When we first launched Lefora, we made a decision early on to refer to our service as a ‘forum’ as it’s an abstract idea that people are very familiar with – it predates the web.

Ultimately, we see Lefora as enabling communities to do more online – the ‘forum’ is the essential core of any group coming together to communicate. We’re focused on the conversation, but have many social features surrounding the forum, from a headlines page featuring hot topics based on community participation, to member profiles that feature everything a person says across the forum. We’ve added other features like thumbs up & down to offer community moderation, email notifications to encourage members to return to the site, and search engine optimization to ensure new people find a lefora site via a google search.

A friend sent us a nice article, How to Grow a Customer Forum into a Social Media Site, that highlights the changes that one company took to evolve their standard forum to a place where their customers could come together online – which ultimately benefits the company by building a community around their product.

The case study makes some good points, specifically highlighting how:

• A community attracts more web traffic
• Connects with consumers
• Empowers brand advocates to spread their message
• Builds interest and expertise