Capturing Conversations

I first came across forums in connection with one of my hobbies. Here at last was a means of communicating across the world with the otherwise isolated fellow-enthusiasts I’d longed to make contact with. Essentially, a forum or bulletin board is a way of capturing conversations on the internet. Unlike chat-rooms (or instant messaging services) where the individual messages are generally short and disposable, on a forum you can often include articles or instructions for discussion, and the responses are all captured and can be further organised if necessary into separate conversation “threads”.

Uses

Now if you think about it there are several ways in which capturing a conversation could benefit your business. This is a way of engaging and consulting your customers with relatively little effort or cost after all.

Here are some ideas. I’ll develop these in more detail in later posts.

1. Technical Support

Support fora are very popular in the IT world in particular. What a great idea to tap into the combined expertise of all the users of your particular product. You may well find that ideas are generated for new uses for the product, you will certainly pick up any signs of recurrent problems or weak areas, and so often enthusiastic users will come up with new ideas for incorporation – “It’s great but I wish it could do…”

2. More Ways To Use…

Sell something that can be made into something else? This could include foodstuffs or craft materials. A forum can be an excellent way to collect suggestions for recipes or patterns. You can seed it yourself and ask for contributions from customers – you could give prizes or discounts to encourage quality contributions.

3. Feedback

To be  used with caution and a stiff upper lip!

Feedback from customers is known to be a great influence on potential purchasers. How you answer the feedback is key – if there is a complaint or dissatisfaction you’ll need to deal with it, and publish the results. However if you’re really serious about your customer service and product quality, this could be a powerful tool in your favour.

4. Building Credibility

Particularly useful for consultants who are basically selling information and their own expertise. If you set the scene by creating a series of articles and then inviting comments to which you respond, you are establishing your own expertise and developing that essential sense of relating individually to potential clients.

Don’t forget that if any of these forums are directly connected/part of your website, then all the information that is generated on the fora will contribute to your search engine optimisation efforts. Just imagine, loads of new, keyword-rich  content that you haven’t had to write yourself!

Read more information about membership sites here.

We are all used to screening our email for the dreaded spam. Fake Rolex, dodgy pharmaceuticals, charming ladies who’d just love to meet us (why never charming gentlemen?!) and worst of all, naked photos. I had them all before my ISP smartened up its act – my mailbox is fairly clean now, and I’d guess that’s typical for most people.

Sadly the spammers are all too ingenious and started to look elsewhere for targets. Blogs and bulletin boards were a magnet.

I manage a bulletin board for an interest group. When it was set up, the brief was quite clear that although the discussions could be viewed by anyone, taking part was only for registered members, and only paid-up members of the society could be registered. Despite this, I am constantly  having to delete attempts at signing up from usernames like “ffggdd”  or “cheappills”. Barack Obama has tried to sign up twice now!

Why is it important to keep your board clear of spammers? I’m afraid I’ve seen a few boards that have been attacked and they quickly become nothing but a stream of adverts and links for all kinds of rubbish. Because the postings are often automated, it would be practically impossible to keep up manually deleting bad posts. Much better to keep them out in the first place.

So what to do?

I’m basing my comments on phpBB but you will find similar features in all good bulletin board systems.

Firstly, avoid allowing just anyone to sign up. Ensure that new applications are held in a moderation queue for checking. If you are planning on building a big community site where it would be impossible for you to single-handedly administer all registrations, make it a priority to enlist moderators who can do some of the screening for you. You could even charge a very small fee for joining – Amember is a good system for this. Anyone who is really interested will pay up, especially if you can give away some digital product at the same time.

Secondly, as you screen new members, use the “Whois” or IP lookup facility to check where the new members come from. If like me you are administering a site for a highly regional group, it will be clear that applications from Russia or the Netherlands or USA are not legit.

Thirdly, keep an eye on the discussions (this can also be farmed out to moderators). At the first sign of any unwelcome posting, don’t hesitate to block the member and add the related IP to a blocked list.

Fourthly, use a “CAPTCHA” of some kind to help screen out automated applications – not totally foolproof but will help. That’s where part of the sign-up process includes typing in disguised letters. In theory computers can’t recognise these, but they are getting cleverer so it doesn’t always work and there are a small number of genuine potential members who have problems distinguishing the type.

Constant Vigilance

Above all, do keep an eye on your bulletin boards. If you’re running one because it’s your own interest, it sets a good example and helps keep things lively if you take part in discussions regularly. If you’re running one for someone else, you still need to watch what’s happening so you can stop problems early.

One of the saddest things I ever saw was a forum which was supposed to be for software support, totally ruined by spam postings. You would go in with some quite innocent question related to the software, and retreat feeling, well, contamintated, so horrible were the spam posts! Not pleasant, not professional, and most definitely not a good advert for your business or society.