Earlier this week, I attended ForumCon in Chicago.
Unlike so many social media events that focus on services like Twitter and Facebook while leaving out the tried-and-true forum, this event embraced the forum. It was great to see 100+ people gathered together to talk about enthusiast communities. Yes, the forum is alive and well.
The speakers were terrific. I learned a lot and met some great people.
Here are some of the key things I picked up:
Forums are here to stay
Forums are still the best way for people that share an interest to come together and interact online. As such, forums are going to be around for a long time. Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, who specializes in social media investing, said forums have a “long, bright future.”
Passion is the currency of forums
Marketers want to advertise in forums because of the passion of forum participants. J.J. McCarthy, who runs the eBay affiliate program, said the power of forums is their authenticity, and that’s what makes them valuable to advertisers.
Each user is different
Some people in forums are power users. Others just stumbled into the forum via a Google search. Tailor the user experience to different types of users based on how they got to your forum and what they’re looking for. As Dan Gill of Huddler noted, if three people walked into a bar, you wouldn’t hand each of them a Pabst Blue Ribbon. You’d find out what they want and give it to them.
Be careful about what behavior you incentivize
As one speaker noted, when you apply a number to someone’s actions, they can’t help but try to boost that number. Just make sure you focus on the right number. It’s never a good idea to create incentives for users to simply post messages. But it can be a good idea to create incentives for users to post messages that elicit a response.
Don’t fear Facebook and Twitter
During the closing panel on the future of forums, the question of whether forums are being hurt by newer forms of social media came up. Yuriy Rusko of phpBB had an interesting take on this. He said that, yes, Facebook and Twitter have taken traffic from traditional forums. But he says it was traffic that forums never had a legitimate claim to. That is, for catching up with old high school pals or sharing family news, Facebook is better than forums. But forums are still better than Facebook and Twitter when it comes to connecting people with a shared passion.
Congratulations to the folks at VigLink for putting on a great conference.