Great answer. Every business has phones. The have had a form of communication since the dawn of time. Be it a pteranodon with a bone attached to its leg( A favorite  Super Bowl FedEx commercial of mine) to today’s instant communication and e-commerce. There has been no question as to the value of communications to a company. The question becomes in how do you optimize the channels that we use to communicate.

Are we communicating our companies goals and objectives? Are we listening to our customers needs and concerns? Are we listening to what the competitors are doing and saying and do we care?

As we have stated many times in our workshops, one on one consultations, and blog post’s not every channel is needed by every business out there. Not all business’s need a staff of 5 to 100 people dedicated to online social platforms to communicate their business to potential customers. But it is needed. Ask yourself how much business would you not do if you had no phones?

 NOW how much business have you lost not utilizing the many free online tools out there to reach your customers and future customers. What is the ROI on silence or absence of your company online?

Only you can answer these questions, but if you need some ideas or help we are here for you.

Just got back from the Login conference hosted here in sunny (okay rainy) Seattle. One of the interesting round table debates was on forums. The debate in questions was should there be official company forums around ones game or leave that to third parties and or fans? One of the many interesting topics that came up was overall cost of hosting a forum as well as the feedback it generated. Apparently fan based or third part forums were usually self moderated while larger ones were moderated by the sites volunteers or paid staff. The third party/fan based forums usually had more positive feedback and support for the games they were based on while the company based forums were more negative. Now guerrilla based negative comments really haven’t made it into these forums yet (but it has been hinted at) and game companies are generally the tip of the spear in new tech on a social level so that was great to hear.

However the discussion came down to a general conclusion that the game companies (even the giants like WOW,LOTR and Startrekonline) need both company sponsored forums and fan based forums. For mainly TWO reasons.:

1: Customers service is number one(without fans to play the game why exist) and they need to have a way to reach the company and forums are a great way to do this. Twitter and blogs don’t have the same impact.

2: Fan based forums are necessary to see what fans are doing amongst themselves and a great way to have research and development done for you outside your company(no cost as the fans are doing it themselves) and a cost effective way to release information about upcoming products and reward fans with sneak peaks.

Now you may not be a game company but forums can do the same for you. Provide effective communication to your customers on your products and service as well as allowing your customers to comment on your products and services and say things they might not tell you face to face that you need to know.