Attention sellers: How to use the power of online communities to build your business

According to Rob Howard, CTO and founder of enterprise collaboration software company, Telligent, "everything is social — social commerce, social business and social CRM". But he prefers terms like "community" and "collaboration" over "social" since they tend to describe more accurately the complexity and depth that is the world of online communities.

In this day and age of progressive technologies and ideas, one of the best ways to build your business and your brand is to get involved in online social networking communities.

Different types of communities

There is a variety of social networks on the web, including the following:

Direct Community:

Howard refers to these communities as those which are owned and operated by a company running "proprietary community and enterprise collaboration software solutions." The organization runs and manages the communities which include B2B and internal employee communities. Dell's Support Community is an example.

Managed Community:

These are communities started and managed by the organization, but are run on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The main difference between this type of community and the prior is that organizations do not benefit from rich data and user profiles created in the community.

AlertPay manages and participates in communities on Facebook and on Twitter.

Participating Community:

These are communities started and managed by individuals and groups on social networking sites or sometimes with proprietary software. The organization whose products and services are up for discussion can participate but have no authority or access to the data created in the community.

Questions to ask

If you want to increase brand awareness, increase revenue and decrease expenses, start thinking about strategies in which you can leverage from these social networking communities. There are a few questions you should ask:

What is your objective?

Figure out your motives for getting involved with these communities. What do you get out of it? What do your customers or members get out of it? What are your end goals? Is involvement in these collaborative communities going to actually enhance your business and your relationship with your customers or members?

Who is your audience?

Depending on whether you're trying to engage a new or existing audience, the solutions may vary. A community in which your members interact may be a good strategy for an existing audience, such as a "managed community".

What are you measuring?

Community and collaboration technologies provide a cornucopia of data, such as valuable customer ideas and suggestions, and potential customers, users or members. So, you should be able to measure just about anything with the help of the customer data available, like customer loyalty and conversion.

Now you have a better idea on how to to further build your business and your brand and foster customer collaboration and loyalty through the management of and participation in online communities.

Thank you for reading!

Source: http://mashable.com/2010/04/09/online-communities-business/