An Opensource Hybrid Forum + Wiki

If you want to connect with your clients, few things are more important than community involvement. Participating in an online forum will demonstrate your knowledge of your industry, build trusting relationships, and help to promote your product or service. Business owners who spend time in dynamic forums, investigating forum software, and building an online presence build businesses that last.

Connecting With Your Audience
Becoming an important part of an online community is so easy that most people can’t accomplish this task. As with most things in life, the best way to communicate with people who belong to any forum is to be honest, straightforward, and command respect. These things can be accomplished by obtaining excellent moderation skills, learning how to be patient, and caring about your customers.

Nothing angers a potential customer more than a business owner who doesn’t take the time to effectively communicate. Your customers don’t want to be paid simple “lip service.” Instead, clients want to interact with you through dynamic forums that allow both parties to contribute to an active conversation. When you join an online forum, make sure to keep your clients’ best interests in mind.

Dynamic Forums Require Positive People Skills
One of the hardest things to learn is compromise. When you decide to join a forum, realize that you may have to compromise once in awhile. While persistence is a positive attribute, you must be willing to analyze every situation from a business perspective. If a client asks you for something that you don’t normally do, think about whether or not you could accomplish a certain task.

More often than not, small client requests can be easily accommodated. Automatically saying “no” to any request may cause a client to label you “close-minded,” and this isn’t a label that you want to have. It’s also important to remember to keep things light while you take part in any forum.

Humor Your Clients
When entering into any kind of debate or discussion, it’s easy to become passionate. However, allowing your passion for your industry to get in the way of client relations is not a good idea. During any discussion, try to keep things light by adding a touch of humor to your forum posts.

While you don’t have to be the next great comic, you should make an effort to keep thoughts and opinions neutral. Lastly, do not turn an online forum area into a mini-infomercial. Rather than posting about your current sales and products, allow potential clients to come to you through your helpful conversations and witty rebukes. When you gain respect through useful content, people will follow you to your business website.

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A Content Management System or CMS, is a software program that can be used to create and maintain a fully functional website. There are numerous content management systems available today with many being free and open source in nature.

With so many CMS options out there, it is important that you choose one that is well suited to you. Some systems are easy to manage and will assist you in building a dynamic site with flash, while some maybe harder to adopt. We have taken the guesswork out of choosing a content management system and have included what we believe to be the five best, free content management systems available today.

WordPress



WordPress is considered by most experts to be the best free content management system on the web as it is ideal for creating personal and mini websites. The user interface is very easy to use and the software breaks the art of managing your content down to three steps. The first step is to find some hosting, the second involves downloading and installing WP using the five minute installation process provided and the final step involves adding content to your WordPress website.


Expression Engine

Thought to be the most flexible content management system that is free to use, Expression Engine offers a very professional user interface and an outstanding support system. This  system is ideal if you want to create more than one blog or if you wish to have a very dynamic website. Through the use of just one control panel, you can easily manage everything on your site including the network, memberships, blogs, forums, wiki, contact forms, etc.

Expression Engine is a top choice for the creation of both small sites and large.

Joomla

Regardless if you are a newbie or an advanced IT professional, the Joomla content management system makes website creation and management easy.  Simple to set up and use, you will benefit from the many plug-ins and widgets offered. The Joomla software allows you to keep tabs on all of your content however, this system does take a bit of getting used to regarding its admin interface and plug-ins. Many people the world over use Joomla to create business sites and blogs as well as personal and family homepages.

Drupal

The Drupal content management system is a CMS which is constantly benefiting from contributions made to it by programmers. It is a very popular and an open source system that has an wide collection of useful features and great support. Large community web sites can be made with Drupal as can personal blogs of all types. Websites can easily be personalized and your content is managed via the use of polls, templates and version control.

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Online forums are a great addition to your website and provide a way for your visitors to interact with you and others that share the same interests in your product or service. An online forum allows you to add a personal touch to your online business that you otherwise would not be able to do with your website.

By providing a place where you visitors can interact, it adds a unique dimension to your business and allows you to learn more about your visitors and some of the unique ideas they bring to the table. By listening to your visitors you will gain the knowledge that is necessary to expand your future offerings.

Benefits of Starting an Online Forum to Create a Long Lasting Community

An online forum will help you to develop long term relationships with your website visitors which are essential to the sustainability of your online business. If your visitors feel that you are taking a sincere interest in their needs they will keep returning to business with you in the future and they will spread the word to others and happily provide you with referrals.

When you start an online forum there are a few things you should do to create a community that is user friendly and welcoming to your visitors.

• Provide Good Information: When you start an online forum it is important to remember that as a general rule people search the Internet because they are looking for information that pertains to solving a specific problem. If you provide high quality information that is useful and helps readers to solve their problem, they will return frequently to receive more information.

To provide high quality information in your online forum you must know your target market and their reasons for searching for your product or service. If you provide information that is useful to your visitors they will instantly remember you and become loyal members of your online forum.

• Encourage Participation: You should encourage your visitors to interact and participate in your online forum by asking questions and opinions or feedback on your latest product or service. People like to be asked how they feel about things and this will show your concern for their needs and help you to learn more about your prospects.

• Be a Good Moderator: An online forum that is moderated creates a comfortable environment where your visitors feel safe about sharing their thoughts and interacting with others. Although the majority of people are well meaning there are some who have their own agenda and will abuse forums for unscrupulous reasons. A forum that is moderated demonstrates to your visitors that you care about your business and that you are concerned about creating a user-friendly environment.

• Use Quality Forum Software: Use high quality forum software that is relatively bug free and that contains features that remind your visitors to return. This is software that provides a way for your users to receive personal messages and updates when someone has replied to their post or contacted them through the personal message system.

Finally, make sure you develop a strategy for promoting your forum. Like everything else related to your business your online forum must have a plan if you are going to create a successful community. There are many online tools such as social networking, article marketing, blogging, video marketing, and other resources that you can include in the marketing strategy for promoting your online forum.

Download forum software for free! and get help on your WikidForum installation

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When you start an online forum there are a variety of ways and methods you can use for monetizing the forum. Before you create streams of income for your forum, it is important to work on generating a significant amount of traffic. It is traffic that ensures that you are going to create income over the long term.

Once you have started to generate traffic to your online forum, you can then put your strategies for monetizing the forum into action. Here are a few tips on how to monetize an online forum once you are up and running.

Premium Memberships

Once you have established your online forum and achieved a reputation for offering high quality information that is useful to your visitors, you can branch out by offering a premium membership that offers additional benefits for a fee. You can decide what benefits to offer by listening to the needs of your visitors when they discuss topics in your online forum.

Affiliate Programs

You can create an extra income stream for your online forum by joining affiliate programs that offer products or services that are related to the topic of your forum. It is important to note that affiliate programs should be relevant to the subjects being discussed in your forum. If you offer affiliate products that are unrelated, it will convey to your readers that you have your own agenda and are solely interested in generating income from the forum.

Sell Advertising

If your online forum is generating a lot of traffic then you can approach other businesses and ask them if they want to purchase advertising space in the forum. Like affiliate programs you should be approaching businesses that deal with products and services that are related to the subject of your forum.

You can also sell sponsored text links which are links that are placed under the post for each thread in the forum. The links contain keywords that are relevant to the forum content which provide your advertisers with the benefits of attracting clicks through search engine optimization.

Online Store

Create an online store that is relevant to the discussion in the forum. The products you offer can affiliate products or your own products that you have created such as information products. Make sure your online store has a uniform look and all of the products being offered are relevant to the discussion threads in your forum. If you offer products that are irrelevant it will look like you lack focus on your topic and your visitors will question your motives as well.

Search Engine Optimization

As you create different income streams for your online forum it is important to keep up with search engine optimization techniques. This will help you to increase organic traffic from the search engines which in turn can increase your forum income.

Donations

You can reserve a space in your forum that encourages your visitors to make a donation to offset the costs of running your online forum. Before you ask for donations it is important to establish a loyal community that respects the information you offer and trusts your expertise.

Monthly Sponsor

Acquire a monthly sponsor for each sticky thread that you create for the forum. These are threads that stay at the top of the discussion thread and do not get bumped down when someone creates a new post. If you have a significant amount of traffic to your forum you can use this as a tool to negotiate a price with monthly sponsors.

It is important to note that when you are monetizing your forum it is important to achieve a balance between how much advertising you offer and the amount of quality information in the forum. If the advertising overpowers the forum your visitors will start to question your loyalty. When you create advertising you also have to make sure it is strategically placed throughout the forum so it does not create a distraction for your readers.

Visit WikidForum to download a cutting edge forum software for free. Here are the forum features and here’s the support forum for the software.

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With the increased use of social media as a tool   for communications most online businesses are moving forward by creating ways to interact with their online customers and establish long term relationships. In addition to setting up a website, business owners are taking advantage of the online tools that are available for reaching out to their target audience. The tools range from social networking and video sites to forum and blogs.

If you are thinking about setting up a forum you probably think it is a complicated and time consuming task. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Actually the forum software that is used for online communications is designed to be user-friendly and simple to use on both the part of the administrator and the end user which is your targeted audience.

WikidForum is forum software that helps you to easily set up a community to help you connect with your online audience while providing a tool for them to interact with one another. When you set up a forum you can create an informal setting that encourages your target audience to communicate with you and other users with the same interests.

WikidForum is unique forum software that allows your audience to have access to discussion threads which allows users to edit and add content as you would on other sites that allow wiki entries. As a moderator this will save you a lot of time answering the same questions over and over again and adding fresh content to the forum on a daily basis.

How WikidForum Works

It is really easy to start a community with Wikidforum software. All you have to do is go to the WikidForum website at www.wikidforum.com and click on the yellow “Download Community Edition” button on the right hand side of the website. The program is packaged as a zip file. Once you save the downloaded file to its appropriate location, all you have to do is simply extract all of the files and follow the steps for installation.

WikiForum contains a variety of themes to choose from so you can customize your site and there is a variety of images and tools for formatting text and adding a selection of widgets. The forum software also offers a great variety of features that allow you to create CSS, use different languages and moderate the forum from an easy to use admin dashboard.

You can see the complete help documents to download and install WikidForum here

The admin dashboard allows you to moderate the forum content and control what is posted and who is allowed to post. This provides you with more control over inappropriate content and users whose sole purpose is to spam the forum.

WikidForum also saves you time when creating content since the users of the forum create material that is relevant to the subject matter of the forum while you moderate what is being posted. Wikidforum is also designed to allow you to use more than one moderator so you can concentrate on other aspects of your online business.

If you are concerned about search engine optimization, the forum software allows you to create SEO for the articles that are posted so the content will be recognized and indexed by the search engines.

Tips on Creating a Forum

If you are new to online business a forum can be a great way to establish your expertise by choosing topics that will be of interest to your targeted audience. For this reason it is important to create a focus topic for your forum and then branch out to other topics that are relevant to the main topic. Remember that you are bringing people together that have a common interest so you should also create a strategic plan for what you want to accomplish with your forum. If you take the time to carefully plan the forum you will ensure success with the community that you create online.

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