The benefits of creating a Forum/Discussion Board (It's FREE)

To have your own forum or discussion board means to run the forum on your own. If you happened to be a forum user, you will notice that there are moderators and administrators that manage the forum. As a warm startup to introducing this method of marketing to you, let me briefly talk about the roles of moderators and administrators.

Moderators- there is at least one moderator being assigned the job of looking after the content of the forum. Usually every subforum has at least one moderator who keep an eye on the discussion among forum members so that the posts that members write do not breach the rules of the forum website. However, the extent to which moderators in the forum is subject to the policy of the administrators.

Administrator - this may be the creator of the forum himself. The forum creator is free to appoint other administrators to co-run the forum website with him. Of course, administrators may also be moderators, but this is up to the main administrator/creator. Administrators focus on the running of the whole site, rather than the moderating the content of the forums like what a moderator does. One of the administration works include managing members.

So now let's talk about a forum can help you improve your web traffic. having your own forum means having direct access to your website visitors. This allows your visitors or customers to make enquiries through the forum, thus making your website more user friendly. Besides that, you could also reach more people when you have an interactive forum. Potential visitors/customers could reach your site more easily if you have a forum that provides online users information about the area of your specialization. Through direct communication with internet users, they are more likely to have confidence on your products or services that you would later sell to them. A forum also help you to retain your customers or visitors as you can use it to announce your latest activities or products/services. In other words, it is a great advertising tool.

To create your own forum is quite easy if you are willing to go through the work of setting up the forum and later, to run it. It would be a long-term work in fact. But if you can see its benefits and want to try this method, you can always do it for free. There are many free forum hosts out there. The following list is a compilation of some of them:

1) Forummotion
2) Lefora
3) Forumer
4) ProBoards

Have a nice weekend.