Last Thursday, Digg held its fifth Digg Townhall in which founder Kevin Rose and CEO Jay Adelson share updates and answer questions asked by the Digg community. This type of open forum has become popular among online sites with large followings, but what about offline? Can companies benefit from creating an open forum like this with its community? Of course…

Hearing directly from your community (employees, customers, stakeholders, etc…) can lead to many things, the most beneficial of which being hearing quality suggestions on how to improve your business and strengthen your base of loyal customers.

Here’s Digg’s latest Townhall and below it, ways you can open the lines of communication between you and your community.

Opening the lines of communication:

Of course you could take the same route to your community that Kevin and Jay did, but likely that wont work for you so here are just a few ways you can engage your community to get quality feedback.

• Create a Twitter account and make yourself available for those interested
• Send an email survey to previous and existing customers and ask for their opinions
• On your website, invite users to send in questions and then answer them on video or respond via email
• Hold a live chat and send customers an invitation

For more ways to listen and talk back to your community, feel free to give The Cyphers Agency a call and we’d be happy to talk to you about how you can leverage the web to enhance your business.