Creating online forums is a great way to build supportive communities around your business. These forums help attract new customers and keep existing ones by giving users a place to connect and share their thoughts about your brand.
Investing in an online forum can ultimately boost your business's revenue and strengthen customer loyalty. However, creating a forum website and managing a successful online community takes more than just setting it up.
One of the key factors to a thriving community is choosing the right platform. Our comparison of online community platforms is a good place to start as you develop your forum.
In this blog post, we’ll look at the many benefits of creating an online community forum for your customer support, product feedback and marketing efforts. We’ll also explore different types of platforms you can use to set up your forum and highlight the key features to consider when making your choice.
Here are some useful tips on how to create a forum website that brings users together. For the bigger picture, read our playbook for growing an online community.
An Online community forum or message board provides a place for your site visitors to engage with people worldwide about your product. They start conversations, ask questions, share their interests, solve problems, provide feedback, and more. For example, some users might use your forum community for posing questions or discussing common interests in your industry, while others seek advice or support about your product.
Online community forums can range from simple discussion boards to more complex websites that include user profiles, private messaging, a knowledge base, multimedia-sharing options, gamification, and more.
These features can offer your business many benefits. Let's look at them in more detail.
Online community forums help customer success and support teams in three ways:
Since forums can save all the content that community members post, they create a user-generated knowledge base that customers use to find solutions to common issues. This means they won't need to contact your support team, which cuts the number of tickets your agents receive and frees them to focus on more complex issues.
A report from Forrester suggests that self-service solutions, including online community forums, play a vital role in helping brands scale onboarding processes effectively. Online community forums help get new customers up and running.
Online community forums provide 24/7 access to a library of information like Q&A sessions, video tutorials, or other forms of user-generated content that helps educates customers throughout the onboarding process. This means customers won't rely on email support or lengthy calls and can complete onboarding tasks at their own pace.
Online community forums enable success and support teams to gather valuable insights of all your community members by reading through the discussions other members post. This helps them understand the issues customers face, identify trends, pain points, and areas of improvement. Armed with this information, they can take a proactive approach to customer success by addressing these concerns in educational materials and constantly updating them.
As product teams strive to create products that customers love, they know listening to feedback is key. Here's how community forums give your customers a way to voice their opinions:
Online community forums encourage users to share their product experiences. They do this by getting involved in Q&As, upvoting and downvoting ideas, and more. This gives product teams a steady stream of feedback and feature requests to prioritize their projects with. They spend time and resources only on the features customers need and use, and they know which requests to say “no” to.
Product teams can create exclusive spaces in their forum to allow a select group of users to discuss beta features. This irons out any kinks by finding bugs or missing pieces before launching the product publicly.
Online community forums also provide the opportunity to identify these super users by analyzing forum members activities. This helps the product team give beta access to a more diverse set of users, so the feedback is authentic because the beta testers represent your actual target audience.
Product teams can dig deep into your forums analytics to understand the user experience and discover exactly what they need to improve your brand's product education materials. This way, customers can better understand the product, its features, and how to use it effectively to solve their problems.
Marketing teams can significantly boost their brand's presence and connect with audiences through online community forums. Here's how:
Since users seek advice and support while using your forum, if you bring more valuable insights to your visitors than competitors, it can become the go-to trusted source for information and expertise. This cements your reputation and your brand's position as a leader in its industry, and keeps you top of mind with customers.
Since online forums create a hub of user-generated content, they can have a big impact on your website's search engine optimization (SEO). It works like this: when members participate in forums, they generate pages, posts, comments, and more, all of which contain keywords and content that help your site rank higher in the SERPs. Customer community forums also keep visitors on your site longer.
Learn how to implement SEO best practices for community forums
Reading through online community forums allows marketing teams to identify customers who are happy with your product. Then they can ask them to share their experience in a case study, testimonial, or thought leadership piece. This type of content provides valuable social proof for potential customers who are still in the decision-making process.
There are several types of online platforms you can use to launch your community. Let's take a look at three:
If you're looking to start small and want to keep your costs down, building an online community forum on a social media platform may be the right fit. Sophisticated enough to cover the basics, you'll reach a wider audience beyond just your traditional customer base, boost brand awareness, and connect with your current customers.
At the same time, you can promote your products and services, share company news, and offer customer support. This is done with features that let you publish frequent updates, respond to comments, appoint admin and moderators, and more. You can also have limited control over the content your members consume by approving, denying, and removing posts or comments that don't adhere to your community's guidelines.
Choosing the best social media platform for your forum will depend on your target audience and the type of content visitors consume and create. There are various options available, like an open-to-all public forum like Twitter or Reddit, or a private community like Facebook or LinkedIn groups.
There are downsides to creating online communities on social media platforms. You'll have zero control over the platform's algorithms and the content that shows up in your audiences' feeds. This means you'll compete with distracting content, making it harder to capture their attention.
Understanding these limitations will ultimately help you decide what platform is best for your online community.
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Building an online community forum with a messaging app like Discord, Telegram or Slack means you have access to a variety of useful tools, such as creating separate channels or sub-forums for specific discussions, sending out community-wide announcements, and allowing voice and video calls. Having all of these core features available means you'll get your online community forum up and running in no time.
It is worth noting that Discord comes with features that better serve gaming communities. While Slack's features align with working professionals that collaborate regularly. Telegram is known for its high level of security. Its secret chats come with a self-destruct timer that causes messages to disappear after they've been opened for a certain amount of time.
Though powerful, creating an online community with a messaging app comes with limited customization options and integration capabilities.
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Check out the ultimate comparison between the messaging apps Discord vs Slack
Let's take a look at key features of Bettermode's community forum software:
If you'd rather not start from a blank screen, Toggy Build does the first pass. It reads your website and content, then sets up a working Bettermode community on your domain, with spaces and starter posts already in place and your colors throughout. You can change every choice, and Build is free while it's in early access. See Toggy build one for your brand →
Building a thriving online community forum is an excellent way to engage with your customers, gather valuable feedback and provide effective support. By selecting the right platform, you can create a welcoming space where users feel valued and can connect with your brand in meaningful ways.
Bettermode offers a wide range of features that simplify the process of building and managing your ideal online forum, including powerful customization options, analytics tools and gamification elements to keep users engaged. With its user-friendly interface and advanced capabilities, you can easily create a forum that meets the unique needs of your audience.
Ready to see the difference for yourself? Start a 14-day Bettermode trial (no credit card required) and start building your community.
You can start a basic forum at no cost on a social platform, a messaging app, or open-source forum software you host yourself. To build a branded forum and test it before you pay, follow these steps:
The cost to build forum websites depends on the platform and features you choose:
Creating a forum website is not hard, especially with platforms like Bettermode, which offers a range of tools for building and managing online communities. Its user-friendly interface makes it accessible even for those without technical skills.
Users can easily set up their community forum by choosing a theme from various templates, organizing content and establishing community guidelines to encourage user engagement. With options for forum plugins, advanced features and better user management, you can create a space that fosters an active community and promotes meaningful discussions.
An example of a forum website is Bettermode, a platform designed to help both small businesses and larger ones create and manage online communities. It allows users to build community forums, engage community members and foster active communities.