I have seen message boards with tens of thousands of registered members and thousands of discussion threads. Some discussions — especially those about products with quality issues — continue for months, have hundreds of posts and sometimes have been viewed more than 100,000 times. Many potential customers go to message boards to find out if there are any issues with the product that they are interested in, and they often base their purchase decision on the information and opinions they find there.

The comments made by people who already own the product have an enormous influence on purchase decisions. Any company is well advised to monitor message boards closely, since one can find valuable information there, such as praise and complaints about products and customer service, product improvement suggestions, etc., or as Mike Driehorst wrote: “Discussion boards are good for getting the pulse of a subject or industry.”

I couldn’t agree more.