic bulletin board is free (with some advertising) and operates completely online. They offer low-cost packages for models without advertising as well.
  
  
• VBulletin is a high-quality option for a professional look and fully integrated functionality. It’s a pay-per-license board, which requires installation on your server. Assistance is offered for a fee.
  
  
• Bravenet provides a free message board with moderate customization and easy installation. In addition to the basic forums, they offer additional services that include polling, chats and online messengers.

Once you’ve set your message board in motion, you have to promote and maintain it.

Once you’ve set your message board in motion, you have to promote and maintain it. Simply building isn’t enough. Send out an email announcement to your customers, promote it heavily throughout your site, and list recent discussion topics in your newsletter. Once you open your doors, you’ll also need to check it often—at least once a day—to make sure that everything is functioning the way it should and to respond to inquiries and topics presented. The more time you can devote to your board, the more it’ll benefit your business.

Communities don’t bloom overnight, so remember to be patient. Continue to promote your message board and give it regular attention. As time goes by and site visitors realize the valuable resource you’re offering, they’ll begin to do the work for you, and you can begin to reap the benefits of increased traffic and sales.