Online Community Forums to Engage, Promote, and Empower

The Power of Online Community Forums- Engage Members, Promote Business, Solutions, and Empowerment

Forums and Bulletin Boards- as we know them on the internet were first recognized in 1996.

What are forums?
A Forum, or message board, is an online discussion where registered and non-registered (depending on your settings) can Post messages and Comment on messages from others.

The messages are arranged in a tree-like directory structure that are Logically organized into a set of generic topics (your settings can determine if you generate the topics and others only reply or allow others to also create new discussion topics).

Most forums prefer an Open and Free discussion settings (particularly forums from outside the USA) and do not require membership or authorization to join. However, most USA forums tend to require some sort of registration process and many US-based companies have introduced employee and/or vendor only forums.

Despite your registration and topic discussion settings, another nice feature about forums is the ability to create Word Censoring and ability to block inappropriate/undesirable language. This helps promote open communications without the need to moderate comments. Although you can also create setting in which members can become a moderator or an admin but these special users really serve to help facilitate communications (place comments by others in the appropriate section, help reply to questions, etc).

You can also allow users to submit File Attachments, Links, Photos and Videos to help support the discussion process as well as create (and allow others) to Poll each other or about information provided in the topics which helps solicit more feedback and participation.

Most Common use:
• Problem-solving, how-to-guides, promoting successful strategies, and discussing solutions to barriers, and enhancing internal/external customer support

Unlike a Blog structure, forums tend to display the original comment on top followed by any responses which may help in identifying the progression of the solution and how more comments were added to the original (but many forms allow you to customize this stetting also).

If you do offer registration and start to collect regular members, you may also allow for members to Private Message one another to promote discussions that are not part of the "community forum". You can also provide Emoticons or smilies (symbol or picture) to be used when writing or replying to comments or messaging to help convey the emotional content of the message(s).

Lastly, another great feature is Subscribing to Topics. This allows for registered members to receive a "notification" which is typically sent via an email to inform a user that a comment has been added to a "watched discussion" or if the author of a post has received some feedback. This prevents the need to log back in to the forum to keep checking on any new comments posted.

Forums are becoming increasing popular among US businesses and are most often deployed (externally) as a marketing and help-desk tool and (internally) as a communications and team-building tool but new concepts and approaches to their use are growing. Thanks in part because of the ease of implementation, settings and cost. Many forums can be created and hosted for FREE and this does not mean littered with ads.

To check out a sample of a Free forum- you can visit our PQI Network Project Forum. No registration required to view and of our topics and discussions.


This topic is part of our Project Form or PQI Labs as noted by the icon to the right. 

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