A lot of people are under the impression that for whatever reason, Forums are a thing of the past. I can understand why people think this way. Before Facebook got really big, forums played a vital role in helping people stay informed. 

Whenever people share some sort of common interest, it’s only a matter of time until one of them puts up an online forum. There are all sorts of free software people can install on their servers to create a forum. These message boards used to be the only game in town. 

Prior to the rise of Facebook and Reddit, it seemed that there was a forum for any kind of special interest. It doesn’t matter what you’re into; maybe you’re into miniatures, or medieval art, or a certain type of artist. It doesn’t matter. There’s sure to be a forum that catered to whatever it is you want to talk about. 

Even you couldn’t find a forum that is specifically on point, you can bet that there will be a sub-forum or a forum within an existing forum that caters to your needs. That’s how things were prior to Facebook. With Facebook and its billions and billions of users, it became increasingly clear that people did not need to take the extra step and go to forums. 

You only need to do a search on Facebook for whatever it is you’re interested in, and you can find pages, groups, and specific accounts and content discussing whatever it is you’re searching for. This didn’t catch on immediately, but just like with anything else pioneered by Facebook, once it did catch on, it pretty much sucked out all the oxygen from existing platforms. 

This definitely happened with message groups and forums. Those message boards that used to rule to roost, they’re basically few and far between. A lot of them have died. Now, please understand that a lot of them are still around. 

How can we say that they have died when you can still load them up on your browser? Officially, they haven’t died. When you go to those forums, and you noticed that the last discussion was from two years ago, you can reasonably say that those forums are good as dead. They’re like zombies. 

For all intents and purposes, they have indications of life because you can still load them with your browser, their domains haven’t expired. However, when it comes to the actual value you’re looking for, they’re dead. People aren’t talking on them. People aren’t updating threads. People aren’t pushing up threads. People aren’t bumping. People aren’t doing much of anything. 

This is due to the fact that Facebook has pretty much sucked out all the oxygen that used to fuel these millions and millions of forums. What can you do if you’re looking for electronic cigarette materials? What can you do if you’re looking to research e-cigs? What if you have your eyes set on a particular e-cig product? Are these forums completely worthless? 

How to use e-cig forums the right way 

First of all, you have to look for live forums. The good news is that there is a filtration process going on with these types of websites. What I mean by that is for every 100 forums that have basically died, there’s still one that is sufficiently active. 

Now, please don’t get too excited. Don’t think that these websites are so red-hot that there is an up-post almost every second. They’re not that busy. They’re still alive, you can bet that there would be at least several posts per day, but that’s pretty much the best you could expect from these websites. 

Considering what they have gone through, that’s quite a lot. So be happy that you could find a forum concerning electronic cigarettes or e-cigs, or any other type of e-cig product that is sufficiently active. 

The next thing you need to look at is whether they talk about the issues that you talk about. Some e-cig forums just talk about legalities. That is awesome if you are a lawyer, or if you have a business that involves the legalities of electronic cigarette products. 

Maybe you advise Chinese manufacturers looking to set up shop in the United States. Maybe you advise small-time to medium-scale distributors who are looking to get into the electronic cigarette game by importing all sorts of stuff from China. 

All these organizations would need solid legal advice or at least would need to know somebody who can give them access to the right forms. But outside of that, talking about the laws regarding electronic cigarettes probably doesn’t really impact or interest the actual users of these products. 

Their only interest would be if they could sue somebody if something goes wrong with their product. But outside of that, people really don’t want to be bothered. So you should look for e-cig forums that are open-ended enough so that they can support a wide range of discussions. 

In fact, they can be so open that they have a high likelihood of supporting the kind of discussion you want to have. With that said, here are just 5 of the many reasons why you should use e-cig forums. Don’t look at them as dinosaurs. Don’t look at them as relics of the past. Don’t look at them as essentially worthless resources, because there are better and more active resources available on Facebook and other social media platforms. 

Believe it or not, given the long-term cumulative effect of the content posted on e-cig forums, stuff that was posted three years ago may still deliver solid value to your life right here, right now. Don’t be too quick to dismiss these forums as essentially irrelevant. No, they’re not. 

They can give you the solid information you’re looking for to make a fully informed decision, or to avoid losing money. In other words, the information they provide can still be valuable even though the consumer space has definitely shifted away from these online message boards. 

Don’t confuse the format for the value of the content contained in the format. With that said, here are five key reasons why you should bother with e-cig forums. 

They post the latest news 

The main problem I have going to sub-Reddits or Facebook groups, to get e-cig news is that a lot of the news is old news. Seriously, it’s as if a lot of these people wait until enough people repeat the same news over and over for them to decide to yet again report that news. 

Tell me something I haven’t heard. Tell me something new. Tell me something that will push the ball forward as far as the extent of my knowledge regarding everything related to electronic cigarettes. That’s what I’m looking for. That’s the kind of mindset I have coming in. 

Unfortunately, a lot of Facebook groups simply don’t police themselves to the extent that they compare their content to other groups. They think that they are floating out there on Facebook all alone, and then they think that they are 100% beneath. 

This mindset insulates them from having to double-check any kind of redundant information, or to police over the repeated or reposted materials. This is why you get a really messed up impression when you join these groups. You think that if you’ve seen one electronic cigarette group, you pretty have seen them all. 

Well, if that is your mindset, you have a lot going for you, because that’s precisely the case in 99% of the time. It’s really frustrating because you’re basically sifting through all sorts of posts that you have found in 1000 other groups. 

When you go to a forum, a lot of that goes away because a lot of forums focus on one hot news item, and it’s featured so prominently on the forum that people would think twice about reposting. They don’t want to look stupid. They don’t want to look dumb. 

So they would look at the top news items and just participate in the discussion thread instead of reposting yet another copy of the same information.

You get actual customer testimonials 

When you spend a lot of time on e-cig forums, you quickly learn to appreciate the tremendous peer pressure exerted on spammers, promoters, and scammers. In other words, there’s such a thing as community pressure. 

When people are doing something that they shouldn’t be doing, community members will sit up and pay attention, and give them a piece of their mind. If enough people are made examples of, negative behavior simply doesn’t get repeated. That’s what is so awesome about forums because it’s so public. 

The problem with Facebook groups and other networking platforms is that it’s very easy for these otherwise public learning opportunities to become private. The spammer just gets deleted. A bad comment just gets hidden, end of story. 

The problem is the story doesn’t end there because people don’t know any better. They can keep repeating that same behavior because they think that there are no bad consequences. So what if they get banned? They can go to another group, and then another group after that. 

You don’t get that issue with electronic cigarette forums or e-cig message boards. Instead, you get actual customer testimonials. These are people who actually use the product. These are people who are very familiar with the pros and cons of a particular product. 

You can tell just by reading these reviews and testimonials that this is the real deal because they don’t give you the impression that the product is somehow, someway perfect. Instead, they paint a clear picture of the product, warts and all. 

If you’re looking for a tremendous amount of honesty, you should go to e-cig forums. You can get the inside dope on whatever it is you’re thinking of buying. 

Industry trends 

There are lots of industry trends in the e-cig marketplace. In fact, this marketplace is now worth 1 billion dollars and is going strong. Some analysts believe that the market will double in size in no time. That’s how hot the market is. 

As you can well imagine, industry trends take place almost instantly. It’s as if they come and go in a blink of an eye. The problem of Facebook groups that focus on industry trends is that there is a filtering process. 

You don’t get a full spectrum of all the trends showing up. Instead, you only get notified of the most heavily publicized trend, usually when there is a big company behind a specific initiative in the industry. You can bet people will hear about it. 

On the other hand, if there is something more exciting, that is more grassroots in nature, it usually takes several months for news of that to percolate up to the Facebook group level. You don’t have to worry about that delayed reaction when you visit e-cig forums. Any late, breaking industry trends are actively published by the moderators of these forums. 

They have their ear to the ground, so to speak. They know what’s going on in the industry. They know the movers and shakers and the best part is a lot of them are unbiased. It’s not like they have a dog in the game. It’s not like they’re being paid by one side over another. 

This is what really sealed the deal for e-cig forums for me. A little bit of objectivity and lack of bias can go a long way. 

Customer feedback and discussion 

Usually, when a customer gives honest feedback regarding a product, this triggers a massive debate on Facebook groups. Just everybody else, I can tolerate a certain level of (15:00). As long as it clearly identifies the positions on both sides, and enables me to clearly see the pros and cons of their argument, I’m up for debate. 

The problem is debates are neither orderly, clear, nor conclusive when performed on Facebook groups. In fact, in many cases, it’s just a digital shouting match. And what’s worse is that a lot of brands may pay people to just speak up and essentially shout down the other side. 

What if the other side has a valid claim? What if the information that their sharing can actually help the brand that’s being questioned step up its game? Unfortunately, none of those are happening because it’s just a digital shouting match. 

You don’t get that impression with electronic cigarette forums. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they’re perfect. I’m not saying that there are no pointless shouting matches, but whatever heated exchanges there are, are moderate, to the extent that they create more light than heat. 

Coupon codes 

Finally, if you’re looking to save a lot of money on your next visit to your favorite electronic cigarette store? You might want to consider stopping by an e-cig forum first. Whenever product launches, or whatever e-cig marketplaces feel pressure from their competitors, they’re quick to come up with corrective measures. 

One of the most common corrective measures, of course, are coupon codes. Coupon codes are a great way of keeping consumers loyal. It’s also a great way of pushing consumers to try out more products that they haven’t tried out before. 

This leads to greater community interaction around certain brands. This also leads to long-lasting relationships. And the best part of all of this is it’s so public. This is why a lot of manufacturers and distributors would rather coupon codes on e-cig forums because they know this material can get in front of the right eyeballs. 

Compare this with e-cig Facebook groups. There’s so much noise being published on those places that you’d be surprised if you see something as useful as a coupon code show up on your Facebook timeline. I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen, but it’s so few and far between that it’s much better to go to a more specialized source of this type of information. 

Keep the five reasons above in mind if you’re still on the fence regarding visiting e-cig forums. I’m not saying that e-cig forums are perfect. They’re not perfect by a long shot, but based on what I know about everything else available, they definitely have a lot more advantages than disadvantages.

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