Add A Discussions Tab To Your Facebook Page With Facebook Forum

Discussion and conversation with your customers and potential customers is a great way to build loyalty, deal with customer service queries and get some insight into what they need.  It can be complicated to install and manage a forum on your own website.  This weeks cool tool ‘Forum for Pages’ is a good solution, it adds a tab to your page where you and users can post questions and discussions.

Here’s how it works

Click here to visit the application page

Click ‘Go to App’ underneath their cover image

Choose the page you want to add the application to

Click ‘Add Page Tab’

Now the tab is installed click on ‘new topic’ to start a discussion

You will be prompted to allow the app on your personal profile before you can add a topic

Once you have done this you can create a topic and description, you also have the option of posting as yourself or a page

Here’s what it looks like when you have posted

I like the idea of this app but I have a few concerns.

1. Getting people to join a forum is hard work, linking what they say to their Facebook account is  a big ask.  Before putting a lot of hard work into an app like this you need to make sure your customers want and need it.

2. Users don’t like adding apps.  Although this app isn’t asking for lots of permissions I’ve noticed a reluctance amongst my own friends to add an app, this is one more barrier towards them interacting with this application.

3. Not everyone will notice your tab! Most users only see your updates on their newsfeeds, to encourage people to use this app you will need to spend time sending them there from the newsfeed.

I do really like the idea of this app, people seem willing to engage in discussions on Facebook so if you have the right audience this could be a really effective way to get to know your community, and to get them engaging like a community.

What do you think?  Would you use a tool like this? Would you participate in discussions on an app like this?