Small Business Forum Feedback!

[Chris Bates]

Hey Everyone,

We would love to get feedback from you on the website so far. You can use this thread to post your feedback, and we'll do our best to take on board and implement your suggestions.

There are a lot of plans on the horizon, all of them with the aim of making this a better place for our community.

Cheers,
Chris, Jake and Tim

[Virtuallyme]

I think you guys have done a great job ! Plus I'm now testing if I set up my twitter/facebook links right.. just gotta fix my profile pic now.. lol

Hmmm oh well 2 out of 3 ain't bad ..

[Burgo]

Considering you have been live under a month, can't see anything to worry about.
I think your different to Flying Solo and probably wont develop quite as fast, but that could be a good thing.
Yep, must admit I enjoy posting, and reading others posts.

[ClickWebDesign]

Hey Chris, Just noticed the forum clocked over 500 posts! Great site, and a friendly helpful community developing, well done!

[Chris Bates]

Thanks all, we couldn't be doing it without any of you. It's all of you that make this such a great place, so keep up the good work!

[Burgo]

Actually I think you can work side by side. As mentioned earlier some of our members didnt feel comfortable on FS, which I can appreciate, and there will be undoubtedly a flow over affect.
The Australian Institute of management started a forum, and just happened to mention FS in one of my posts, but AIM didnt have active admin, so it fizzled.
FS has also been going for several years before they introduced a forum, so there was a loyal group who naturally hopped onto the forum, but not every member participates.
Its like the carpet cleaners forum has around 700 members but there are only 20 that actively participate.
So where are you marketing this forum ?

[Chris Bates]

Yeah that's the nature of forums - lots of lurkers and one-posters. But that's alright, because that's what a forum is for. But it's those 20 people or so that actively engage daily that really make this place shine.

In the (near) future, there will be rewards for those who do actively contribute!

As for marketing, we use social media a lot and encourage our community to spread the word. So do that! Tell your friends and invite them to join

[JakeThomas]

Thanks for the positive feedback guys =)

Just to clear a quick thing up, we aren't directly competing with Flying Solo, and for the record - Still appreciate and will participate in that community.

They are targeted mainly at micro business, whereas we target a much broader audience with "small business".

- Jake

[Burgo]

Thanks Jake exactly what I was eluding to, but you have a much better way with words.

[kbrookes]

I participate both here and over at Flying Solo.

Certainly there's a larger community there, but I feel that this one is a little more relaxed. It shows in the forum setup, I think - the social integration, the wider access to forum features.

Fortunately, I feel welcome at both and get some like-minded company.

Unlike Australian Webmaster. I participated there for a while, but many of the posts are purely to build backlinks. Like the SBF, Australian Webmaster is a DoFollow forum. Unfortunately they're well known for this and so are spammed constantly by overseas companies and individuals pushing out banal, useless drivel to make it to their requisite 5 posts need to create a signature with links.

Chris, Jake, I beg of you - as much as I like that this forum is DoFollow, if it comes to that, clamp down hard on asshats who come here purely for linkbuilding without truly participating. Make the necessary number of posts to have links in the signature something wholly unreasonable for people not willing to commit, then make it really hard to get to that number if you're posting drivel.