What do you think about creating a forum on site of hosting company? Forum with questions from your customers, exchanges of opinions, experiences, and also questions from your potential customers.

Do you think such forum is a good or bad idea?

What policy would you have about moderating or not moderating bad opinions about your company and services?

What is the minimal number of customers which company should have to build such forum? (no customers = empty forum)

I am interrested in your opinions how such forum would influence on current and potential customers.

We have one and I think it has been successful for us. We started it from the beginning with only a presales area. As a few members joined we opened up other areas.

I believe our clients are glad that we have it and allthough I believe we get more presales contacts via email, it is helpful in that way also.

Just make up many accounts by yourself and start talking to your self.

I believe many people will think that you are a different person and start signing up.

Originally posted by ozzie123
Just make up many accounts by yourself and start talking to your self.

I believe many people will think that you are a different person and start signing up.

lol... the sad thing is, he's right! :eek:

Originally posted by ozzie123
Just make up many accounts by yourself and start talking to your self.

I believe many people will think that you are a different person and start signing up.

LOL sure:
Wife: "Hunny what did you do today?"
Me: "Sat on the computer and talked to myself"
Wife: " What? Sure i go off to work and you work all day talking to yourself!"
Me: "Lol yeah i guess so"
Wife: "Well then u need a vacation"

See even thinking about it has made me write up something stupid id never think of doing in a million years.

:)

Derrick

LOL, when I started to jump in to internet life, I build up a forum and start talking to my self and resulting in like... 200 post....

:D Member just start coming after that...

I bet it would work. I would consider trying it for a content forum for sports related stuff or business relate, but wouldnt decieve any potential customers of my hosting with that. :) Trust and being honest goes a long way.

Derrick

Its a bad idea, if you have more than a few servers. Unless, of course, you want to spend alot of time moderating it.

I would say it cuts down between 50-75% of our tickets. Glad we ran with the idea from the start :)

What I usualy do is look around if a prospective host (dedicated or not) has a forum and how it is moderated.
For example, do they delete posts that have critisim in it (but this is not a good rule as there tend to be two sides of the story)

See what other people's opinions seem to be.

See if the staff posts and awnsers questions.

See if other users are helpfull too (this shows it's a relatively usefull and happy community)

So yes, a forum might be a good idea

Well... as I said...

Create multiple account and start chatting with your self :D

Originally posted by MN-Robert
I would say it cuts down between 50-75% of our tickets. Glad we ran with the idea from the start :)

Curious...how many customers do you have?

I completely agree with Robert.

We have a busy forum [site :D] and no, we don't spend a lot of time moderating it. Barely any time at all. :)

A busy forum is an amazing sales tool, as people are naturally attracted to other people. Folks see an active forum and are attracted to that activity. A dead forum is a real turn off, IMO. The trick is getting over that hump and then letting momentum keep you going. :)

I think if you do this its important that you as the host do not use it to make announcements. I am on such a forum and announcements are made through the forum instead of through an emailed newsletter like they should be, and it would be easy to miss these announcements.

I wonder how many I have missed?:rolleyes:

Originally posted by Stevio
I think if you do this its important that you as the host do not use it to make announcements. I am on such a forum and announcements are made through the forum instead of through an emailed newsletter like they should be, and it would be easy to miss these announcements.

I wonder how many I have missed?:rolleyes:
I'd disagree with that. Our clients simply subscribe to their server forum, and they are emailed immediently when we open a new thread etc. Our staff can only open new threads in the Server forums. It works rather wonderfully.

Each to his own. :)

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
I'd disagree with that. Our clients simply subscribe to their server forum, and they are emailed immediently when we open a new thread etc. Our staff can only open new threads in the Server forums. It works rather wonderfully. Yeah that would work, but that is essentially what I said as well in a way.

When there is an announcement, the clients are emailed. The difference is that your clients are told, in the email, to go to the forum to read the annoucement. We don't get an email when there is an announcement, we just have to hope we notice when we check the forum.

Yep, I agree that an email needs to go out for such announcements. Can't expect clients to be hovering over the announcement forums etc. They have better things to do. :)

Originally posted by Stevio
I think if you do this its important that you as the host do not use it to make announcements. I am on such a forum and announcements are made through the forum instead of through an emailed newsletter like they should be, and it would be easy to miss these announcements.

I wonder how many I have missed?:rolleyes:

We also place them in a client area. If they are subscrubed to the email listing they also receive it.

Hello :)

This is an apt topic for us right now... We tried a forum about 10 months ago and it just didn't take off at all. Reason being that back then a lot of our client base was local businesses and as such they really weren't into using a forum at all.

Now that we have a broader client base, I would hope it'd take off better and we could then add extra sections for discussions etc.

The biggest problem we've had with getting one going is that our clients (when quizzed) seem very happy with existing support methods (which is a bittersweet thing ;) ) and don't see the need for a forum.

When I read the comments about Announcements, I had to laugh as we've been considering opening a forum again except, this time mainly used for announcements. With the hope that folk would get used to visiting it and getting the feel for it and eventually posting.

Yet I read so many times here that many people like to be able to see one on a site and as Aussie Bob has said, it is a great advertising tool - one that I'd really like to take advantage of.

I guess there is much planning and scheming to do if we are to make it work! :D

Anyhow, my hat off to all who have made such a success of their forums! :agree:

This is true, an active forum can be a great marketing tool but a dead forum may also be a poor representation.

Alot of my clients I met through local events/networking and they don't really even bother with the control panel, much less participating in the forums. Really depends on your clientele.

We started one with our old site but no-one really used it they just emailed, so make sure you have enough customers to use it, because an empty forum can be offputting to potential clients.

Have any of you tried specials/rewards/prizes/etc to entice customers/potentials to use your forum? If you start to base certain special aspects around your forums, especially if they are only broadcasted through your forums... your base should increase. Adding a reward/special/prize/whatever to that would also help.

Grab a few of your friends and get them to signup and help keep the general forums going with chit chat if you have a general forum. Hopefully then a few stragglers will stumble in and drop a post here and there and liven up the place even more.

For you value added service type hosts, what about posting up tutorials or articles in your forums for your clients, and then also special ones on how to get started in this business or gain more out of your hosting or whatever for the potentials. Possibly marketing technique articles, reccomendations on software, setups, etc. And then your basic support tutorials.

Offer some sort of value or reason and they will flock :)

Yes, thats what we started offering back in 2001 :)

To the original poster...if you search around the forums you will find MANY threads on this very subject. Some seem to be successful with one while others are not.
It just seems to be whatever works for you!
;)

Originally posted by MN-Robert
I would say it cuts down between 50-75% of our tickets. Glad we ran with the idea from the start :)

How do you know this when you have had forums from the start? ;)

i just thought offer free hosting services at your forum, and put some time on it, within 2 months you can build a good looking forum. should have more than 3 thousand posts.

then after that, stop the free hosting services, and keep your forum going.

or you can spend money to buy a forum's database, it's just a money matter :D

the only down side is when you have a forum and your clients rather read it than post in it , pre sales clients tend to think if you only have a few members signed up for the forum thats all the clients you have if you dont have many clients you must be bad .this is some ppls thought process

We always planned to have a forum because if they're fairly busy they offer some really strong advantages:

1. People get to help each other out (how do I install this script etc.) which lowers the amount of incoming requests at our official support channel.

2. It lets clients get to know you personally - it really takes the "faceless company" image away. We're all human and have a life outside of setting up servers etc. it's nice to convey this :)

3. People who contribute suggestions on the forum really have a feeling of ownership in the company, which could well be my favourite advantage.

The downsides have already been documented and discussed, the main disadvantage I can think of is if you have a dead forum, it does look bad.

We waited until we had x amount of clients then e-mailed them all at once :) - it went from there really. Our forums are only 4 months old and post number 3,000 ticked by yesterday :)

Kevin

heh heh, i have got 4,800+ in my forum within 2 mths.
i myself posted 1,100, i was really hard working. :D