Between social networks, help platforms, and specialized forums, choosing the right format to build a direct and lasting relationship with your audience is crucial. Mathias Blandin, CEO of Semiologic, shares his vision for the future of forums.
Forums: A Format More Modern Than It Seems
Long considered a relic of Web 2.0, forums are currently experiencing a genuine revival. While social networks prioritize fast, ephemeral feeds, forums offer structured, readable, and lasting spaces—ideal for customer support, co-creation, and valuing long-term interactions.
Forums are not dead; they have simply evolved. Users are looking for clear, reliable exchange spaces focused on their topics of interest. Brands and communities have everything to gain by modernizing their existing spaces, explains Mathias Blandin, CEO of Semiologic, the publisher of the GraphDebate solution for managing online communities.
The Revival of Community Platforms
Online forums had lost ground, particularly to Facebook groups and other community spaces directly integrated into social networks. The reasons were manifold: ease of access for users who already have an account, increased legal constraints regarding editorial responsibility for content, and obsolete technologies ill-suited to mobile usage.
Today, far fewer brands offer free open forum spaces. The law has become more restrictive, and the benefits are deemed low. Yet, for those who manage to get organized, it’s a winning trio: SEO, engagement, and retention. But this requires real animation and genuine commitment. Not everyone has the resources to manage a community.
However, signs seem to indicate a possible revival of these community spaces, much like Reddit, “a mega-community that works extremely well and remains a space for freedom of expression.” Other major tech players also maintain support forums: OpenAI for ChatGPT, Orange for customer help. “These examples prove that the format remains relevant, provided it is adapted to current standards.“
The shift to mobile, the E-E-A-T criteria imposed by Google (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), as well as Core Web Vitals, are also reshuffling the deck. Older forum platforms, often based on aging technologies, no longer meet these requirements. However, modern solutions like GraphDebate, designed as “mobile-first” and optimized for SEO, offer new perspectives.
Strategic and Essential Independence for Brands
By regaining control of their communities, brands and media outlets have the opportunity to capture first-party data—an indispensable lever for building an actionable audience base. Organic SEO is another major pillar not to be overlooked, allowing the exploitation of long-tail pages that capture organic traffic over time.
Unlike posts on social networks, this content remains accessible and referenced over time, emphasizes Mathias Blandin.
The audience built this way can be reused for other marketing levers: newsletters, commercial offers, subscription programs, etc. This strategic independence allows for revenue diversification, reducing reliance solely on advertising or third-party platform algorithms.
Having your own community infrastructure allows you to master its evolution, adapt features to specific needs, and, above all, keep control over your data and customer relationships.
3 Tips for a Successful Community Strategy
To relaunch a proprietary community, a structured and methodical approach is necessary to achieve good results. Here are the recommendations shared by the CEO of Semiologic to help you build a community strategy effectively and sustainably.
1. Choose the Right Playing Fields
Online forums work when users can exchange around a shared passion, such as beauty, cooking, travel, sports, etc. “A brand like L’Oréal will struggle to offer a legitimate community space because users want to critique products and talk about the competition.” Communities require a certain distance from the brand to function authentically. As for users, they must feel they can express themselves freely, without censorship or commercial pressure.
Specialized media and customer support forums thus constitute particularly fertile grounds. “Reworld Media understood this well by taking over well-known forums like those of Doctissimo or Au Féminin. We have started equipping the forums of Beauté Test and Psychologies with our technology.“
2. Think “Mobile First” from the Start
While the majority of web traffic comes from mobile, older forum platforms, initially designed for desktop, offer a degraded user experience on smartphones. This unsuitability partly explains their decline. This is why Semiologic adopted a mobile-centered approach from the start for its GraphDebate solution.
You must think mobile-first, offering a fluid interface, intuitive navigation, and optimized loading times.
The notification experience also plays a crucial role for the CEO. “We are working on encapsulating forums within mobile apps to benefit from native notifications. Browser notifications are intrusive, and notification emails no longer interest anyone. This also explains the success of Discord, even if its interface is heavy and not very ergonomic.“
3. Remove the Moderation Barrier with AI
Moderation, historically the main obstacle to the development of online forums, accumulates negatives: high cost, legal complexity (with publishers being held responsible for published content), and significant human resources required. To overcome these constraints, which may have discouraged some initiatives, Semiologic offers a moderation solution boosted by artificial intelligence.
Our AI is contextualized, meaning it doesn’t just moderate raw text but takes into account the context, the media, and the conversation to which the message is replying, and it can be customized for each client. This ensures GDPR compliance while guaranteeing precise control.
By automating a large part of the moderation work, brands save time while retaining final control over publication. “Thanks to this technology, we are making the return of real, modern forums possible—easy to administer and pleasant to read.“
A Technical Solution Adapted to Brand and Media Needs
Beyond a simple forum, the community platform published by Semiologic stands out for its technical architecture. It natively integrates SEO optimizations, such as server-side page generation, compliance with Core Web Vitals, and data structuring in line with Google’s expectations.
Semiologic is not just a forum: it is a true CMS, fully customizable. Our clients can add their own HTML elements, menus, ads, columns, etc. This flexibility allows for harmonizing the experience with the existing digital ecosystem while remaining optimized for SEO.
Better Conversation Readability
The GraphDebate solution also adapts to different needs: media outlets find a way to re-engage their audiences and generate complementary content. With the “Bubbleflow®” feature, you can clearly visualize the conversation structure and know who is replying to whom, for better debate readability.
Unlike most other systems, discussions do not pile up confusingly. It is a real answer for think tanks, researchers, institutions, or companies working on complex subjects.
ROI and Revenue Diversification
This “next-generation” community platform provides a truly strategic complementary offer to social networks. By highlighting a mobile-first approach, integrating AI to facilitate moderation, and using SEO-optimized content, brands have all the cards in hand to offer genuine proprietary exchange spaces that generate organic traffic and actionable first-party data.
For Mathias Blandin, the return on investment is measured in terms of strategic independence, with diversified revenues as the outcome and a direct relationship with the audience:
- Support cost reduction: A growing share of recurring questions is handled by the community (self-service), which lowers the cost per ticket.
- Sustainable long-tail SEO: Each indexed discussion becomes a recurring organic traffic asset, reducing dependence on paid campaigns.
- Loyalty and retention: Readable and fast spaces (mobile-first and Core Web Vitals) increase member returns and session duration.
- Operational efficiency: Contextualized AI-assisted moderation reduces time spent on simple cases while leaving final control to teams.
- Knowledge transfer: Tutorials, best practices, and feedback capitalize on product knowledge and accelerate the onboarding of new members.
We want to help brands and media regain control over their communities, their image, and their traffic. Our mission is to provide them with a technologically advanced, mobile-first, and cost-effective solution that allows them to recreate quality communities, assures the CEO.
Article source: BDM
