darnoldy
29th November 2006, 09:43 PM
The movie “Field of Dreams,” popularized the phrase “If you build it, they will come.” However, unless you are trying to attract long-dead baseball players, you’d best take advice from a character in another movie—“Fuggedaboudit!”
Any product or service, in order to attract customers, must have what marketers call a USP—a “unique selling position [or proposition].” Before you all yell “I’m not trying to sell anything, I just want people to post on my forum!” let me elaborate. Selling, in this case, does not necessarily mean “the exchange of money for goods or services.” It means convincing people to take some action. In other words, a USP is the answer to the question “Why should people use your product (visit your site) instead of something else?” It is what differentiates you from the competition.
If you are running a site for your gaming clan, the USP is pretty straight-forward—“this is the one place where my clan exchanges information.”
If you are running an company-internal technical support site, you may think you don’t have any “competition,” but you do—people could telephone you; they could walk to your office; they could ask Fred in accounting, who “knows all this stuff;” they could wander the building aimlessly asking anyone they meet “Have you seen the IT guy?” until they corner you in the hallway and ask their question. Each of these actions is “competition” for your site. You need to be able to articulate the reason(s) why people should use your site instead of doing them.
If you want to start a teen general chat site [good luck with that]—you have a great deal of competition, and the USP becomes more important and harder to find.
He can feel you thinking, “Can’t I just install the software, add some ‘kewl’ hacks and worry about this stuff later?” No, you can’t (well, you can, but then you’ll end up like all the other folks who buy a license, and close their forum in disgust six months later, ‘cause they can’t get anybody to post).
The USP needs to form the basis for every decision you make about the forum. Should I add this hack/mod/feature; what colors should I choose; what sections should I create? All of these should be answered with an eye toward your USP.
Some of you (the advanced students) may be asking “What about identifying my target market/audience?” That is a topic for another thread. Stay tuned.
Any product or service, in order to attract customers, must have what marketers call a USP—a “unique selling position [or proposition].” Before you all yell “I’m not trying to sell anything, I just want people to post on my forum!” let me elaborate. Selling, in this case, does not necessarily mean “the exchange of money for goods or services.” It means convincing people to take some action. In other words, a USP is the answer to the question “Why should people use your product (visit your site) instead of something else?” It is what differentiates you from the competition.
If you are running a site for your gaming clan, the USP is pretty straight-forward—“this is the one place where my clan exchanges information.”
If you are running an company-internal technical support site, you may think you don’t have any “competition,” but you do—people could telephone you; they could walk to your office; they could ask Fred in accounting, who “knows all this stuff;” they could wander the building aimlessly asking anyone they meet “Have you seen the IT guy?” until they corner you in the hallway and ask their question. Each of these actions is “competition” for your site. You need to be able to articulate the reason(s) why people should use your site instead of doing them.
If you want to start a teen general chat site [good luck with that]—you have a great deal of competition, and the USP becomes more important and harder to find.
He can feel you thinking, “Can’t I just install the software, add some ‘kewl’ hacks and worry about this stuff later?” No, you can’t (well, you can, but then you’ll end up like all the other folks who buy a license, and close their forum in disgust six months later, ‘cause they can’t get anybody to post).
The USP needs to form the basis for every decision you make about the forum. Should I add this hack/mod/feature; what colors should I choose; what sections should I create? All of these should be answered with an eye toward your USP.
Some of you (the advanced students) may be asking “What about identifying my target market/audience?” That is a topic for another thread. Stay tuned.