Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Discussion Board Best Practices?

Posted by Anonymous on 7/15/2009 at 1:02 PM ET 125 Points
I work for a small business association, and we're trying new ways to reach out to our customers. We have a LinkedIn group, with 1000+ members, but very little activity on the discussion part of it.

My bosses want me to move away from LinkedIn and create a new discussion board for our members on our site. The thinking would be that if the discussion board is branded on our site and restricted to members only, it would garner more discussion and interaction.

Has anyone had success or failure with this? Anyone have similar issues?

And since we're on a discussion board, what makes this one work? Why is it popular?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 7/15/2009 at 1:11 PM Member
    A few thoughts:

    Your board may be suffering from customer IT department restrictions on discussion groups. Also, what is the purpose of the discussion group? To have customers talk to each other? To roll out (and gather opinions) about new services or how well your association is helping its members?

    Hosting it yourself would associate the great content and interaction directly with your organization. Is there a reason to keep that private? Public discussions might also help drive traffic (and eventually get more members) for your group.

    Jodi
  • Posted on 7/15/2009 at 1:16 PM Author
    The purpose of the discussion group ostensibly to extend our networking and allow members to share best practices and knowledge.

    Part of our brand is the networking and high-level knowledge that is shared between members.

  • Posted by michael on 7/15/2009 at 1:46 PM Member
    Well, the first time I responded on MarketingProfs I was excited to get my question "accepted". So maybe it's a reward system you need...like best poster gets free link on the website for a month.

    Have you looked around LinkedIn? Lots of discussion boards have no activity. What if you developed a sister city-type relationship with a similar assn in another country?

    Michael
  • Posted by melissa.paulik on 7/15/2009 at 2:44 PM Accepted
    I agree with Michael, there's a "carrot" held out for answering questions on this forum. Assigning points for questions answered could work well for yours too.

    I don't know that I'd spend time moving my discussion board off of LinkedIn and over to a branded board. I think the issue is the formula for getting members to participate, not the medium itself.

    LI boards can be members only. You just have to not approve anyone who doesn't fit the member criteria.

    In addition to rewarding points, you probably need to juice the conversation with some questions - if you aren't already.

    Don't make the questions self-serving e.g. "What do you like best about our new product?" Ask something more provocative.

    Also, you want to avoid lumping all of your members into one category. If you have very technical members as well as those who couldn't care less about the bits and bytes, it might help to put them into two groups.

    The most successful discussion group I belong to on LI is Doyle Slayton's Salesbogcast.com. If you reach out to that group, they could probably share some great insights into what makes that board tick.

    All the best!

    Melissa
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 7/16/2009 at 8:44 AM Member
    One of the problems you may be facing is that some of your members may be competitors, and sharing information would be a liability to their business.

    Why not provide a forum for people to ask for help and have others chip in (information, time, clientele, etc.). For example, "Our customers tend to be women 30-40 years old and we'd like to also have more women 40-50 years old visit our store." A smart member (who doesn't have a competing business) might do well to co-market with questioner to "share" their 40-50 year-old women clients.
  • Posted on 7/16/2009 at 3:25 PM Author
    These are great. Thanks very much for your input! You've given me a lot to take back to my bosses.
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