Social Features: Keep in Touch with Website Visitors

How social is your online business?

If you are like most companies, probably not very.  I've been helping one of my friends who has a medium-sized traditional service based company.  He's been relying on old fashioned methods until just recently. He's making great improvements to expand into new technologies and so can you.

Most old fashioned businesses think of a website as just a static information page to say what they do, where they are, and a contact form.  In reality, it can be that and much more.

Your website should become an opportunity for two way communication.  Another friend with a very successful site, actually uses the community he formed as the major focus of his website.  The transition from a traditional site to a community isn't easy, but with some planning and effort you'll get there eventually.

Let visitors comment on your posts and articles

I was so frustrated with spam that I had disabled comments on most of my sites, but you might have better luck.   You can try requiring registration and use spam filters and CAPTCHAs and see if that helps reduce spam to a comfortable level.

Let visitors blog

Some may want to write about the same topic as your site, so let them blog if you don't mind checking for spammer blog registrations.

Let visitors discuss issues in a forum

A forum provides an opportunity for visitors to discuss the issues you mention in your posts and articles.  The difficulty here is to get it started because no one wants to be the first. On the other hand, forums seem to be easier to sustain once they get going.

Offer Chat discussions

A chat room is fun, but unless you have a high volume website, most people will complain that no one is there even if many people join. This is human nature. Everyone wants to join and find people there. No one wants to join and actually wait (not even a few minutes) for others to show up.

Offer Chat support

If you have national and international customers and clients, online chat support will be very helpful. They can avoid long distance and international call charges and get the help they need in a way that is more dynamic than e-mail.

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