Invex Communities
I’ve been traveling a lot recently, explaining the advantages of social media and online communities. One of the questions I’m being asked consistently is “What should our company focus on: a community on a public social network like Facebook, or a private, brand-safe community?’ … Delivered via platform vendors like Awareness Networks, Jive Software, or Lithium, for example.
This is a great example of what Jim Collins was talking about in his book Good to Great. Interesting that such a little word such as “or” can be so powerful! But when it comes to social media, the word “or” must be regarded carefully. The fact is, different types of online communities are useful in different ways, and ideally they can work together to meet the various needs of your customers, partners, advocates, and company.
Let’s look at Intel’s Facebook and Intel’s named community, for example, look at their relative strengths and weaknesses, and generally determine what is fair to expect from each. What I hope to show is that when used together, they’re a powerful complementary pair.
Long before Facebook gained traction and the phrase “social media” became a buzz word, there were great examples of online communities. And counter to the stereotype of techies not being social, most of these were developer online communities like the excellent work of the Microsoft Developer Network.
The software life cycle is perfectly suited to involving feedback from a community of users, it turned out. And these communities use the same basic ingredients that go into all successful online communities: common interests, real information, exclusivity and mindshare, a forum for dialogue, and in the case of support communities like MSDN, access to real experts within the company providing the technology being discussed.
Obviously, the support function of an online community is something you’re not going to find on Facebook or any public social media site. Nor should you. The purpose of public social media is not to have deep, feature-set discussions about your new product; rather it’s a place that, because of its openness and relatively “low-threshold” engagement, encourages rapid community growth on a scale that your business-driven and metric-driven support community will not strive to provide.
Is this discussion thread on the right track ? What are your thoughts so I can include them in “Online communities and the “tyranny of or” – Part 2″.
In the meantime…
Suggested readings:
- Laura Ramos, “B2B Marketers’ 2009 Budget Trends,” Forrester, April 24, 2009
- Zach Thomas, “Corporate Social Networks,” April 25, 2009
- Jeremiah K. Owyang, “What Works in Online Company Forums?” Forrester, November 24, 2008
Finally, I would really welcome any thoughts on your experience leverging Awareness Networks, Jive Software or Lithium Community Products and Services.
Tags: Branded Community, Discussion Groups, Ecosystem, J-Net Community, Online Communities, Social Network
Great post. I’m currently working to introduce online communities to wineries and this question comes up frequently. The branded community is were the deep meaningful conversation happens. The presence in Facebook, Twitter, etc are communication and recruiting channels.
Richard, I would love to hear more about how wineries and wine makers are using social media. Is there a place to learn more? In addition, we are definitely seeing the same trend here at Juniper.