Online Message Boards: A Value Add

Online message boards can transform your Web presence from a one-sided mouthpiece for your organization to a place for interactive dialogue that allows visitors to communicate with you and with each other. Message boards not only encourage communication, but they foster community and accessibility.

Message boards offer a specific location where constituents can gather, allow almost real-time communication and easy navigation through message threads, and archive conversations, writes Susan Tenby, online community manager for TechSoup, online provider of nonprofit technology services that include news and articles, discussion forums, and discounted and donated technology products, in her white paper “Using Message Boards to Build Community.”