One question website operators often ask is: what if I add a Ninja Post forum to my site and a rogue operator comes along and begins to speak ill about my enterprise?
Chances are that your forum will primarily host conversations about your product and other topics of general interest to your community. However, during the course of these conversations it’s possible that someone could speak ill about your product. (Gasp!) There are two potential scenarios: there’s the raving lunatic scenario where a crazy person comes to your site and starts acting a fool. Then there’s the more common scenario when someone expresses a legitimate gripe.
Ninja Post’s moderation tools are designed to deal with the extreme case, the raving lunatic scenario. When someone engages in libel, their posts can be removed, their account can be banned, and their IP address can be turned over to authorities.
In a more common case, the legitimate gripe scenario, a customer might come to your Ninja Post forum with a complaint. Perhaps it’s an unfounded or unwarranted complaint in your eyes. But to them it seems like a legitimate complaint and they’ve come to you seeking resolution.
Although some website owners shudder at the thought of someone airing “dirty laundry” on their own site, here’s the rub: people are going to talk about your product or service anyway so why not hold the conversation on your turf? At least your privy to the conversation and have the opportunity to set the record straight.
Chances are, if someone comes to you with a complaint, he or she wants to be “won back.” When your customers explain why they’re upset, and you acknowledge their point of view, everyone can benefit. Mediating complaints in a public forum is not for every problem. However, it is useful for many problems, especially more trivial ones. And when a site owner can employ his or her happy customers to act as his proxy in such matters it is a powerful testament to his or her business.
Organic search results, AdWords, and outreach via Twitter and Facebook are three of the most common ways to drive traffic to your site. But no matter how you attract visitors, the process is either time consuming or expensive or both.
Worse, once users make it to your site, they often vanish without a trace. Ninja Post message board software mitigates this scenario by making your website more engaging, more like a Borders or Barnes & Noble. It’s not hard to conceive of a message board that:
- Anchors your social media strategy;
- Allows you to optimize customer acquisition costs;
- Keeps users coming back to your site; and
- Helps you develop stronger customer relationships
That’s exactly what Ninja Post is designed to do. Then again, that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what Ninja Post can do…
People often ask us how we keep Ninja Post forums running so fast. The answer of course is our state-of-the-art cloud computing technology, pictured below. It’s the steering wheel that makes Ninja Post forums load so quickly.
(Actually, this photo was part of a Fark.com Photoshop contest. More background at Snopes.com.)
Once upon a time, bookstores were functional but dull: customers stayed only as long as it took to make a purchase. In the 1990s, bookstores became more social. They offered an upscale atmosphere with armchairs and Starbucks coffee. They became “destinations” and encouraged customers to stay, browse, and chat.
Ninja Post does the same thing for your website (minus the coffee shop). It provides a forum to interact with your users and lets them interact with one another. Customer feedback enhances product development. Visitors become fans. All this translates into increased page views, more time spent on your site, more revenue, and happier customers.
Ninja Post leverages social networks like Facebook and Twitter to unify your social media strategy. Threads update in real time like a chat, and the design is elegant and easy to brand. Ninja Post is hosted in the cloud so setup is painless. We’ll integrate it with your URL but do the heavy lifting on the back end to keep your forum running fast.
The quote from this Jeff Bezos interview (see video below) is applicable to anyone but it’s especially applicable to entrepreneurs. In particular, this line stands out: “I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried.”
Ninja Post is especially keen to partner with other entrepreneurs who share this sentiment. If your company can benefit from Ninja Post, let us know.
The full quote and YouTube video follow:
I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.”
I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried.
I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision. If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, “What will I think at that time?” it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion.
We are fanatical about speed. Why? Software that is fast and responsive—especially on the web—makes for a better user experience. When pages load quickly, users are more likely to stick around and participate. This is one of the ways that we combat participation inequality.
Forum software can be a resource hog. If you’re hosting your own forum, it can slow down (or sometimes crash) the rest of your site. Since Ninja Post is a cloud-based service that integrates with your URL, it not only ensures that your forum keeps moving quickly but it frees up resources on your own server to ensure that other aspects of your site load rapidly too.
Instead of saying that Ninja Post is insanely fast, we say that it is Usain-ly fast.
Ninja Post is a proud graduate of the Shotput Ventures program, an Atlanta-based incubator for capital light web companies. It was a phenonmenal experience. You could say that we came for the seed funding but stayed for the exceptional mentoring.
Applications for this year’s class are now open and I encourage all aspiring entrepreneurs to apply. There is an early application deadline of March 22nd and a final application deadline of April 8th. More info, including the application form, are available on the SPV website.
Good luck to all applicants. Feel free to email me with any questions about the program.
Finally, here’s a list of other incubators entrepreneurs should consider applying to.
Posted by Mike Wilt on 
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