Forums still dominate social media

Despite the clear dominance of Facebook and Twitter as the platforms of choice for people to express opinions, once again we have seen the influence of discussion forums providing the most significant weight of opinion that brands should be concerned with.

For our sixth year of social media monitoring we have curated posts that were significant and relevant to our clients from 856,793 different posters, including blogs, social networks, discussion forums, comments on the websites of mainstream media, customer reviews. Having sorted out the wheat from the chaff, this gives us some insight into where meaningful and influential opinions are being expressed. Looking simply at volumes of posts or traffic, about everything (Bieber, anyone? ) we, predictably see Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Yahoo Answers, and LinkedIn on top. But, this is no help to a brand or reputation manager. Opinions are being influenced elsewhere. Where? On the discussion forums. Of our Top 40 sites, 19 were discussion forums, accounting for 51% of the influential posts. This should surprise no-one. We are more likely to trust the opinions of those with whom we share a common interest.

Another key take-out from our findings is the importance of opinions being expressed in the comment sections of the websites of mainstream media. Just as many noteworthy comments are appearing here, as appear on Twitter. Newspaper and broadcasters websites remain highly viewed and are increasingly proving to be noisy debating chambers as well – particularly at a local and regional level.

This is something our clients fully understand, but why is it that so many others think a social media strategy means Facebook and Twitter, overlooking the enormous opinion forming influence of the forums and online newspapers? We think it is because it is too difficult. Monitoring of discussion forums is not easy. Measuring it is even harder. Conversational threads are not susceptible to the kind of key word searching done by software alone, and a high degree of human intervention and intelligence is required. Anyone relying on a purely computer based platform for monitoring consumer generated content, is missing out half the picture, and probably the most important half.

Of course, this isn’t the whole story; no-one should overlook the power of twitter as an amplifier, and opinion spreader, nor should anyone under-estimate the intimacy and trust people have within the friends on Facebook, but anyone devoting more than half of their social media attention to Facebook and Twitter (because there are cheap tools that make it easy) should re-think. Social media monitoring needs to cover the whole waterfront.

And, yes, MySpace did not appear in the Top 40, and UseNet Newsgroups are fading fast. Google Plus, meanwhile is slowly making its presence felt and we expect to see a stronger showing next year. For anyone interested, our top 40 sites during 2011 were:

1	Twitter
2	Facebook
3	forums.moneysavingexpert.com
4	www.digitalspy.co.uk
5	www.boards.ie
6	forums.thinkbroadband.com
7	www.cableforum.co.uk
8	www.sagazone.co.uk
9	forums.overclockers.co.uk
10	www.youtube.com
11	www.ispreview.co.uk
12	pub37.bravenet.com
13	www.mumsnet.com
14	www.dailymail.co.uk
15	www.reviewcentre.com
16	www.guardian.co.uk
17	www.techwatch.co.uk
18	www.3g.co.uk
19	uk.answers.yahoo.com
20	www.miningmx.com
21	www.netmums.com
22	community.adn.com
23	www.thestudentroom.co.uk
24	www.bbc.co.uk
25	www.cable.co.uk
26	www.hotukdeals.com
27	forums.macrumors.com
28	www.thisismoney.co.uk
29	www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk
30	www.pistonheads.com
31	www.babyandbump.com
32	www.brandrepublic.com
33	www.adn.com
34	discussions.apple.com
35	www.bitterwallet.com
36	www.sheffieldforum.co.uk
37	www.iii.co.uk
38	www.telegraph.co.uk
39	www.dooyoo.co.uk
40	www.techradar.com