They may not be talked about much, but forums are a driving force in true social media success. Social Media Explorer has experienced the prevalence of forums first hand. When we begin working with a client we create a Conversation Report, which uncovers research on where online conversations are happening around their brand, competitors and industry. More often than not, we find the majority of conversations are happening in forums. In fact, the publicly available Social Media Explorer Conversation Report, “What Consumers are Saying About Banking” showed that 90% of conversations about banking and banking products happen on FORUMS and less than 1% happen on social networks. It’s funny. Despite how much forums dominate the share of conversation for brands, rarely, will you find someone talking about their “sexy” forum strategy. That’s probably because forums are viewed as “old-school” and less relevant. I’m not scared to admit it. We create some truly stellar forum strategies and they can be immensely powerful in driving relevant conversation with the right target market.
Most businesses don’t have tens of thousands of Facebook fans. Most don’t have hundreds of thousands of website visitors. So it’s easy for the social media expert in your neighborhood to follow the hippie’s and tree-hugger’s version of social media and say Facebook advertising and promotions are bad.
In the end, though, it’s all a numbers game. The more fans you have, the more potential click throughs you can get on a Sponsored Post. The more your audience is incented to share a coupon or a deal with their networks, the more conversions you’ll see. The more numbers, the less inclination you’ll have toward the purist’s way of thinking.
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