As the original social network, forums dominated the web for since the early days and have grown along the way. Often started as a hobby or network between friends, these small sites can reach hundreds of thousands, even millions of users and unlike the big networks, the topics can be very focused from Frequent Fliers to Disneyland Tricks to Headphones. But just as the close-knit community built and user to user focus of forums give them huge reputation power, it makes entering into them tricky to say the least.

Here 4-steps to getting involved and unlocking the potential of forums.

Understand the community, its membership and dynamics.

The first part of getting involved in any niche community is of course knowing the niche. I’m not talking about product expertise here but rather community – does the forum allow businesses to post? Does it have certain requirements for disclosing information? When can links be used? Is it owned by a company or a few friends? Does it have rivals? Who uses the site? Novices in the space or the top players or both?

Make a plan to integrate, not just advertise

In the past most companies considered a social strategy to mean placing ads on a site where customers could interact with each other; not exactly engaging and thankfully we’ve learned a lot since then but old habits die hard. While it’s easy to write a check and treat it as another opportunity for direct marketing, that’s not utilizing the opportunity and not likely to succeed.

This doesn’t mean going in and selling but educating, answering and simply participating is a huge win and done right, generally welcomed. Stick to the facts like when a product hits, how it works, what support is available [social support goes great with forums if you have the CSR staff]. Leave opinion, debate and subjective analysis to other members or at best referring to a previous post that gives it. By showing that you’re more than an ad you can demonstrate domain expertise and the experience your company offers.

United Airlines may not get a good rep in every post but having a representative on FlyerTalk.com, the world’s largest frequent flier site, to share company updates and respond to comments insures the FT users know the airline is, at least, listening. That’s a critical first step for driving business.

Leverage sponsorship to show your commitment to the community

Since most forums are self funding or even unprofitable businesses and hobbies, brands, especially larger ones, that come on board aren’t just buying advertising, they’re helping to keep the lights on.

Whether it’s on the site, at events or even at your own trade or press events, reminding your industry of the commitment your company is making to the community and the ability for users to share with in it is a strong message that you can leverage as your sponsorship continues on over time.  No matter how much people may dislike ads, or even question your brand, if done right your sponsorship becomes a symbiotic relationship.

When I founded Scubaboard.com in 2000 we had no idea it would grow to become the largest site [and community] in the dive industry. As we grow, so did costs, and our early advertisers stood up not for the exposure value but to drive something they saw potential in. Many years later, the owners of the site still call on them for events and posts: they are a part of the community.

Devise ways to put your product in front of the user honestly

Of course the goal of your involvement is to drive your business. Whether it’s gathering feedback, market research or seeding a new item, forums are an ideal place to learn and influence but it’s got to be done right.

When it comes to topical communities like forums, the single most effective way I’ve ever found to build positive influence [in more than 11 years of experience] is getting product in the hands of users through challenges or, for a more general product, open sampling.

It’s a simple concept – you invite users of the community to try the product by chiming in with a few details. After a couple days or weeks of collecting submissions your team, along with a representative from the forum, selects a number of “testers” spanning different interests, experience levels and statuses within the community. Each gets the product, theirs to keep, in exchange for an honest review on the forum [with disclosure of the freebie of course].  Keep it easy, transparent [that means allowing a review good or bad and promoting this heavily] and large enough to be seen.

A couple weeks after launch you’ll find that not only did you get a pile of reviews but chatter about your brand is up all over the forum, after all, you’re the guys who believe enough in your product to give it to people to test.

Just like on the major networks, the big leap in truly leveraging forums comes when you stop seeing it as a silo and start seeing it as a part of your communication strategy.

Integrating a community into your business process is like having your own open focus group of target customers 24x7x365. Input and commentary, whether it’s positive or negative, flows freely for those willing to take it and use it.  The more you give, the more  you get seen, known and trusted.

So if you’ve integrated your business with a community brought product in and are looking to what comes next, start thinking about how the community can exist within your business…

• Run new products by the community for first stage testing?
• Invite members to special events at trade or consumer events?
• Seed every launch out as a source for kick off marketing buzz?
• Bring commentary on products & your company into team meetings, reports, and the flow of business…. It’s not good until the community says it is.

When daily deals first launched,  hitting the minimum participants to “activate” the deal wasn’t a given and that made them social as people would have to bring friends in to get things going. Years later Groupon, LivingSocial and other leaders have too many users to have to worry about “qualifying” thus the social aspect is gone & deals have become glorified coupons that you just buy into.

Now don’t get me wrong. I may have critiqued the relevancy of daily deals in the past and am now joining others in questioning their business viability but I don’t doubt the potential of deals as a gateway for discovery, and value service to consumers – they just need a little network power to get to exciting. So as we watch Facebook prepare to roll out its deal offering, Google move into social & deals and Groupon and LivingSocial battle for control of the current market, I thought I’d take a crack at what the future could look like.

Deals are better when they’re done together [rhyming not intended]

Late one evening, a few weeks back I got a text from a friend (let’s call her “Sally”) asking if I wanted to jump in on a LivingSocial deal for White Water Rafting. Sally, knowing I raft frequently, wanted to put together a group trip and saw the deal as as great opportunity. To me that’s exactly what daily deals are for: great offers on services that people were considering, and now have a tipping point to take action on — together.

Problem is, it was 10pm, the deal expired in 2 hours and we all had to commit to make it work – no one wanted to take the first plunge and the deal was missed.

Risk stops purchases; but what if you could remove it?

What if, rather than a mass text, followed by a lot of hoping and messaging back, my friend, had been able to set the whole thing up as a group deal contingent on her network participating:

- Sally decides this deal is for her, looks at the calendar, picks an available date, creates an event and invites 20 people who she’d like to have show up… It hits their email, sms, facebook wall or twitter handle, their call.

-The threshold on the deal is also set based on the offer type. For white water rafting its one full boat – 6 heads. More can join but without 6 the deal is not on. Other services could have a threshold as low as 2 for a spa day or 4 for dinner out, but always a group.

-Sally’s friends get an alert that there’s a deal expiring in a few hours with the right details – the time, the place and the cost. Since they already have accounts they can confirm it right from their iphones but there’s no risk, the deal only goes if the threshold is hit.

-5 people are excited to try out rafting and convince #6 to join via a Facebook group message. The deal is on. Go Sally!

Whether it’s white water rafting, learning to rock climb, or a spa day, deals are overwhelmingly for services people do together but the current systems drive individual purchase and does nothing to address the fear of being the only one to go in.

By flipping the model back to its roots and enforcing a commitment minimum, not from all participants, but from a network of friends the risk is gone and there’s a whole new motivation for people to buy.

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Update: as of 8/26/2011 Facebook has announced they are closing down their deal service. In my opinion they had the best shot at truly creating a discovery tool by leveraging what no other deal site really has: relationships. But ultimately it’s a peripheral service and without enough attention, likely never got the legs to have a fair shot.