Attract and magnetize new clients instead of constantly chasing after new business. Here’s a guide on how to structure an online forum for your prospects and clients. While this venture will require some steady effort from you, if you take the right steps now you will succeed in eventually creating a self-sufficient forum. It will essentially feed on itself without you having to inject much effort. And when it finally builds a large enough number of users your forum will turn into a money making perpetual-motion machine. 

What gets people talking?

Boring material never gets people to buy. You’ll need to execute some initial brainstorming and make a spreadsheet of bird’s-eye-view topics. Generate these topics by taking a careful look at your products or services. Regardless of what you’re offering, there are always multiple categories that can be discussed. Many forums wither up and die because they were forced into an extremely limiting field of categories. Unless, you’re a black-hole physicist (owners of the infinite-conversation title…get it…infinite…black hole…never mind), there’s a good chance you’ll need to eventually expand your conversation topics or you’ll lose your forum members from repeatedly discussing the same material.

Consider topics such as the technology behind the design, special manufacturing processes, unique applications and so on. And for the truly bold forum builders, finding a way to tie in politics, sports or celebrities has always proven to be an immediate pot-stirring, conversation-starting virtual rocket fuel for forums.

It also helps to conduct some research on the Web. You can do some basic queries in the search engines to check for keyword strings related to your business. It’s also quite helpful to look into websites that serve the specific function of providing search and popularity information regarding specific topics and websites. A prime example of this is Alexa, which is a free resource and is quite easy to use.