This is often a question we are asked, and I wanted to give you a couple of statistics about both that will help answer the question. Customer satisfaction with our service will often be judged by things we can’t control - like traffic and usage - and avoiding some easy problem areas are one way we can increase customer satisfaction.

Blogs

A blog only works if the client is contentious about posting regular entries, and the clients perception of a successful blog is often determined not just by traffic, but by responses from their readers. Reader response is directly related to the quality of posts, and the regularity of the postings. Instructing your clients that less regular posting than weekly may be better addressed through an email newsletter is a good way to increase the effectiveness of their message, even though they are not getting feedback. Alternatively, using a newsletter to announce a new blog post may increase the effectiveness of the posting feedback for less regular posters.

Here’s a great article about blogs and the way posters tend to let their work slide over time. You may find it useful to send this link to prospective clients.

Forums

Forums are even more difficult to launch successfully than blogs. Some time ago, I heard these rough statistics:

1) Forums will get 1 post for every 100 registered users / week
2) Forums attract 1 user for every 100 visitors
3) Most forums find that only 2% of the users will actively post to the forum
4) You need 100 active users to insure a forum gets sufficient interaction to continue to attract registered users to the site

If you start doing the math, you will find that a web site with a forum is likely to need 10,000 visitors in order to launch a forum, and 100,000 visitors for it to have active posting. While some specialized forums (especially those related to technical support of a product) may do well with less visitors, we should instruct our clients that a poorly used forum is far worse than no forum at all.

Good Selling!