stuff123

Forums on the Internet remind me of that bulletin board that all large grocery stores have in their entrance way that never seem to have anybody reading them. How do you find anything in that jungle? A friend of mine had the right idea—pure luck!

The Internet search engines (google, yahoo, msn, etc.) do a really good job of helping us sort through that mess so it isn’t impossible. But the forums are full of people making childish or rude remarks about nothing. Grow up children. Show some respect for people that are actually trying to learn something.

I really believe that the only way to communicate effectively is one-on-one. This post is one-on-one. You and I are having a conversation except you aren’t saying anything in return until you use the comments box.

And do your best to avoid short forms. It just confuses people.

It is true that you could be swamped by many, many requests for conversations. All that is telling you, is that people find you interesting and they would love to chat with you—the cup of coffee thing. They’re mostly not nosey, they’re curious.

You could make the bulletin board more interesting by putting little treasures in it but that trick won’t work for long because the truly smart people find the ones of value and go on about their business. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? The ads running down the side of your screen are a good example.

The only ad I’ve seen so far that seemed useful was the one from Domino’s Pizza. Order online now. Good idea. We all get hungry when we are on our various Internet quests. But up the ante if you really want it work, Domino’s. Give me an offer I can’t refuse—a nice discount, some extra free stuff of value. Don’t insult me with the “introductory offer” thing. Means I’ll only shop your store once and I might not come back because you played me for a fool, you insulted my intelligence.You tried to trick me. Build something of value so that I will always be loyal to your cause. Like a points program for frequent online orders that can be redeemed for useful stuff. It’s called Excellent Customer Service. I’m available if your marketing department goes duh too much. Use the comments box.

For the forum to truly work, it will have to evolve. It will need to have scam filters and be more organized in such a way that the users will readily find the information they are looking for and be given direction on some things that the forum offers that they did not previously consider—the top 10 lists.

Make it easy on the eyes. Fewer words. Good graphics designers understand the use of “white space”. It helps the story stand out.

All the Sports websites are a classic example of the Forum going wrong, in attempting to get your attention. They all use mice print and there are so many trees in the forest that they resort to recruiting the gals with Arthritis to try and grab your attention and stay a while.

So what do we do. We just visit the gals with arthritis. Usually, they are a lot more interesting than what you have to offer and they put their whole story right up front for even the vision-impaired folks out there. Careful, they might poke your eyes out.

And after a while we move on to something else.