Facebook and Twitter get a lot of the credit for all of the conversation that’s going on around the web these days, and quite rightly so - they certainly account for a great deal of it! However there’s still public conversation happening in many other channels - blogs, Q&A sites, news sites, YouTube, other social networks, and forums.

Google's newly redesigned SERPs place a great deal of emphasis on conversations, as I mentioned in my previous blog post. The new ‘Discussions’ option lets users refine their search results by time, relevance or date and they’re given the option for all discussions, forums or Q&As.

They can refine this even further by filtering for discussions of any length, short, medium, or long. In addition, they can sort by standard results, sites with images, and page previews, and by all results and results from nearby locations. That's some pretty deep down drilling!

Anyway, no matter which parameters you choose to search by under discussions, the non-everything options are Forums and Q&A.

Businesses looking to increase their exposure and visibility ought to consider answering questions from consumers in areas that they are qualified. This has always been something to consider for a successful online marketing strategy, but now forums and Q&A sites not only attract targeted traffic, but appear in search results. Not to mention they help you sell your expertise in your line of work. The difference now is increased visibility. Google's search options may not be new, but they're more visible now, and you can pretty much count on them getting used a lot more.

Q&A sites are also not new, but lately it seems that we're seeing an increased focus on them from a variety of players. Yahoo, the top Q&A site recently served its billionth answer, but others are bringing different elements to the Q&A table. Some are integrating local business listings with them to provide. Others are finding their own unique spin. Google itself even purchased Q&A property Aardvark recently. It will be interesting to see if this becomes more heavily integrated with the Discussions option.

Social media marketing is about engaging with your audience, and a big part of that is about knowing where to find your audience. A lot of brands find that their audience is easiest to reach through forums, which are kind of the old school social networks.

There's still a lot of value to the big networks like Facebook and Twitter, but forums are still a way to jump into a topical conversation and engage with an audience that is heavily invested in that subject. Depending on your audience, forums can sometimes provide more value than the big social networks

Forums and message boards are powerful because they have a lot of influencers, they reach a lot of people, and they rank in search results as well.

The very nature of forums makes them good for search, because users will continue to update them with fresh posts in many cases, and add information and value, and often answer the questions users are seeking with their search queries.

Last year Google made it easier to find forum posts related to topics users search for. When forum sites have more than one relevant discussion going, Google will link to them under the main result.

If you are new to a forum, make sure you pay attention and get a sense of the atmosphere in a community before jumping in and embarrassing yourself. If there's one thing most active forum participants have in common, it is that they're vocal, and you don't want any negative reputation issues to arise.

While forum participation may be like petting a shark, that doesn't mean you should be afraid of it. Just get to know the shark, and become its friend. The forum sharks just may potentially be some of your best and most loyal customers.