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The underlying principles of promoting online will always include "web presence" and nowadays having a solid online representation of your brand is as vital to an individual entrepreneur as it is to a major corporation. With that said it's worth taking a look at different social media platforms that are supposed to be relevant to the business of production to see how well they stack up to the entrepreneurial litmus test. This will be the first in a three part series that analyzes social media websites; in this case study we'll look the forum styled site http://www.futureproducers.com/ to see whether or not they are cultivating a crop of new producers dedicated to changing the future of the production game or if they're just another message board with a slick name and a lot of dumbed-down content.

In my opinion forums that are worth your time should set out to meet very real content and networking goals which are easy to spell out. So here is my list of what a user should expect from a forum as well as my input on how www.futureproducers.com stacks up:


A forum should be a free source of valuable information that can be disseminated and shared amongst the community:

While this website is free I must say I didn't find much valuable information on the first 10 pages of posts that I checked. That is unless you're interested in the latest on the Tupac death mystery, every new release that has already been flooded on hundreds of other forum/blog sites, too much gratuitous business promotion and lots of posts about personal music projects that rarely have more than 10 comments.  

Forum discussions should raise legit questions and have members of the community with experience and expertise answer those questions:

A fair amount of the questions in the threads on futureproducers.com were about how to advance individual production careers, however there weren't many qualified commenter's that could truly provide answers to these questions. Most of the answers came from users that were in the same boat as the individuals asking the question, which doesn't do a great deal for either person. Don't get me wrong it's fine to speculate about the issues confronting the production community but if you can't get qualified people in your forum to work through the answers then (IMO) there's little or no value to asking questions there.

What I have noticed is how many so-called "qualified" persons are trolling through that site trying to influence buying decisions or advance their individual business goals. Most of the time I can truly say that this community has policed itself and sent these guys packing which is a good look, however there are a few posters that get card blanche which either means the sites owner's support these positions or they're getting some sort of compensation to allow this type of attempted manipulation.

Forums should always be a place where the quality and tone of the comments match the advertised purpose of the site:

Comment threads on Futureproducers.com are typical of what you see on most high traffic burn-down sites which offer a lot of adolescent chuckles but little in terms of serious minded narrative and discussion. If you visit a thread on www.futureproducers.com that is discussing a serious topic all you have to do is wait until the trolls and spammers see that post reach a notable activity level (ie. 75 responses) and then the fun will begin.

At this point you'll be inundated with posters making comments that aren't intended to engage the discussion but rather contain a lot of random off topic babble. It seems that people on this site like to say whatever they want and spinning big fish tales is a favorite past time of a great deal of posters in that community. After all how do you verify a falsehood told by an anonymous poster from lord knows where?

Reputation management is important!

While most discussion forums use community moderators it's usually a good idea to ensure that those persons claim to fame goes beyond having a few thousand posts on your website. After all these are the people who are supposed to promote interaction and steer the conversation when appropriate. This site seems to use moderators as some sort of police force with an "I Have the Power" mentality.

I think that sends the wrong message to posters in the community and discourages active participation from readers outside of the community. This is especially the case when, as I pointed out earlier, some folks are allowed to ramble on about nonsense and they're not checked. Taking this approach to thread moderation brings in to question the intention of the sites owners.


I believe that forum moderators should start meaningful threads and engage participants with their understanding and knowledge. On futureproducers.com some of the moderators in the hardware, software and techniques section do that fairly well but the rest of the site is definitely lacking in that area. Personally I think the site's owners need to recruit more qualified moderators.

Recap

One strong point of http://www.futureproducers.com/ is the amount of community members they boast which is over 200k. While it's hard to verify how many of these members are active it does speak volumes to the resiliency of the site's founder(s). However if this site shut down today it wouldn't impact the business of music one bit. Overall I'd say this site doesn't live up to its name and I'd give it a C- rating as far as its value to producers and songwriters. Their forum feels more like a site for fans of production while the minority of the users there are serious minded music grinders.

Being a free web platform doesn't give you a pass on quality and purpose of content and being a professional music producer isn't some unobtainable dream. So where is the place for real conversation about the urban music business that everyone is trying to succeed in? If you know reach out and I'll gladly post the link on the PMP, just remember your forum has to pass the litmus test. Or maybe it's time for a PMP forum? Feedback is welcome...

Look out for case study #2 where we examine the new corporate darling Twitter and the many ways its supposed to impact your business.


- Anthony Marchante/Co-Founder PMP WorldWide Inc