Stay Safe, Stay In Touch

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Web Development

Q How can we increase activity in our online communities and forums?

Rafi Spero
Co-Founder
Neatreceipts
Philadelphia

It's the fear of every high school student: You throw a party and no one shows. The business version of that humiliation is an inactive online forum. To stay healthy, online forums require two things: a critical mass of participants and intelligent, lively conversation. The first challenge is enticing people to drop by. We assume the forums are prominently featured on your home page (we can assume that, yes?). You can then aggressively advertise their presence with a mass e-mail to customers, perhaps highlighting a recent provocative exchange or posing a controversial issue for discussion. You could also try offering incentives--a 10 percent discount coupon, for example--to the first 100 new registrants.

To start the conversation you want participants who are knowledgeable about your products but not company spokespeople. Your best customers are ideal. Ask them to moderate, says Mike Tatum, a general manager at CNet (NASDAQ:CNET), the large Internet media company. Company representatives should chime in as well; everyone from the CEO to the designers of your latest product can add insight and prevent uncomfortable silences. "Some mornings, it might just be employees talking with themselves," says Bill Johnston, director for community and research at Forum One Communications, a technology consulting firm in Alexandria, Virginia. "But there's a conversation." And, of course, employees should never be coy about their affiliation. If participants catch one of your people pretending to be a customer, things can get ugly fast.

As fascinating as your product is, chances are it can't sustain a conversation indefinitely. So come up with other topics that might interest your customers. If you make a device that scans receipts, consider opening a debate about workplace efficiency or taxes. If the digital tumbleweeds still blow through your community, consider other forms of interaction, like a blog. Blog readers can add their comments to yours, and given the right topic, their interactions can be as freewheeling as those in forums. Sure, it means you'll have to supply most of the conversation, and if few respond you end up talking to yourself. But that's better than presiding over a ghost town whose emptiness tells the world that nobody cares.

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