Studies or articles showing benefit of forums?

[flowermark]

I've always heard that forums increase the stickiness, authority, and the brand loyalty for a website. But I usually see these assertions in forum and blog posts, but never in any formal articles or studies.

I'm new to community building, so I suspect my ignorance is pretty overwhelming. So I was wondering if you forum veterans know of any well-respected articles that cover the tangible positive effect a forum has on a website?

Thanks!

[rogerd]

I don't think I've seen published articles, but I can attest to the fact that a successful forum can dramatically increase traffic, time on site, search referrals, etc. One forum I admin was added to a content site, and now generates over 90% of site traffic and hundreds of thousands of daily pageviews.

The key word is "successful" - simply grafting forum software onto a site won't have any impact at all. Any community takes careful nurturing throughout its life stages.

[attard]

Keep in mind that generating additional traffic to a website isn't the same as generating additional income. It's not unusual to find that forum participants pay lots of attention to the forum posts and little or no attention to any income producing links or ads on the pages.

[rogerd]

Quite true - the click rates on ads in forums tend to be lower, partly because the number of pages viewed by each visitor is normally so much higher.

If you have another part of the site that is monetized, though, like an ecommerce site, a brochure site for expensive products or services, etc., you can use the forum to drive traffic to it.

Don't expect a windfall - building a blockbuster forum takes lots of time, a fair amount of skill, and a bit of luck.