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

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.