Q:  What’s your opinion on forums vs blogs on websites to encourage both customers/potential customers to get involved and to keep content fresh for search engines?  Is one better than the other?

A:  It really depends on the people that will be reading the site.

Forums are great for problems and answers... people post issues or problems with a product and moderators typically answer their questions. This is a great way to get people coming back to the site and looking for new info etc (works great with software as there’s always bugs). So forums are a great idea if your customers are looking for a solution that you’re happy to give away for free, or perhaps a subscription model may work for you.

You could look into having a members only forum that only your customers can log into... the only thing with forums is that they are A LOT of work... you will need to have someone to constantly moderate and make sure it’s working properly.

 Blogs are great if you’re looking at getting opinions about things. Company blogs typically are good for letting people know about changes, upgrades or additional services... you can really make a blog a ‘value add’ type of site as you can post loads of helpful info for your customers and get them to comment on it etc.

I think the thing to remember is that loading up these types of add-ons to your site is really easy... it’s the updating, maintenance and promotion of these facilities that is the hard bit.