March 2002

Website Technique
Discussion Boards

Building community is a continually emerging trend in smart e-marketing technique. The tools available on the Internet make it inexpensive and quick to get your own community started.

WHY BOTHER?

One of your goals should be to provide a safe place for people to get the information and camaraderie they desire. When you develop such a place you reap the benefits in several ways.

• You have a group of people interested in a certain topic that you can market to.

• This community could become a major asset to your business.

When you market to a group of people that are members of a discussion board you've got to be careful or you may lose your status as a safe haven.

One reason people like discussion boards is that they are generally protected to a certain extent from a barrage of ads. Sometimes a special area of the board is reserved for member ads.

MEMBER BENEFITS

Advertising -- Members can advertise in several ways.

1. They post a signature file with each comment they make on the board which can tell everyone else their company name and maybe a little tag line and website link.

2. They slyly make comments and ask question that push their agenda.

They also get lots of networking benefits OR

They can stay totally anonymous and simply read the posts (usually people have to be registered to be able to post questions and replies).

BOARD OWNER ADVERTISING

Owners of the board have several options when it comes to advertising to their members.

• Banner ads on the site.

• Text link ads

• Posted announcements

• Email announcements

• They can post comments and questions to the board along with a sig file just like everyone else.

TYPES OF DISCUSSION BOARDS

Moderated / Unmoderated

A moderated discussion board means that each post must go through a person/persons that decide if the post is reasonable before they allow it to be seen by the masses. 

Unmoderated means that posts go directly on the board without screening . . . Let me expand on that. The board can be set to watch for foul language and censor posts that have bad words in them, however you can't really automatically screen idiotic ideas or nasty comments.

Threaded / Linear

Threaded boards start off with a main topic and then "threads" branch off the main topic similar to breaking up people into small groups to discuss an particular aspect of the main topic. Threaded boards are well suited to question and answer style conversations.

Linear boards have one message following another in chronological order and are better suited to long in-depth conversations where people really get to know each other well.

I am using a threaded board from V bulletin. Click the graphic below to go to their site.

BEFORE YOU LEAP

Think this through a little . . . .I mean a lot! You must be sure that the bulletin board you pick will work with your server. You must know a little about running a bulletin board. I didn't so I got help from Jeanette Cates mailto:cates@techtamers.com , Sally Strackbein mailto:Sally@ConnectionExperts.com and the Content Guru Dan Shafer mailto:dan@shafermedia.com .

Dan has written a killer ebook called "The Online Marketer's Resource Bible. Volume One is about building community and it's great! It will save you tons of time. Dan also reviews many different software options in the book. Contact him mailto:dan@shafermedia.com 

Another book that I found helpful is "Community Building" by Amy Jo Kim.

Here are some other titles I found when searching for reading materials on the subject:

"Online Communities "
by Jenny Preece 

"Hosting Web Communities "
by Cliff Figallo 

"The Virtual Community "
by Howard Rheingold 

"Poor Richard's Building Online Communities" 
by Margaret Levine Young, John R. Levine 

"Online Communities" 
by Chris Werry (Editor), et al 

"Design for Community" 
by Derek M. Powazek 

"Communities of Commerce" 
by Stacey E. Bressler, Charles E. Grantham Sr. 

"Communities in Cyberspace"
by Marc A. Smith (Editor), Peter Kollock (Editor) 

"Net Gain" 
by John Hagel, Arthur G. Armstrong 

"Community Building on the Web : Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities" 
by Amy Jo Kim  (This is the one I have)

COSTS

You can get bulletin boards for free, but you generally have to allow them to advertise to your community. My board cost about $165.00 installed. I spent another $250.00 to make it look like the rest of the  http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com site. I also had to upgrade my server package to handle the board which I think was about another $20.00 per month.

VOLUNTEERS

It's highly recommended that you recruit gung ho volunteers that know what they are doing to help you run your board. If you get big enough you may hire people to help you. 

Volunteers can act as moderators, greeters and facilitators. Plus they will add knowledge to the board which is part of why people visit the board.

CHAT

I'm presently looking into adding live chat so that people on the board can get real time conversations going and network even better.

WILL IT WORK?

From what I've heard you have to work pretty hard to get to a critical mass of users so that the discussion is always lively and there is always new info to peruse. I haven't put too much effort into the board yet, because I'm trying to learn how to run the administration interface before too many people start asking me questions. Too many, too fast could definitely get out of hand. At the time of this writing I have only about 50 registered users and the discussion is picking up. I have no doubt that this board is going to work really well, but without putting full time into it, it will take a little while to get going.