Base One Beliefs #5: I would like to believe that forums will be recognised as effective instead of unfashionable

This piece complements a post I wrote about a month ago, where I explained the reasons why forums are a frequently neglected but highly effective part of the social media toolkit for marketers.

Online communities as we have already established are a great way of building conversation and attaining engagement, however, it's important to adopt key tactics especially when joining a forum as a B2B Marketer. I was fortunate enough to be taught from a person who has been on the social media scene since it's pretty much started and is now heading up the social media division at Brands2Life.

Let's start shall we? Here are a few factors I take into consideration when approaching a forum:

• It is important to have a set of brand guidelines that will tell us who the target audience are. That way you'll be able to sign up to forums that are relevant to the brand's category. This should also apply to other social media platforms such as Twitter.

• I have found the most important factor to consider in all of this is the TONE. The tone that is adopted within the forum will not only be representing your brand but it  will also allow other community members to relate to what is being talked about within a thread. The tone is easily identifiable via monitoring conversations within the forum before signing up; it is important to watch & learn.
  *Note that if you are representing a brand it is important to sign up as the brand's name so that other community members can trust who they are speaking to.

• Once comfortable with the tone that will be used, the first post made should always be an introductory post. It is important to create a presence and become recognised. Ensure to state that you have 'joined the forum as a means of.... and are representing the brand.'   
  

• Become conversational by talking to other community members who have topics that are relevant to your brand. Continue to build the community's trust for 2-4 weeks before you decide to start up your own thread and get conversing about the brand. 

• Forums are great means of driving traffic and one can do this by adding a signature that will link to the brand's website (again, only once you have become established) so that one doesn't  necessarily need to keep talking about the brand as that could be deemed as spam.   
  

• Lastly, have fun. Going into a forum is a little bit like going to a party. You join a crowd of people by firstly engaging with on-going conversation. What you will not do is join a crowd of people and completely change the topic because that would be plain rude.

I hope that this blog post has helped answer why forums are just as effective and how they can be better used to our advantage. I would strongly recommend forums as a suitable social media platform and another way of maximising a brand's exposure/awareness.