Marketing Tips
 May 2009
Creating a Conversation with Your Site Visitors –
Blogs, Forums, Email Lists, or…..?
Last month’s column on blogging raised a number of questions, and it might help it I step back a bit and take a look at the many ways of creating a conversation with your site’s visitors.
For most businesses and organizations, the most popular methods tend to be blogs, forums, and email lists, with the more ambitious setting up full-scale social networks or online communities. As a starting point, however, let’s look at the first three: what they are, what they’re not, and how they are best used.
A Blog is a series of entries by one author or a selected team of authors, on a single topic or a scheduled series of topics (for example, a blog of business tips might have entries on a rotating series of topics: Monday, Marketing; Tuesday, HR; Wednesday, Customer Service, etc.).
While a blog can be multi-author, it is not open for anyone to contribute entries. Readers may (or may not) be allowed to post comments on each entry; the blog author(s) have the option to moderate these comments or not. Readers have the option to subscribe to the blog using an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed which can notify them of new posts or place the posts directly in their email In-box.
If you are a business owner interested in sharing your expertise with your clients and prospects, developing a following, building traffic to your site, and raising its Google ranking, a blog is your best option. Good blogging platforms include WordPress (http://www.wordpress.com), Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), and TypePad (http://www.typepad.com/) , among many others.
For a single-author blog, see http://www.seventhgeneration.com/learn/blog. A good example of a multi-author blog is http://blog.gaiam.com/ .
A Forum (also called a Bulletin Board) is an online gathering spot where a group of subscribers can hold electronic conversations about many topics. Depending on the purpose of the forum, there may be varying levels of moderation: one forum may be set up only to provide announcements; another may have very little moderation.
Forums are best used as a tool for community building and communication for a group of people with a common purpose or interest. For example, if you have ever sought online help for a computer or software product, you have probably encountered online forums (for one example, see Adobe’s user forums at http://forums.adobe.com/index.jspa). You can find online forums for real estate agents, socially responsible investors, role-playing gamers, book clubs, and just about anything else (see http://www.theadminzone.com/directory/ for one listing).
You can incorporate a forum into your website using third-party software; two providers are ESyndiCat (http://www.esyndicat.com/) and VBulletin (http://www.vbulletin.com/).
An Email Discussion List (not to be confused with an email list for a newsletter or ezine) is similar to a forum in that many subscribers can have conversations on many topics. However, while forum subscribers visit an online site to participate, list subscribers receive posts in their email, whether as individual messages or as compiled digests. Less structured than forums, email discussion lists are also best used as a tool for community building: for example, if you are a camera store owner hosting a group of professional photographers and/or hobbyists.
Like a forum, an email discussion list can be tightly moderated or very open; you can also set a desired level of security for lists and forums, limiting them to the people you want to include.
Usually, an email list of this sort is accessed through a link from your site. Participants will need to have an account on the list platform before they can post or receive posts.
The most popular list platforms are Yahoogroups (http://groups.yahoo.com/), Googlegroups (http://groups.google.com/?pli=10 ), and Topica (http://lists.topica.com/channels/art/0 ).
If you want more information about setting up a forum or list for your site, contact the Chamber’s web goddess at meg@dragonfly-design.com. For more information about creating a blog, contact Phila Hoopes at phila@your-words-worth.com.
Talks are in process regarding a community discussion platform for the Chamber; stay tuned!
Phila Hoopes
The Tree-Huggin’ Copywriter
Giving Your Vision Your Voice
http://www.your-words-worth.com
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