Enhanced Interactivity Adds Value to Site

Careful reasearch and planning can make adding a forum to a web site a good step toward building the site's usefulness and value.

New information and changing technologies make the Internet an exciting place. And when it?s not exciting, it?s at least interesting. New tools catch on quickly and are often overused or used improperly, but almost every tool available to online companies can enhance business when applied properly. Internet forums are no exception. Although many sites have forums that receive little traffic or turn into chaotic advertising boards, a well-researched and well-deployed forum can be a powerful asset to business.

A successful forum gives a company?s client base a place to network with each other and support each other while giving the company another medium to build credibility and generate excitement about products.

A good example of a successful forum launch can be seen on the American Writers & Artists Institute (AWAI) web site (www.awaionline.com). The forum was formatted and deployed by DragonFly Creative Media (www.dfcreative.com), a growing marketing company.

AWAI is in an ideal situation to benefit from providing an interactive forum. As a provider of career building courses covering topics such as copywriting and graphics design, a forum provides AWAI members a place to easily network with students who span the globes. It also allows students to support and critique each other, adding a dynamic aspect to the learning process.

Besides being well-positioned to benefit from a forum, the AWAI forum launch has been successful for other reasons, as well. AWAI took pains to advertise its forum among its students. And DragonFly Creative Media took time to interview AWAI in order to determine the most suitable shape the forum should take to best serve the user base. The end result is a growing and informative forum that is easy to navigate and expand and that has generated a good deal of excitement among AWAI staff and students alike.