Hello all,

In the near future I will be launching a new company focusing on selling reseller, vps, dedicated and colocation services.

I would just like some informaiton to add to my business plan about hosting a company forum. I have seen many companies who run a forum and it proves an excellent asset, the customers seem to find it very useful to talk to other customers etc.

BUT.... how on earth can you get a fresh install of a forum with all these lovely categories and forums all with 0 posts 0 topics written all over the forum index to turn into a thriving lounge which actually provides your customers with a place to talk where there are others who will reply?

Its something I have never been able to understand, with any forum.

Any feedback on this mystery is welcomed!

Harry

Its just a matter of time.

Do you have enough customers to make use of a forum? If you have thousands of customers then it'll fill pretty quickly.

"In the near future I will be launching a new company focusing on selling reseller, vps, dedicated and colocation services."

I have zero customers :)

Its best to leave the forum until Im fairly established then? Or maybe I can setup a forum for staff use only (only staff can post, just to give service updates etc) and later expand to customer use?

Sorry, I missed that part! :)

Yeah, i'd say its better to wait until you have a good enough client base to fill a forum. I think if people visit your site and see an empty forum it'll affect their decision on using you.

Your idea of starting with your own announcements, promotions, suggestions, FAQs, etc. sounds good to me.

You can start the forums by filling the sections with 'Tech -talk', 'Tutorials', 'Tips', FAQ's, and other general answers to common queries related to reseller, vps, dedicated and colocation services. Running and building a forum is a time consuming task and therefore you can start filling the above categories right away. Once when you feel you have enough posts and clients, you can open the forum to public.

Sounds good to me :)

Thanks for your input

Your best bet is to wait until you have many clients to populate your forums. You wouldn't like to see zero post on all your forums.

Update it and post everyday, also advertising is good and it will take off like a plane.

At the first stage you'll have to post a lot yourself or your techs willl have to do it, and you can start by posting questions and then answers to them, but in this case it'll be much of knowledgebase than a forum, as a forum implies communication, actually forums work well for big companies with lots of active clients.

Hosting it off-site with a network category is great, updating your members if a service goes down. This will give them a reason to bookmark the forum or visit it daily.

Unfortunately the spammers will fill it up with advertising/crap posts for you even if no customers visit........ :mad:

You can reduce outright spam by requiring registration with the initial password sent to an email address; that way, you know the email address is at least real.

After that, you do need to moderate, whether actively (approving each message) or passively (checking in periodically and manually deleting the garbage).

I would purchase some clients from other companies and fill your client base first. Then, maybe setting up a forum might be good.

I agree with your idea in setting up a forum to announce your company news, and provide tutorials there.

Hello all,

In the near future I will be launching a new company focusing on selling reseller, vps, dedicated and colocation services.

Harry