PART TWO
Now that we have discussed what advertisers are most interested in online, it’s also important to note exactly what we, as forum owners, can do to counter their concerns about advertising on message boards.
Typically, message boards sport the same sort of layout – the main page lists threads, interior pages list posts, etc. This standard layout has become so familiar to advertiserthat they tend to exclude anything that looks like a forum because of the issues stated in part one . All it takes is one glance and they don’t get any further. Many CPM networks won’t even give a forum a chance – even if the content is outstanding and expertly moderated.
In my opinion, simply changing the layout could get your foot in the door to more opportunities. I have been on the phone with several large ad networks as they have been attempting to learn about our site, only to hear them say, “Oh, it’s only a forum…” They don’t even phrase it as a question. Such disappointment in their voice – and for non-forum networks, they know that they simply can’t accept us based on that visual alone.
But you see, I feel like we haven’t even begun to tap the possibilities of forums. To me, user-generated community content is like the perfect evolution of the Internet. It used to be all about the site – it was all about the pages that the all-knowing and powerful Webmaster created or coded. When blogs became more popular, evolution came a bit further because not only could the still-all-knowing Webmaster write to their hearts content – people could interact with them. Brilliant! Of course, message boards are as old as the hills (older, in fact), but they have been largely untapped as a viable Internet business until somewhat recently. Well, they aren’t going to be the redheaded stepchild any longer.
So what if we took the beautiful parts of a forum (the sense of community, the fantastic content born of collaboration, etc.) and fused them with a design that no longer reeks of a forum? What then? I mean really – if a forum didn’t look much like a forum any more, might that get your foot in the door to bigger campaigns and more ad networks? If an advertiser could get past the moderation concern (“Is content moderated before or after posting?”), might they then consider paying you the advertising rates that a site with LESS content and LESS quality (but not a forum) makes?
But alas, not every idea is perfect… If you start stripping away the standard forum ‘look,’ what will members think? Will they stop posting like they used to? Will they feel like they aren’t at ‘home’ any longer? If there is one thing that I have learned in my time as an admin, it’s this: Members Hate Change. They hate it so much that every time we have done a major redesign (major=changing all the template colors), there are always people who have left simply because they couldn’t stand that things are different. That just shows you the passion that people have. It’s this passion for their community that marks the most successful forums out there. But, what about posting rates? What about converting new members? Will new surfers not understand that they are there to communicate? Could making a design change to please advertisers actually kill the things that make forums what they are?
So how could you make a forum look less like a forum? Basically, you can use the forum as a giant, public CMS. Different content gets formatted differently once published – essentially looking like various static content pages (that still allow for feedback and interaction). For example, we have reviews on our site. Each review page can be automatically formatted to look like a page on a static review site rather than a forum post. News stories that would previously look like other content could be formatted to look like an article. By creating many different postbit templates for various types of content (while still including the features that members need to interact), one can – theoretically – create the feel of a static site with a forum attached even though the static content is actually all forum fed.
Part of why I wanted to share all of this with you is because we are about a week away from a new design for our forums. This design takes into account many different formatting changes and different postbit templates. We hope to achieve the feeling of a static site without alienating members or losing the sense of community.
Now the important part of ALL of this is that this decision was not made based on ad revenue alone. We make it a point to make all decisions for the forum based on the good of our community as a whole. When you start making decisions based on revenue alone, you can’t be sure you are doing the right thing. We saw this as an opportunity to present our members with content in a way that showcases relevant topics and info based on where you are within the site. Often so much information is missed in large forums because people simply don’t have the time to get to every section every day, so by feeding some of the best content to other pages, we are able to bring more right to our members.
I plan to update our progress as we go along. I am tracking member activity, overall satisfaction, and other data collected by Google Analytics (time on site, etc.) to try to gauge what the effect the new design will have. I also plan on applying to networks that previously rejected us based on our forum status. Stay tuned for those updates as we embark upon a new adventure with our forum.
(In the meantime, feel free to check our these three sites for ideas on how to step out of the forum mold: www.DaniWeb.com, www.GirlsGetGoing.com, and www.HysterSisters.com (the last two are owned by Kathy, a Forum Trends Contributor)
by Laua Alter, NoteBook Forums
Very nice read!