PROPOSAL FOR BRASS TAXES PART 2
- xingyu zhong
- Oct 4, 2017
- 4 min read
As the idea of increaing online exposure I talked about last time, there were two things Brass Taxes could do: publishing tax articles online and performing online tax education on social media or forum. When I was presenting this idea, Rus asked me where to put the articles. I said just put them on the company's website. However, while I was refining my idea, I found an online forum including all those things would be a better option. This online forum is a freelancer tax community that seperates from the company's website but has links and information about the company. So, it will be another part of the company's website.
The initial ideas to build such a forum are listed below:
Website building: 1. Add page “about us” to the homepage introducing the company and team members. 2. Add a link to the Brass Taxes Forum by adding page “Forum” to homepage
* Function of the Forum: People can read articles, questions and answers published in the forum, search for questions and articles; Users can ask and answer questions, comment under articles, interact with other users and forum managers; Company members as the forum managers can publish articles, answer questions and do other management of the site.
* Articles reference: https://www.freelancetaxation.com/ Writing in Brass Taxes funny and joking style
* Forum structure:
Forum
- new posts
- articles and questions
- topics
- managing tax
- deductible expense
- managing finances
- groups
- freelancers
- artists
- designers
- editors
- film/video/animation
- photographers
- psychotherapists
- writers
- about us
- search
- homepage
- login/sign up
New posts: the most recent published articles and questions; Topics: articles and questions are divided by three tax preparing topics; Groups: articles and questions are divided by different careers; users can find others that work in the same area and communicate with each other; About us: introducing the company, contact information and its social media; Search: people can use keywords to search relevant articles and questions; Homepage: link to Brass Taxes homepage; Login/sign up: users can create an account using their email or login.
After I got these ideas, I started learning to build a real online forum. I was looking at several forum to see their structures and functions, and finding a proper platform to build a online forum as a newbie. Then I settled on building it in Wix because it seems easier than other professional online forum building platform. But, as I started building the forum, I found there were some limits of the website building functions which made me couldn't follow the structure that I originally had. But also found some new functions like the members can search for each other in the forum based on the information they input, which made the forum even better than I thought. So, I made some changes to the forum structure:
- Home - Forum
- Topics
- Groups
- Blog
- About
Here is the link to the forum I built for Brass Taxes:
In the Home page, I made it has the same logo, slogon and style as the brand. There are also links to the company's main website. Two slides there have links to the Forum and Blog page. People can also put their email to subscribe for the latest news from Brass Taxes.
In the Forum page, memebers can ask and answer questions; non-members can browse contents in it. The login/sign up bar and search bar are located here. And I actually put two forums in it, one is Topics, the other is Groups. They have the same functions. Just Topics is focused on the tax problems, so it has the categories as managing tax, deductible expense and managing finances, while Groups' categories are career focused, where people can find the problems that most in the same career field would have, and also connect with thier peer in the comment area.
The Blog has the articles created by Brass Taxes talking about helpful tax tips, also Brass Taxes news. Members will also get those information in email too. There is also a search bar here that people can search the key words for relevant articles.
In About page, there are introduction of Brass Taxes, contact informations, box that can send email to Brass Taxes, and a link to the company's main website.
Start off: Company members post articles and questions and answer them first; Provide discounts for current customers who join the forum and ask questions or leave comments, in that way to make the forum look busy and popular.
There are 4 advantages to build such a forum:
1. Boost the SEO of both the forum and the main website of Brass Taxes;
2. The company would have a better chance to be acknowledged by potential customers when they search tax questions using search engine; 3. Educate customer about tax knowledge which is one of the company’s values, and save future work at online appointment in the meanwhile; 4. Enhance customers’ confidence to the company’s work by providing professional tax information.
After I showed my online forum to Rus at the final presentation, he was content about it. He said he was actually talking to a SEO guy about how to improve the SEO of the company's website. And that guy told him that it would need to a blog. He thought what I did was exactly what they were discussing about and more because of the forum part. He was interested in the forum about how it works and how it brings the freelancers together. He also liked how I designed the layout and categories of the website. It looked simple and clear.
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