Hidden Power of Online Forums As A Marketing Tool

I was at the Opsource SaaS Summit today and sat in on a preso from the Lithium SVP, Amy Lewis, who talked about the value of online forums to companies. Some of the key points were as follows.

Why have an online forum:

• Forum-ize your product line as part of your Web 2.0 marketing
  
• Forums can be used for customer support as well as for marketing
• Building a forum allows you to identify who your super users and because they are passionate, they represent a critical user group, a tribal base that are influencers.
• Consumer groundswell can be positive or negative which a forum can help manage. As a vendor, a forum allows you to be involved and make it a two-way dialogue and manage conversations happening on the blogosphere otherwise outside of your control.
• Communities can provide a powerful real-time vehicle:
• enhancing customer care
• enhancing brand loyalty
• providing support provided by users to users
• content is raw and unfiltered
• immediacy of great info
• value of having users talk to each other eg. customers share workarounds
• foster demand generation
• can serve as an online focus group eg. an setup private communities to help with product design
• value of happy comments being viewed by many users has a nice halo effect for branding
• professionalism and tone of forums have improved. Forum moderator should respond where appropriate and establish rules of conduct.
  
• ROI on support forums is a great place to start eg. call deflection
• suppport forum helps to build up critical mass
• lot to learn from customers