Interactive Content – Blogs, Forums, and Feedback – What Does Your Web Site Need?



Get Internet Marketing News and Info on mps-internet-marketing.com. Interactive Content – Blogs, Forums, and Feedback – What Does Your Web Site Need? topic will increase your understanding on Internet Marketing News and Info. We at mps-internet-marketing.com only provide news, articles, information in Internet Marketing News and Info. Internet Marketing News and Info at mps-internet-marketing.com provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

The business principle of continued contact and online relationship building has given rise to the popularity of online business blogs, forums and feedback opportunities. Interactive online communication define the web site owners as experts in the eyes of visitors, and serve as a promotional vehicle for other products and services that the business seeks to sell. Continued, interactive contact can bring many benefits, such as:

· You'll find out what type of content visitors want to see at your web site. This will attract your visitors to revisit and read the content.

· You'll find out how to improve existing products or services. This will attract new customers to buy from your business.

· You'll find out which products or services your customers would like to see you sell in the future. This will increase your back end product sales.

· You'll find out how to improve your customer service. This will cut down on customer complaints and how to better resolve problems.

· You'll find out how to improve your sales letters or adverts. This will increase your sales, traffic or subscribers.

· You'll find out how to design your web site to fit your visitors’ needs and wants. This will increase the time your visitors spend on your web site.

· You'll find out what kind of non-related products or services your customers would buy. This will help your business easily move into a different market.

· You'll find out how to better price your products. This will help you sell your products or services at a price that will pull the most orders.

· You'll find out the interests of your potential customers. This will inform you where to market and promote your products.

Getting Started
So where do you start? Do you need a blog, a forum, or a feedback form? All have different uses and your selection will depend on the needs of your particular business and your limitation with regard to time and/or budget. Below are some of the options and some ideas for adding interactive and fresh content to your web site.

For more information about how to establish and maintain online relationships with your viewers and customers, get a copy of our guide “Building Online Relationships” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.html

Weblogs or Blogs
A blog is basically a series of posts that appear by the date posted like an online journal. Setup is minimal and the interface is easy to learn- if you can use a word processing package, you can write a blog! Services like Moveable Type and Blogger make it incredibly easy for anyone to publish on the web.

Blogs can be integrated seamlessly into your site so that they have the same look and feel. You can use a blog to publish an events calendar or comment on developments and news from your industry. A blog can be strictly professional, announcing special offers or new product info or it can be casual and create a "personality" for your company.

What can a blog do for your business? Think about what your customers want to know.

To add interactivity, several blog programs come with a "comment" ability built in. This allows general users to create an account and post their comments to your blog. This is something to be careful of as you can get negative comments along with the positive.

Forums
While online forums are popular and the perfect method of relationship building, starting a forum and maintaining one can be challenging, especially in the beginning when members can be few and far between. The challenge for most new forum owners is to get beyond the initial start up phase and move onto a phase where the forum members themselves promote the forum simply by posting.

Forums have become a common feature in many websites. With good free scripts available, and paid scripts being relatively cheap, it seems that every new website has its own forum(s).

But is it wise to add forums to your website?

On the pro side, large, active forums generate content for your website. They add a "sticky" element as most people come back, at least to monitor developments on their threads. Some forum software allows members to opt to receive an email whenever someone replies to their thread. Most people use it and that automated email sends them right back to the forum and therefore, your web site.

However, forums can take a long time to pick up and an empty forum can actually drive new visitors away. You need to constantly monitor your forums to make sure that they are clean of spam, troll posts, and just keep everything in order. In addition, forums are database-type applications that generate web pages on the fly. Every time a user views a page, it's being created from scratch. As the forums become more active, this can take a heavy load on the web server's resources and ultimately increase your hosting costs.

A forum is an incredible tool for building content and a community but it's not a task to be undertaken lightly; it requires a lot of time and energy and some technical knowledge (or a tech budget!)

If your industry has a need, or your product has a loyal following, a forum is a great tool to build content while drawing like-minded individuals together. A forum is great for market research, technical support, building a fan base, trading ideas and knowledge, and many, many other benefits. Try to get a base of people from similar business or industry experts to post at your forum. It's exposure for them and helps to build a solid foundation for your information.

If you decide to start a forum, be sure to use one that is search-friendly, such as www.InvisionBoard.com or www.phpbb.com, and set aside a good chunk of time to promote it and administer it.

Feedback
Unsolicited feedback is a powerful and convincing tool! Let your customers tell other customers why they love you. It's much more compelling than your own claims. Unfortunately, customers normally need to be asked for their opinion. You can ask for feedback on any area of your business, your web site, your ordering process, your levels of customer service, your delivery service, etc.

The easiest way is to simply set up a form to allow customers to submit their feedback. Keep it fairly brief and allow a space for comments. You can then use the information provided to improve your customer experience, and with permission, publish the ones you choose.

Often other web site owners that are also customers of users of your web site can be enticed to write a review or testimonial for your site in return for a link back to theirs. This helps them with link popularity but it helps your site as well it shows a real person wrote that review.

Ask The Expert
This is a great way of not only interacting with potential customers but also establishing your business as an expert in its field. Using a simple question form or forum software, users submit questions and someone at your company answers them. The Q&A are both published on the site for users to read once they are answered in a "knowledge database" or “FAQ” section. This is less time-intensive than a full-blown forum but a great way to keep a finger on the pulse of what customers want to know while still adding content on a regular basis.

Summary
If you are interested in building loyalty and interest in your company as well as repeat business and you want to get increased traffic from the editorial or free listings in search engines, you have to offer more than just sales information to your users. If you create a plan for content that offers value and interest to your customers, you can have a site that is built to sell AND drive repeat business.

For more information about how to establish and maintain online relationships with your viewers and customers, download a copy of our guide “Building Online Relationships” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.html



Rocket Spanish. - Cutting Edge Interactive Audio Course! High searches, check out learn spanish in Overture or Google. High conversions!
AstrologySource. - Professional Astrology Services, Original Content for your site. Put our Astrology Cookbook Search Engine on your site!


Article Index: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54

More Articles:


1. How To Guarantee Your Success In Internet-Marketing By Daegan Smith
1. Belief in the Product To sell a product you have to believe in it. Or at least know it intimately enough to be able to market it properly. If you fail to do this you will not be able to pitch the product convincingly. You must be totally familiar with the details of the product or service. If this is not so, you will not be able to satisfy the curiosity of the potential customer.Avoid over pitching a product. Doing so makes the product seem phony and contrived. Ultimately, the potential cus…

2. Do You Want To Increase Your Website Traffic? You Need Content! By Walter Bowman
Why do people visit your website? Pay per click? Word of Mouth? Lots of advertising? Dumb luck?What ever gets them to it, only one thing will ever make them come back. And that is "Content."What is content? It is information of some type that is of interest to your visitors. They learn something new or see a new slant on something they had heard about or are otherwise entertained. They return, hopefully often, to see what you have new. Keeping content fresh is key. Here are some ways to do j…

3. Don’t Fall Into the Same Trap as Most Affiliate Marketers By Mike Linley
One of the biggest mistakes affiliate marketers make is that they only concentrate on building a short-term business where they just make small sales, one sale at a time. If they stop running their ads their business would cease to exist! The following strategy will allow any affiliate to build a long-term business and make repeat sales to the same customer over and over again. Using this strategy will persuade potential customers that you are an expert in your field and making money will beco…

4. What Good is Viral if It Isn't Residual? By Joseph Pattison
OK, let's assume that you've got an incredible viral marketing campaign. You're receiving tons of visitors, and hopefully many sales through a viral that's making its way across the Internet. But if you're limiting yourself to one-time sales and affiliate commission, you're leaving money on the table. This is where a residual income opportunity comes in.In order for something to be viral, it has to have a high perceived value, and be easy to give away to others right? Also, people must have a …