In today's fast-paced digital landscape, online discussion forums have become a mainstay for businesses looking to engage their customers and gain valuable insights. These online communities provide a platform for customers to communicate with each other and with the business directly, allowing for open dialogue and the sharing of ideas.
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The benefits of discussion forums for businesses range widely. For example, they can improve customer satisfaction and can act as a goldmine of innovative product ideas that come directly from your audience.
In this post, we will explore different types of discussion forums and how each one can help you meet a variety of business goals. We'll also share best practices for creating an effective discussion forum for your customers.
A discussion forum is an online platform that enables people to engage in ongoing conversations and share information about a particular topic or theme. These forums are often created on community engagement platforms designed for business use. A Discussion forum is a tool for community building, and 80% of company founders state it is important for their business. Forums help companies connect with customers, gather feedback, and establish a sense of community, and they are also an opportunity for users to connect with like-minded people and participate in a shared experience.
There are tangible, measurable results to building a community around your business. Discussion forums help businesses glean valuable insight which can help scale, engage, and improve all their efforts.
When you provide customers with a platform to ask questions or raise concerns, your support team can respond more quickly and effectively, increasing levels of customer satisfaction. Forums can also reduce customer support costs because other users or admins can answer customer questions, allowing the support department to operate with fewer representatives. Your support team can even respond to queries within the forum by providing supplementary links to an FAQ or self-service option for customers.
Discussion forums also allow businesses to identify and address issues before they emerge. By monitoring discussion posts, businesses can detect patterns in customer feedback and use that information to improve their products or services. This proactive approach can lead to higher customer satisfaction and improved customer retention.
Forums can also foster a sense of community among customers, which can lead to increased loyalty and advocacy. Customers who feel connected to a brand are more likely to refer their friends and family, leave positive reviews, and continue doing business with that brand.
A discussion forum is a powerful tool to drive growth and nurture your customers as they become loyal brand advocates.
With a platform for sharing experiences and opinions, brands can create a sense of community and foster meaningful interactions. By participating in these discussions, customers become more invested in the brand and show a higher level of engagement and loyalty.
When monitoring forum discussions, businesses can gain a better understanding of their customer's pain points and use that information to improve their products or services. When customers see that a business is actively listening to and implementing feedback, they are more likely to engage and become advocates for the brand.
Another added benefit: as customers interact with one another and members of your team inside multiple discussion threads, they will naturally create content related to the subject. If the community is optimized for SEO, you can leverage the user-generated content to increase organic traffic and drive business growth.
Your customers are your greatest asset in product development. Use their ideas to create innovative solutions and make effective product decisions.
Discussion forums can be a valuable tool for businesses looking to gather feedback on products or services. By engaging with customers in a forum, businesses can get real-time feedback on everything from product features to pricing. Product developers can use this feedback to make informed decisions that meet the needs of the target audience.
Discussion forums provide a centralized approach to collecting customer feedback and implementing it. You can update customers on the status of various ideas, share a product roadmap, announce product changes, and share product education materials to improve product adoption and user satisfaction.
Public discussion forums are open to anyone who wants to participate and are a great way to foster community and engage in open dialogue. However, they can also act as a breeding ground for trolls and harassment, making it more challenging to moderate and foster productive conversations.
Private discussion forums, on the other hand, offer a controlled environment where members can engage in more intimate and focused conversations. While private forums may not reach as wide of an audience, they are a valuable tool for building strong relationships and fostering deeper connections within a community.
General interest forums can be useful for casting a wider net and reaching a broad audience, while niche forums can be a more targeted approach for reaching specific demographics or communities.
Some well known-examples of of general interest discussion forums would be Quora or Reddit (the latter dubbed ‘the front page of the internet’). There are countless communities inside these websites on almost every topic imaginable. Companies do utilize these forums for marketing in a variety of ways, but you need to tread carefully. General interest forums are a place for people to connect organically about their shared interests and users don’t appreciate overly corporate input. However, general interest forums are a great place to gather enormous amounts of data and insight from customers.
Meanwhile, a business can create its own niche forum as a way to cultivate a community around its brand and establish itself as a thought leader in their industry. To effectively use their niche forum, businesses need to become a useful resource that provides value to their target audience. This can include sharing industry insights, answering questions, hosting discussions, and creating opportunities for networking and collaboration.
One great example of how to use a niche forum to build a loyal following and brand awareness - Sephora, a beauty retailer, created a forum where members can share beauty tips, ask questions, and connect with other makeup enthusiasts.
There is value in both general interest and niche discussion forums - the key is to understand the purpose of each to maximize its potential to engage with your audience.
Many companies build communities on social media and even create smaller discussion groups within those platforms. Doing so can be the easiest way to start a customer community. However, there are significant pitfalls to using social media as your main tool in community building, such as lack of ownership over your data and limited customization capabilities.
Standalone discussion forums, on the other hand, offer a more focused and engaged community for businesses to participate in. They can also offer more control over the conversation and the ability to moderate the content. However, it might take longer to grow your member base and requires a more targeted approach to reach potential customers.
Ultimately, the best approach for a business will depend on its specific goals and target audience, and many businesses may find value in utilizing both social media and standalone discussion forums to reach and engage with customers
Features and functionality: Look for features such as user registration, moderation tools, search functionality, the ability to create sub-forums, multi-linguality, and more.
Customization: Consider the level of customization the platform offers. You probably want to tailor the forum to fit your branding, but some platforms go beyond that and provide tools to customize the forum layout and navigation too.
Integration capabilities: Can your discussion forum platform easily integrate with other platforms and software you use in your organization? Powerful integrations simplify data management and ensure a seamless experience for your team and your customers.
Scalability and performance: Make sure the platform can handle the amount of traffic you expect to receive and can scale as your community grows. Discussion forums built on social media might perform well when you start, but as your member base grows and are creating new posts each day, you’ll need more advanced features that allow you to adjust forum settings easily and provide a high-speed and reliable experience to your members.
Security and privacy: Security and privacy are crucial when it comes to discussion forums. Ensure the platform offers robust security features such as two-factor authentication, SSL encryption, permissions, and protection against spam and malware.
Mobile responsivity: Since many users access discussion forums on a mobile device, consider the design and user interface of the discussion platform and whether it is optimized for mobile use.
Cost: Consider the costs associated with the platform, such as licensing fees, hosting fees, and maintenance costs.
Ease of use: The platform should be easy to use and navigate for both administrators and users. Building a discussion forum is not a one-time job. You’ll need regular modifications as you grow your forum, so an easy-to-use platform will make a big difference. Providing templates that simplify building different spaces is also a plus sign for a forum software.
Support: A strong user community and support network can be invaluable when building a discussion forum. Look for a platform with an active community and strong support resources, such as documentation, onboarding, and tutorials.
???? Not sure which forum software better fits your needs? We’ve compiled a list of the best discussion forum software with a complete breakdown of pros, cons, pricing, and more.
Discussion forums can become a bit like the wild-wild-west if you don’t establish some ground rules. However, if you diligently follow best practices, you can build a thriving community around your brand that fosters engagement, builds trust, and establishes your expertise. Here are some best practices we recommend:
Guidelines and policies help users understand what is expected of forum participants in terms of behavior, language, and other important aspects of the forum's culture. It is important to make the guidelines and policies clear, easy to understand, and enforced consistently. You can also include a section that outlines consequences for users who violate the guidelines and policies, such as temporary or permanent bans from the forum.
Contact us to discuss your requirements of Discussion System. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.
???? There’s a lot to creating community guidelines and that’s why we’ve outlined Everything you Need to Know About Community Guidelines.
Users are more likely to participate in a forum when they feel welcomed and valued, so it is important to create a positive culture. You can achieve this by engaging with users, responding to their comments and questions, and creating interesting and relevant topics that encourage discussion and debate.
A well-functioning forum needs a moderation system to ensure discussions meet your community guidelines. There needs to be a clear process and to ensure all members are following community guidelines and a management system to follow when a violation occurs. Depending on the number of posts appearing in your forum each day, you may need a dedicated moderator.
At Bettermode, we have a dedicated community manager, and one of their roles is community moderation. We find that having someone whose sole task is community moderation helps us get the most benefit from it. However, there are many ways to establish an effective moderation system that facilitates healthy communication inside your discussion forum.
Users are more likely to participate in a forum if they receive notifications when new topics are posted or when someone responds to their comments or questions. You can implement a notification system using , push notifications, or other methods that are convenient for your users.
Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are great places to promote your forum and encourage users to join. You can also promote your forum through newsletters, blog posts, and other marketing channels that reach your target audience. There are many creative ways to cross-pollinate content from your discussion forum and social media channels - use content from each and share it on the opposite platform to get more feedback and entice new members to join in on the discussion.
Discussion forums are a powerful (not to mention fun!) tool for businesses looking to engage their customers, gain valuable insights, and develop innovative solutions for their audience.
Forums can take all kinds of shapes and sizes, but don’t be taken aback by seemingly endless possibilities. If you take the time to envision the community you want to create, the other decisions will fall into place and you’ll be left with a community that serves your business and your customers.
Looking for more?
???? Here’s more insight and inspiration on building a discussion forum:
1) Introduction
This blog explores how Universal Knowledge can help businesses enable inter and cross departmental collaboration by discussing three areas where forums within knowledge bases can add benefit for internal organisations.
By developing the collaborative feature of discussion forums, Universal Knowledge is expanding its functional capabilities and providing additional business value. Knowledge users can now collaborate and connect more effectively and have a place within Universal to capture and track new ideas. By including an online platform for conversation between its user base, Universal Knowledge can assist organisations to enhance effective communication surrounding knowledge within their information estate.
The inclusion of discussion forums confirms Universal Knowledge as a core tool within internal organisations, strengthening the existing collaboration features, such as the existing communications platform, expert escalation of questions and feedback features.
To view the KPS Knowledge Management Solutions click here
2) Forums As A Tool To Begin The Process Of Knowledge Creation
Forums are a powerful tool to help teams work together to publish new documents. What started off as a simple discussion around new ideas, can often evolve into valuable knowledge which could be used to the benefit of the whole business. For instance, early discussions may end up guiding the creation of a new product and/or services.
Using forums as an aid to create content may significantly improve the quality of knowledge documents produced. Recently, in a Deloitte White-Paper it was established in the department of operations research, knowledge experts created content based on various biases. For instance, when an operations employee needed to generate new knowledge to solve a problem, they often tended only seek information that confirmed their initial assumption and ignore all other contrary evidence that disagreed with their held beliefs.
The use of Universal’s forum feature can help mitigate any bias problem that many businesses face when dealing with the creation of new knowledge. Instead of letting employees become insular, Universal Knowledge’s experts are encouraged to actively communicate with each other when in the process of creating new knowledge. They become motivated to react in a collaborative manner, to one another’s perspectives and experiences, and thus use forums as a springboard to negotiate the construction of new ‘unbiased’ content.
See how discussion forums are incorporated into the KPS Employee Knowledge Sharing Solution click here
3) Forums As A Tool To Discuss How To Improve Existing Content
Knowledge users can utilise Universal Knowledge’s forum feature as a suggestion box on existing knowledge items to discuss improvements on live documents. Used in this way, a forum can let teams share thoughts on crucial issues on a piece of content already in existence which may be outdated and in need of revising.
By allowing users to collaborate to quickly validate the merits of an idea on existing sources through the use of forums, Universal Knowledge can help speed up the process of iterative thinking and thus has potential to speed up the innovation process. A study by the Department of Industry found that companies that make use of collaborative technology are more likely to innovate in comparison to businesses that do not collaborate. In concurrence, the heavyweight accounting firm PWC states that using a collaborative approach can be remarkably effective as it increases the levels of motivations and participation, pulls teams together and therefore provides a fertile ground for knowledge capture, resulting in more innovative results.
By utilising forums within Universal Knowledge, users will have access to open-minded employees who can quickly validate any ideas or changes that need to be made on existing knowledge articles, which will in turn help speed the process for innovation. In this way users have the ability to collaborate around different ideas deciding whether suggestions have any merits or alternatively, can help save time by burning through bad ideas.
See how discussion forums are incorporated into the KPS Employee Knowledge Sharing Solution click here
4) Help All Users Within The Knowledge Base Seek Assistance And Support
Universal Knowledge’s new discussion board feature is a great way for members of a group within the Knowledge Base to seek assistance and support. The forums within Universal Knowledge allow employees to locate and discuss ideas with the right people (e.g. from proposal writing to sales prospecting) who are outside the employee’s explicit network, enabling the right conversations to happen irrespective of geographic location.
In this light, Universal’s forum feature can act as an intranet help desk within your business. This outcome will negate the repetition of tasks across the organisation and can therefore lead to productivity gains and cost savings. For instance, employees may ask a question on a particular topic and receive a helpful answer. By using Universal Knowledge’s forum, employee answers can be recycled so next time an employee has a similar question they can first search the forums section and see previously discussed conversations on any given topic relevant to their initial query. Using this self-service culture within an organisation can be invaluable and lead to substantial profitability benefits, since employees within an organisation with relevant expertise only have to complete an answer once for the benefit to be realised across the entire business.
See how discussion forums are incorporated into the KPS Employee Knowledge Sharing Solution click here
5) Creating A Return On Investment For Knowledge Base Discussion Forums
A key consideration for making discussion forums effective for a knowledge base solution is having the right strategy. This is because the return on investment from collaboration tools is complicated by the fact, that even if the company deploys the world’s best collaboration tool, it does not necessarily mean that adoption will follow. A successful deployment almost always depends on effective user education and fundamentally changing user behaviours.
To help make the project a success, we will run workshops with you to uncover critical success factors before anything is implemented. For instance, we will work with you to help convey to your employees that there is a clear purpose to the use of discussion forums. We will run training sessions to help staff realise their posts will have a direct impact on a particular issue or will provide some tangible benefit (for the organisation, or for other staff).
In summary, the nature of collaboration through the use of discussion forums within Universal Knowledge has the power to enable collective innovation, reduce bias issues and allow for productivity gains and cost savings.
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To view the KPS Knowledge Management Solutions click here
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