Blogs are probably the most well-known and popular of social media. However, discussion boards can’t be far behind. (Regarding the headline, yes, I know there are different types of social media.)
Discussion boards are good for getting the pulse of a subject or industry, surveying and getting direct feedback from members, and interacting with members in other ways.
Some boards, by gollly, even have forums to post news releases. It can’t get much easier than that! But, few do offer that blatant of an PR opportunity.
Like in blogging and other forms of interaction, focus on building relationships, being active, involved and contributing, and helping — not overtly pitching.
I’ve been involved in a few boards of late, and listed them below. I also found many more just by doing a search for “discussion boards.”
Homebrewing. Gosh, there are three that I found: BrewBoard, RealBeer and HomeBrewTalk.
Plastics: Injection Molding Magazine’s Network Forum
Community forums like Toledo, Ohio’s ToledoTalk, and one by the “Honolulu Advertiser” newpaper.
If you want to reach the narrow-minded, bigoted white pride people demographic, then register at the Stormfront White Nationalist Community.
If you looking to reach a literary audience, there’s the African-American Literature and Book Club board.
What about those interested in Pregnancy & Parenting? Or, a broad range of online communities?
For the utility industry, there’s TheMeterGuy (see the Tailboard link).
Of course, there are many automotive-related boards and chat rooms.
If the video gaming market or demographic is your target, check out the Neoseeker Forums.
And, finally, we can’t forget about the violin demographic.
As you can see, there is a discussion board for nearly every interest, topic and subject. When using social media for your company or clients, there’s an entire universe of discussion boards. If you don’t find yours, start one.
– Mike
Technorati tags: discussion boards, social media
Mike … great post. Discussion boards or bulletin boards are often overlooked but they have a lot of advantages over blogs, especially in terms of dialog.
Mike, do you or your readers know any good jokes about blogging? I am making a humorous Toastmaster speech next week on this subject and could do with a few ideas.
I believe that message boards are more important than blogs when it comes to public relations issues. I’ve seen automotive message boards with more than 20,000 or 30,000 registered members and thousands of discussion threads. Some discussions go on for months, have hundreds of posts and sometimes have been viewed more than 100,000 times. Are there any blogs with numbers like that?
Potential car buyers often go to these boards to find out if there are any issues with the vehicle that they are interested in and they often base their purchase decision on the information they find there. The comments made by people who already own the vehicle have a much greater influence on a purchase decision than any advertisement or car review found in traditional media or on blogs.
Any company is well advised to monitor these boards closely, since one can find valuable information there, such as praise and complaints about products and customer service, product improvement suggestions, etc.
Other great points
(UPDATED approx. 9:30 a.m. with a Shake Well Before Use post at the bottom.) For your humor, thinking and just surfin’ pleasure, I offer the following for your consideration: Yom Kippur: A Post of Atonement, Gary Goldhammer/Below the Fold (Gary…