can a web forum create marketing buzz for my business?

[stefania]

I am really new to this forum idea, but i read a book- Wikinomics, and i love the idea of engaging entrepreneurs (who need money and talent to grow their business) about what they need and like, so i can improve my business offering..

i have a "static" web site now, and i thought addition of a web fourm would be a way to enter the WEb 2 world..

any comments?
Stefania

[AstarothSolutions]

Forums can provide all sorts of benefits for companies and can be used for a variety of things such as technical support for IT type products/ services to forums that are basically a business in themselves but you use as a channel for free advertising and by being an active member of the community also get the support of other regulars.

The difficulty with all forums is that you require visitors/ posts to be able to get visitors/ post and therefore they can be very difficult to get off the ground successfully. Obviously if you are providing Tech Support only via it then it is much less of an issue but would still undermine marketing claims of a thriving online community of experts to solve your problems etc

[stefania]

Most valuable insights. What is the critial number of participants to start, do you think? Here is one idea i have: I have a group of talented executives who are subscribing to a program meet fast growth companies which need execution talent. I want these executives/subscribers to be able to exchagne ideas on how to approach these companies and share their learning exprerience. Do you think 10 is sufficient to start?

[AstarothSolutions]

I dont think that it is as straight forward as needing a fixed number of users to work... it will depend on how wide the topics covered are going to be (you will need less if you have a forum on the lesser spotted garden snail than a business forum where you need people with strong skills in financing, accountancy, law, IT, web, marketing, PR etc), how active the users are and what type of forum it is... a chat forum needs to be more active than a support forum.

[2Macs Jim]

Hi stefania, Forums are a good way to create brand awareness and interactivity between you and your clients/visitor/etc. It does take awhile usually to get a forum active so don't get discouraged. Also, joining other forums like this one and others that relate to your field. Set up a signature for yourself with a link to your website here and on every forum you belong to, that way everytime you post, your name a direct link to your site will be posted also.

[tradeya]

Hi stefania, Forums are a good way to create brand awareness and interactivity between you and your clients/visitor/etc. It does take awhile usually to get a forum active so don't get discouraged. Also, joining other forums like this one and others that relate to your field. Set up a signature for yourself with a link to your website here and on every forum you belong to, that way everytime you post, your name a direct link to your site will be posted also.

I agree that in order to get more people/traffic into your forum, you need to visit other forums too. put your site in your sig is a great idea. i found this forum through someone's sig in DP forum and i stick to both. as you see people will come from other forum through sig/link but they will stay in your forum or not depend on the info&community they can get from your forum. everything have to start from scratch. 10 is a good no. to start with and later i'm sure with a good community and support your forum will run well. dont forget to tell us the forum link so we can have a visit and leave some post.

[ankur]

its definately worth discussing in communities, like talking to 1000-10000 members as many as comes on the site. its very difficult for the same to happen in real time.

[Brando_M]

HI Stefania

What is your business?