Forums to help drive traffic to website and retain customers?

[directholidaylets]

I have recently started a new online business advertising holiday home rentals worldwide and i am thinking of adding a forum for owners to chat and discuss different topics such as managing bookings and marketing their properties.

Does anyone have any opinions on the effectiveness of forums in regards to whether this will help to retain customers interest in a website?

Is anyone else running a forum on their site and if so have you seen any positive or even negative effects of doing this?

Your views would be appreciated.

Robert
Direct Holiday Lets

[SALGADO INVESTIGATIONS]

Hi

I don't use a forum but i do use a blog. So I have been using it a way of increasing traffic through SEO. I think forums will take a lot of your time as you will need to approve and moderate posts and make sure that spammers don't get on and stuff like that.

Overall its a good idea but it will not look after itself.

[directholidaylets]

Thanks for your response.

I do have a blog for the site with news updates and other info which I think can only help promote the site.

I have been toying with the idea of using a forum and I realise that it wont run itself and I will probably get a lot of spammy postings and could become a bit time consuming.

Thanks again.

Robert

[Peter Bowen]

I have a forum on one of my sites and it's real hard work - probably not worth the effort it takes.

I get spammers every day and few posts otherwise unless I stimulate the discussion myself.

IMHO not worth it

Cheers


Pete

[peterjhale]

it's extremely hard work at the beginning as people only follow the herd and won't contribute unless the forum looks busy.

However, the hard work does reward you eventually....

[Ian J]

I did toy with the idea of adding a forum to my website a few years ago so that I could answer questions relating to commercial finance but gave up the idea partly as there would have been nothing to stop my competitors from registering as members and I would have ended up giving them valuable promotion

[AstarothSolutions]

They do have the issues of needing to be busy to get people there and posting so a nice vicious circle.

In your situation, seeing as you are talking about owners, it may be an idea to restrict access to people who have villas registered - at the moment it wont help you prevent spam (unless you are vetting each application before going live) but when you are charging £80 per listing it certainly would be a committed spammer to pay that for the rights to advertise junk on your forum

[Robert Griggs]

Yes I think this is my best option. Just keep it restricted to subscribers/owners makes the most sense.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Robert

[www.infoebookstore.co.uk]

people judge a forum's quality by the number of members and number of posts rather than the actual quality of the posts.

I personally think it would be useful for people to ask questions about specific holiday homes, locations etc as long as they were answered. It will give that personal touch.

Good Luck

Jim