The fact that big companies make an use of social medias in order to expand their brand awareness and also to establish a more direct contact with their potential customers is no new deal; it is also very known that, when done in an efficient way (that is, by understanding the aim of the company, creating measurable objectives, and choosing the right channels), the referred to as “social media strategy” can lead many companies to building a strong and personal connection with their prospective customers. Nowadays, it is left very clear that, thanks to the expansion of the phenomena of daily use of technological devices such as smartphones and tablets, people spend a considerable time in front of their screens, which is a motivator factor for companies to adapt the social media strategy.
The latter strategy is practiced by many multinational companies and can adopt many forms like the following: Microblogging is one of them, which consists on a web service that allows the subscriber to broadcast short messages to other subscribers of the service, along with RSS, which allows the publishing of information such as blog entries; Social Tagging, used to categorize a concept, as well as others like Mashup and Online communities. Today our focus is rather going to be on another form of Social Media which is Forums, handled by companies to connect with people, and most importantly to bring the online users closer to each other.
It is essential though to mention that most importantly, Forums, as a form of social media, provide a fundamental information about people’s tastes and tendencies. As Forums usually propose a formula with many subjects and topics of discussion, companies take advantage of the collecting of the information that could be crucial for the development of the business. For example, a famous French forum on the website jeuxvideos.com allow video game players to openly talk about new games that are out on the market, or game consoles that just launched; Sony could make significant use of the report on their new product to give them a concise impression about it, and help them know what aspect they can ameliorate for the future.
It is also convenient to mention that Forums on websites can bring much more to companies’ knowledge. Since any topic is convenient for debate within different forums, whatever you want to search on Wikipedia but you can’t find might be there: any tip for a videogame, things you would recommend someone for buying an apartment, opinion on books… thus it allows the companies to make predictions. For example, for big company Airbnb, an opinion given on a forum about a street that is too noisy can serve them to prevent for ranting an apartment in that specific location.
In addition to what we’ve mention before, us as consumers like the thought that our voices and opinions about a product or a service is considered; in other words, we enjoy being heard, so we speak louder! The latter statement refers about the main satisfaction that forums provide us: the right to talk. In this sense, if we know that our complaints and criticism are being taken seriously, we will then become more motivated to be “louder” and thus voice our opinions more often. That can only be beneficial for companies that always seek for feedbacks from their customers.