Free Web Forum
Forums - Useful or Useless?
By Brenda Williams 
In the world of Internet Marketing, business and advertising, forums are a dream come true. Forums provide an open line of communication for consumers to offer feedback on products and services offered by companies. They also provide open channels of communication from consumer to consumer or person to person about issues that may not even be related to the business world. For example, if you wanted to start a forum discussion about getting married, you could do it. For most businesses, forums are a great tool for improving the quality of what they do. If a person writes a comment on a forum discussion for a paper clip company, for example, that says they want to see more big paper clips, then this might spark some sort of reaction in other people who are visiting the forum. Then, if you had a significant number of people voice their concerns over having jumbo paper clips, then the company might see it and do something about it like make jumbo paper clips.
Forums are great because they provide helpful feedback to various companies. In this day and age, it would almost be unwise to not have some sort of forum. Starbucks, for example, saw the value in having customer feedback and actually started it's own, separate web site specifically for customers to voice their opinions and concerns. One concern that one person had, for example, was having some sort of spoon or device that you could mix drinks with without having the drink splash back on you. As it turns out, sever thousand other people totally agreed with this one guy, and as a result, Starbucks just came out with a new splash-resistant lid with a reusable splash spoon thingy. Pretty genius idea, right? Some people might argue that forums are a cheap way for businesses to come up with new, ingenious ideas without having to do all of the leg work (because the consumers are essentially doing it for you). However, there is not a whole bunch of truth behind this thought process.
It would be unwise for any business to not have some sort of way in which consumers/customers could provide feedback though. I mean, think about it. How would you know whether or not your company is doing well? Sure, your lack of sales might tell you that you're NOT doing well, but it wouldn't tell you why. At least with forums, you can find out from consumers what exactly is wrong with your product as well as some helpful or insightful things that you can do to make it better. Your feelings might get hurt if someone tells you that your product sucks; but at least, they're being honest and hopefully, they'll provide an explanation as to why they feel that way as well as what you can do to fix the problem. Forums are a definite must for any business. Other ideas for ways in which to garner customer feedback is to create blogs or other avenues in which consumers can voice their opinions and help you out.
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