If there is one big benefit social networks brought to forums, it was probably traffic, but a close second, and certainly the most important business change, has to be the breakdown of business perception and removal of the stigma around community and engagement. Forums are perhaps the oldest online format for building community, but with the advent of the mass networks, brands are just now starting to understand that marketing engagement is better than banners and affiliate links alone. Thus, we have seen the rise of integrated programs.
Integrations have had their own stigma with forum owners and users: fear from having to fill the community with spam or bend the rules to get the business on board. Indeed, brands are worried about forums spiraling away from them. Some see a medium where they have no control and push for more than would normally be allowed. But, that doesn’t mean the forum has to bend. In fact, the best thing a forum owner can do is help a business thrive within the confines of the community environment.
Almost all forums are rooted around an activity or interest which has products and/or services that are already a point of discussion. Bringing a brand into a forum is about finding a way for that brand to add genuine value to the existing dialogue and, when done right, it is the best way to truly drive value to the business in both profit and engagement.
Whether it’s having a brand representative on site to answer questions about the latest product, help with a service issue or provide samples to interested members, as you will see in the next few pages, a campaign can maintain the right barriers while being useful to the entire audience.
In this section, we’ll be covering some of the more popular and relatable examples of sponsored brand placement which will help to give you an understanding of how it can work, enabling you to partner with brands to build custom solutions that both work for your community and deliver value to everyone involved.
While many forums already have areas related to products or services, these are generally kept strictly non-commercial and for good reason. But, many questions asked are about commercial decisions: what does XYZ offer, how much will it really cost, who sells it and so on. The questions are already there, but the format to let the brand respond in an acceptable way is often not.
While you can create a framework to allow companies to safely answer questions about their products, you may have an opportunity to integrate them more deeply by creating a specific area on your forums within which a brand can host a dialogue on the questions users actually have, ask for feedback and perhaps share interesting updates, as opposed to just broadcasting press releases or details on the latest sale. Knowing the brand will respond and allowing the brand to know that they can respond, not to sell, but to educate, is a win-win.
For some communities, it can be such a win-win and a value add that it may not make sense to charge for it, because brand representation adds value to your community and can keep members coming back. That said, depending on the level of integration and sponsorship tied to the section, your feelings may vary. The value that a brand can derive from the interaction, the access to your audience and the ability to remain at the top of their minds certainly has monetary worth.
In other words, they’ll certainly be making money from it, so it makes sense for you to charge for this sort of deep integration.
Think of branded forums as your entry level engagement program. Every advertising campaign will benefit from one and having one makes advertising work that much better. Since you’re talking about conversation, this shouldn’t be a month to month arrangement. You’ll want to set a pricing structure that encourages a long term commitment through a discount or by offering the service in 6 or 12 month options.
On the topic of brand representation, just like premium memberships on a forum, you may be able to offer brands a special professional membership, where they pay a monthly, quarterly or perhaps yearly fee to have an account designated in a certain way.
You could give them a special badge indicating that they are a verified or professional account. They could also be offered enhanced abilities on the community, like more private message space, an advertisement in a dedicated area of the forums, a spot on the list of verified or professional accounts, deeper analytics on the forum to do with mentions of their brand or other keywords and any other reasonable benefits that you can think of.
Participants receive greater exposure and the benefit that comes with publicly stating that they support the community. But, they also should respect the guidelines of the community and any specific instructions that you have given them. If they don’t, you should make it clear that a pro-rated refund will be offered.
For some communities, the benefit of having official representatives, and marking their accounts as verified, may outweigh any potential income that may come from charging for it. Members like to interact with company representatives and receive answers to their questions. Even so, you could offer two separate programs: one for verified accounts and official representatives, which is free, and one for professional supporters, who pay to support the community and are clearly recognized as such.
You can also offer additional benefits, as you might do through a premium or supporter membership program. We’ll discuss these benefits in greater detail in the Premium Memberships chapter of this book.
When a brand has a new product, they want to spread the word about it. If they are doing it the right way, these are through honest efforts that aim to drive initial conversation from influencers and seriously involved participants, like those in a forum. But, one of the chief difficulties that they face is they often must wait for enough people to buy the product on their own before they begin to see any discussion about it. Consequently, a new launch tends to be more questions than answers on the forums.
By developing an in-advance or at time of launch seeding program, brands and community administrators can work together to invite the community at large to review the product with members briefly applying for the opportunity to try the product at length and write a review in a specified area.
Screening is done to ensure those that receive a sample are active members, as opposed to those just signing up for a freebie. They don’t have to be advocates. In fact, it’s often better for the brand if they have some negative impression going into the review, as a positive from them will be even more valuable. While the product is free to the participant and is always disclosed as such in any comments they make, the opinions remain entirely that of the member. Honesty must be encouraged at all times.
By scaling the program up to dozens of members, or even hundreds based on the value of the product, any minor biases for or against the brand are removed, as is the “but it was free” perception. What the community gets is immediate insight into a new item or service while also knowing that they’re valued to businesses in the field and seen as influential. It improves the member experience and their perception of the community and potentially saves people a few dollars.
It is important to note that, for both ethical reasons and to comply with truth in advertising rules, discounted or free product reviews should always include a disclosure of the relationship. Part of your management of such a program should be to make sure that this happens.
There are always two elements to a product review program that benefit the brand: promoting the opportunity and the exposure of the reviews. While more products does mean more users get a direct benefit, consider charging brands based on the size of the sample, as that’s where you’ll find the exposure increase, in addition to the time it takes for you to help select members and moderate the process.
Though these sorts of programs are often designed for a specific product and moment in time, you can bundle multiple instances together for brands looking to promote multiple products or lines of products over the course of a year. This is also a prime opportunity to suggest a larger media play as brands will want to maximize the attention gained from the program.
Companies spend billions on research to find someone “like” their customer while forums already have the actual customer that they can engage with. The opportunities for learning are huge.
Research programs can vary widely from on-site Q&A to real-world events, but it almost always starts with an open invitation from the brand, soliciting a response. The goal of course is to find willing participants (again, this isn’t openly polling members on the forums) as well as to show the community how important their feedback is to the brand. A handful of participants are selected and invited to respond to a new product, service or just to talk about the brand’s existing perceptions and opportunities.
In keeping with the spirit of a community, research encourages the group approach, giving people a chance to discuss not with the brand but with each other, to see how their comments impact and change perception within a small circle.
Compensation to participants is common but not always required. The more progressive the company, the more open the program tends to be and, at times, less about lengthy research and more about letting a clearly recognized brand manager into the right area to ask questions and solicit a wide variety of responses. If the brand comes back after the fact to show the impact of the comments, it makes things that much stronger for the next round.
Research sits at the top of the funnel as there’s no visible community involvement and the requirement on each member can be time consuming. As such, you’ll want to design your program to cover the exposure associated in recruiting for the research, moderating the forum and/or questionnaire and of course the access to your member base. Advertising will not have as much of an impact on this sort of program, but, after the results are in, it’s generally an easy upsell as it becomes clear just how much influence your community brings to the brand.
Creative brand integrations move beyond traditional ads to offer more customized experiences that allow companies to interact with your member base in a way that is respectful and, hopefully, provides value to all parties.
The goal of any successful brand integration is sticking to your guns and not selling the forum short with any sort of “you pay, you play” methodology while still allowing the brand the chance to engage in an acceptable way.
By making the entire process transparent, you help to ensure a campaign that respects the integrity of your community. It’s very plain: this is the brand, this is the brand area, this is an invitation for an honest opinion – not a paid positive – and, consequently, the program provides value back to the community as well.