Repurposing a discussion forum for lead generation
 

A small company I've done some web work for decided he wanted a forum. From my experience with my own, unless you have a number of members who are willing to post... most people interact with you on social media these days.

I was talking to him (Steven Omene -- not sure that's spelled right) yesterday. He said he finds the forum quite valuable. He's the only person posting to it, but he he uses it as kind of a billboard/timeline for sharing bits and pieces of information that couldn't be used for an article. Here is an example of a post to Twitter:



He runs a commercial cleaning company, but as he told me, people don't get real excited about cleaning topics. I can see that. When we have friends over, we don't sit around and talk about mopping the floor. Maybe if we had more beer....

He claims that by posting one tweet to Twitter about a series of posts on the forum about tax reforms, brought him in 200 new visitors over a 12 hour period and one new cleaning contract. I thought that might be just coincidence, but I don't really know....

Maybe it's a good idea... maybe some of you can benefit from doing something similar. It's a thought.

He hasn't been at this long, but if you want to see it for yourselves you can see his forum here: https://purifyofficecleaningedmonton.com/community/

Anyone else trying something like this?

Regards
Steve

Re: Repurposing a discussion forum for lead generation
 

Steve,

If I read his numbers correctly, he has 212 members. For his particular topic that seems like a huge success. Yes, he posts relevant information but, my gosh, a cleaning topics forum. Congrats to him and thanks to you for sharing.

forum versus social media
 

I was a moderator for a large group for several months and it was a real P-A-I-N...I stopped doing it.

In forums or even WordPress Blogs you have an archive of the info posted that becomes a knowledge base which is searchable.

In Facebook groups one keeps answering the same questions over and over and over again...year after year...there is no way to have a knowledge base.

Using Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest to feed any of the above is simply just good marketing...especially when the forum or blog is a display case for your products, or when trying to establish oneself as an authoritative figure.

Want to become the go to guy...join a group that interests you and get active for a few months answering questions...if you don't have an answer google it and then answer...usually the people asking are too lazy to do their own research. Two benefits to this....you will get to be the go to guy and as a bonus having done this you will most likely have sufficient info and knowledge to create your own product...or...for hotsheets the 30 answers critical to XXXX, or the 20 secrets to XXXX....you will know exactly what people are looking for and want.

Re: forum versus social media
 

Cornell,

You have just exposed the secret to success. Damn, now everybody knows.

I couldn't agree with you more about people being too lazy to do their own research. What grabs me by the short hairs is how prevalent this is among our so called college students. (I live in a college town and interact w/these wanna be future leaders.)

I guess that's why the 80/20 rule will never disappear. And that's no matter the type of guvmint structure we have. Anyway, just my thoughts...

Thank you
 

Thanks for your messages. I'll pass your suggestions on to him — I expect I'll be talking to him this week. It will be interesting to see, later on, if this turn out to be a good idea for a forum.

Regards,
Steve