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Casual Articles - Forums - Should You Have Them On Your Website?
What's your company doing to set itself apart from all of its competition and build a sustainable competitive advantage? Many companies struggle with defining what makes them different from their competitors, even though they have core strengths that do set them apart. In today's crowded marketplaces, when prospects and customers go looking for a vendor, what usually causes them to investigate further into the possibility of buying from a specific company is what sets that company apart. Companies that define and develop their messaging around their unique selling proposition have a much better chance of accelerating their sales and gaining customer attention and traction.It's very easy to actually develop your company's uni
And Now To The Cons
Forums Can Take a Lot of Time to Take Off the Ground
I remember how I could feel my posts echoing in the empty board four years ago… It can take a long time before your forums pick up. An e
As a book marketing guy and book publicist it’s imperative for me to keep up with all of the great books and magazine articles being published on the topic of book marketing.I’ve read dozens and dozens of books on book marketing and usually have found a morsel or two of useful information in each one. Here’s a list of my favorites. By the way, I’ve personally met or have spoken to each author and can attest to the veracity of the material they present and their credentials to discuss these topics.PyroMarketing. Book marketing professionals know the secrets of success that drove the sales of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life to a chart-busting best-seller and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” into a hu
In this article I'd like to take a look at the pros and cons of adding forums to your website. The largest of my websites, www.TheCatSite.com boasts one of the largest online forums on pet related subjects. In fact I have yet to see a larger forum dealing with pets. As of the writing of this article (Summer 2004), we have over 7,000 members and nearly half a million posts. In the past four years I have struggled with the hardships of community management and learned what works and what doesn't. Let me share a few insights that may help you decide if you want to take the forums path yourself.
The Pro Side of the Equation…
Forums Generate Content
Large, active forums generate content for your website. Google now has literally tens of thousands of pages indexed for TheCatSite.com's forums, and people looking for some of the more esoteric subjects related to cat health and cat behavior are very likely to meet one of our forum pages in their search results.
Forums Make People Return to Your Website
Forums are truly a "sticky" element. Most people come back, at least to check on developments on their threads. With a good community, you get some real addicts who have to get their daily fix. TheCatSite.com's forums run on Vbulletin Forums, which means members can opt to receive an email whenever someone replies to their thread. Most people use it and that little email sends them right back to the forums…
Forums Create a Sense of Community
Reaching from behind their computer screens, people from all over the world join together, get to know each other and create a community. This is actually happening! Members connect with each other, offering support in time of needs and some of them even meeting each other in real life. For you as the webmaster, this means loyal visitors that keep coming back to a place they consider to be home.
And Now To The Cons
Forums Can Take a Lot of Time to Take Off the Ground
I remember how I could feel my posts echoing in the empty board four years ago… It can take a long time before your forums pick up. An em
With over 2 million real estate agents according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), becoming a successful real estate agent takes more than just a license and a knowledge of current laws and regulations.The first year drop out range estimated to be from 40% to 80% demonstrates that many real estate agents are not as successful as they could be and research suggests that 90% give up after 3 years. The following 7 tips may help you avoid becoming one of these statistics. First and Foremost YOU are a business. Real estate agents work for a broker, but are independent, commissioned sales people. This means that you are a small business and must run your practice as a business. Again, remember you ar
The Pro Side of the Equation…
Forums Generate Content
Large, active forums generate content for your website. Google now has literally tens of thousands of pages indexed for TheCatSite.com's forums, and people looking for some of the more esoteric subjects related to cat health and cat behavior are very likely to meet one of our forum pages in their search results.
Forums Make People Return to Your Website
Forums are truly a "sticky" element. Most people come back, at least to check on developments on their threads. With a good community, you get some real addicts who have to get their daily fix. TheCatSite.com's forums run on Vbulletin Forums, which means members can opt to receive an email whenever someone replies to their thread. Most people use it and that little email sends them right back to the forums…
Forums Create a Sense of Community
Reaching from behind their computer screens, people from all over the world join together, get to know each other and create a community. This is actually happening! Members connect with each other, offering support in time of needs and some of them even meeting each other in real life. For you as the webmaster, this means loyal visitors that keep coming back to a place they consider to be home.
And Now To The Cons
Forums Can Take a Lot of Time to Take Off the Ground
I remember how I could feel my posts echoing in the empty board four years ago… It can take a long time before your forums pick up. An e
There are many ways to earn an honest buck using the Internet, while others just try to find the best deals possible. There was a time when people that were surfing the Net were more prone to click on the affiliate links and buy stuff without thinking too much of it. Not it seems that the things are a little bit different, due to the fact that the prices are higher than they were before and some people try to "Hijack" the commissions by replacing the ID of the affiliate links with their ID.Let’s suppose that you have an affiliate link such as www.productdomain . com/?affID, and the hijacker will replace your link with his ID, which is "newID": www.productdomain . com/?newID. This is how he manages to take the money that is righ
Forums Make People Return to Your Website
Forums are truly a "sticky" element. Most people come back, at least to check on developments on their threads. With a good community, you get some real addicts who have to get their daily fix. TheCatSite.com's forums run on Vbulletin Forums, which means members can opt to receive an email whenever someone replies to their thread. Most people use it and that little email sends them right back to the forums…
Forums Create a Sense of Community
Reaching from behind their computer screens, people from all over the world join together, get to know each other and create a community. This is actually happening! Members connect with each other, offering support in time of needs and some of them even meeting each other in real life. For you as the webmaster, this means loyal visitors that keep coming back to a place they consider to be home.
And Now To The Cons
Forums Can Take a Lot of Time to Take Off the Ground
I remember how I could feel my posts echoing in the empty board four years ago… It can take a long time before your forums pick up. An e
Own an ecommerce website? Do you have a mailing list?If not, you’re potentially leaving a lot of money on the counter.Keeping in touch with your past customers and visitors, is one of the easiest and cost effective methods of increasing your website sales. You simply must have a mechanism to collect the email addresses of both buyers and browsers alike.Collecting buyers email addresses is a ”no brainer” – after all you need to send them confirmation details, receipts etc. Just make sure you ask their permission to keep them up to date on future special offers.Collecting visitor details is a bit trickier, and you must offer some kind of incentive in return for them handing over their valuable email address.
Forums Create a Sense of Community
Reaching from behind their computer screens, people from all over the world join together, get to know each other and create a community. This is actually happening! Members connect with each other, offering support in time of needs and some of them even meeting each other in real life. For you as the webmaster, this means loyal visitors that keep coming back to a place they consider to be home.
And Now To The Cons
Forums Can Take a Lot of Time to Take Off the Ground
I remember how I could feel my posts echoing in the empty board four years ago… It can take a long time before your forums pick up. An e
During the California Recall Election, I was very interested. Without getting into the political scene at all; my entire company, The Car Wash Guys, and all our staff and franchisees were closely watching The California Recall and Election. Why you say? Why would a National Car Wash Franchising Company care much? Well we have some friends of past days who were very much involved there. See some of these articles and find out how we were assisted in our early company years by Mr. Tom McClintock (Rep) of California who was running a very close third in the election with the fastest moving up numbers in the polls. We all wondered would it be The Terminator just like in the movies? Arnold Schwarznegger, who promises to terminate bureaucra
And Now To The Cons
Forums Can Take a Lot of Time to Take Off the Ground
I remember how I could feel my posts echoing in the empty board four years ago… It can take a long time before your forums pick up. An empty forum can actually drive new visitors away. It's a vicious circle – when they see that no one else is posting, they don't post themselves, and move on to the next website. It can take weeks and even months of hard work to get your forums off the ground.
Forums Need A Lot Of Ongoing Management
You need to constantly monitor your forums to make sure that they are clean of spam, troll posts, and just keep everything where it belongs. Once your forums are large enough, you have to have a team of quality moderators to help you run the place - the task being too time-consuming for one person. This is the place in this article to say "hi!" to any TCS team members reading this – thank you guys – you're the ones that make it all happen!
For the webmasters reading this article, I will say that managing a team is a task in its own right. Finding the good mods can mean the difference between success and failure. And it doesn't end there. You have to put your heart and mind to it – all the time.
Forums Take Up a Lot of Resources
Forums are database-type applications that generate web pages on the fly. Every time a user views a page, it's being created from scratch. As the forums become more active, this can take a heavy load on the web server's resources. When our forums reached 2,000 members, we had to switch over to a dedicated server. When they reached 7,000 members, we had to upgrade to a new dedicated server… With several other websites stored on our server, the forums are the big resources hoggers, taking up bandwidth, disk space and, most importantly, CPU resources. This brings us to the next point…
Forums Do Not Make Lucrative Advertising Stock
You think that with successful forums, generating millions of targeted pageviews each month, you would do well financially? Think again. Forums not only cost you a lot to run, they also don't bring in a whole lot of revenue, compared to regular web pages.
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BB link (for phorums):
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