Viral Marketing and Forum Health
If you've been around the world of online communities for any amount of time, then most likely you heard the term viral marketing.
This single element of a community may be the biggest money maker, marketing tool, and growth factor for any type of forum. Viral marketing can overcome any marketing effort that has not ever used or considered using. Best of all, many times no cost.
To take advantage of this aspect of your community you need two things: a clear idea of what is viral marketing, and an understanding of Forum how health affects their ability to use this tool.
What is Viral Marketing?
Before we can begin to discuss how the health of your forum affects their ability to capitalize on the viral aspects of the community, we must first look at viral marketing itself.
If you are not familiar with the concept that can be summarized as follows: In an online community around any group of interest, product or service, you are most likely members know others who are interested in the same. If you use this membership base to promote something, you can be your greatest selling tool.
Imagine that you currently have 1,000 members, and after having declared his desire to grow your forums, each member refers a new member to your site. Suddenly you have 2,000 members. With her first success decide to run a contest to promote the idea. This time you have 2000 members to work with, and again each one again refers a new member. He now has 4,000 members to work. If you ran a new contest, with the same result, then it would grow its membership base to 8,000.
This is obviously a very simplistic view, but the concept is very clear, viral marketing is using its membership base as a marketing tool to grow their forums, and ultimately growing your bottom line. As a member of its growing base gives you even more members who will work for you, and this type of marketing can grow exponentially if he gets to work for you!
A Forum is healthy Viral
With an idea of what viral marketing is probably wondering how you can take advantage of this powerful tool.
Here is the big secret: All you need is a healthy forum, with a base of active members. The viral aspect is often initiated all by itself. You can always run contests, offer discounts for referrals, or make other ideas to promote viral marketing within their community, but the most important element is an active, healthy community.
If you took the time to look at various forums around the web, the forums will most active share some common features.
1. Administrators and moderators are active in the community.
2. Administrators look to the community for entry into the improvement and expansion of the site.
3. Topics not go unanswered.
4. Problems are resolved quickly.
5. Members are encouraged to help others and to participate actively.
With these five points at the end has members who also share some common features.
1. First, feel valued, because your opinion is important for site owners / managers. This leads to a sense of ownership on the site.
2. Then, as they are encouraged to participate, often leading to a sense of pride in participating in their forums.
3. Finally they know that their questions be answered, and problems rarely occur, so they have a place to come to share their passion / interest on the subject.
When you have these three elements, you end up with a membership base that often works for you. Enjoy your site, and have a sense of pride and belonging, so why not help your promotion.
As a forum administrator should always monitor your health forums, using tools such as BoardsMD (http://www.boardsmd.com), and must be in active participation. By putting your focus on your forums that you are taking the first step in going viral!
About the Author
Trevas Walker is a freelance writer, with previous experience in community building, who often works with forum-related sites. Currently he is working to help promote
BoardsMD – the web’s only forum ranking system.
180 Health And Wellness Forum