It was great to get at least one comment last week. Thank you, Richard! I hope to hear from more of you soon. But for now I will continue with “Online communities and the “tyranny of or” – Pt.2″…
Invex Communities
…But branded communities aren’t just about support. At Juniper’s J-Net Community, for instance, we’re making the transition from a traditional support community to one of support, partner, and business engagement. By targeting specific business issues and pain points of like-minded, passionate audiences, we can use J-Net Community to build awareness, interest, demand, and loyalty, to drive Web site traffic, and to gather feedback. Another community that’s taking great strides in a similar direction is Salesforce.com’s Apex Developer Network.
By creating an online engagement community ecosystem, versus just post/response, enterprises are discovering that they can gain all sorts of valuable information through crowd-sourcing feature ideas and solution direction, as well as create improved awareness.
And the great part is, this process can start anywhere. Just because Facebook isn’t the place for an in-depth conversation doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be mined for interesting and unexpected ideas. SAP is on the right track with their Facebook community, and no doubt listens carefully to what originates on the pages and forums there. With such a dynamic community, people crossbreed ideas and perspectives with the kind of free thinking that any closely listening company could profit by.
Of course, where good ideas are, technology isn’t far behind. Facebook itself is recognizing that in order to become even more useful to businesses interested in social media, it has to provide greater degrees of integration. That’s where Facebook Connect comes in. While it seems currently geared mostly to the small business or private user, I’d expect to see a more robust, enterprise version of this coming down the pipeline, something IT can integrate with whatever social media platform is being used for the official support or engagement community. Users and administrators could choose the level of integration, and in no time: a rich, diverse community ready to offer as much market data as you can capture.
Today, of course, I would absolutely encourage creating, growing, nurturing, and monitoring multiple communities, both branded AND public. But if Microsoft, SAP, Intel, Salesforce.com, and of course Juniper Networks are any measure, it’s worth it.
Suggested reading:
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
Tags: Branded Community, Discussion Groups, Ecosystem, J-Net Community, Online Communities, Social Network
