When somebody uses the term “social network,” what is the first thing that comes to mind? Chances are, Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn will be your go-to word association. These established online communities offer substantial benefits for executives in terms of identifying and engaging stakeholders, increasing brand visibility and communicating key messaging. That said, their massive size and scope requires execs to cut through the clutter in order to have their voices heard.
Enter enterprise communities. These b2b online networks have the same advantages of consumer-facing communities—connecting global audiences, building trusted relationships, offering interactive access to information—but they go a step further to unite members around a shared purpose and then contribute business value accordingly.
Because they have highly defined memberships based on a specific business topic—improving sales processes ( Jigsaw.com), exploring trends in the wireless space (I Nmobile.org), sharing medical insights and case histories ( Sermo.com)—and are invitation-only, enterprise communities are ideal for networking, improving bottom-line results and solving specific business challenges simultaneously.
“A b2b user generally visits an enterprise community as an extension of his or her professional learning,” says Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks. “He may be seeking to solve a real and urgent business problem or may be looking to connect and engage with a peer in a working group style. All these uses are driven by the need to make a business point of pain go away.”
While a number of enterprise communities already exist, communications executives can start their own virtual forum for collaborating with like-minded professionals to share ideas, discuss challenges, find solutions and establish thought leadership. Here’s how.
â–¶ Identify the audience you will serve (and who will serve you). There are two components of a successful enterprise community: a specific business need and a community of experts that can effectively address it.
“Start with the end in mind,” DiMauro says. “Understanding who you want to serve, and in what ways, provides the business rationale for an enterprise community program.”
â–¶ Establish clear membership guidelines and a strategic invitation process. “One of the best practices found in b2b communities is a well-crafted invitational experience where an audience is identified and then reached out to by the sponsoring organization in a personalized way,” DiMauro says. “Viral marketing also plays a large role in member acquisition strategies because trust is a driving factor in user adoption.”
The viral growth of enterprise communities also differentiates them from consumer networks, which tend to open their proverbial doors to everyone. The success of a closed community is not measured by the quantity of members, but by the quality.
Getting that quality starts with a clear vision of your target audience. Make a wish list of the members that would bring the best ideas and solutions to the table and then make a compelling offer for them to join.
â–¶ Design the site around navigability and simplicity, not pomp and circumstance. Decorating your enterprise community with more features than the iPhone App Store won’t impress members—quite the opposite. The point of the forum is to create value and offer information that can’t be found elsewhere. If executives wanted to share photos from last week’s post-trade show bar crawl, they would have joined Facebook.
“The reason for visiting the community is to interact and learn, not to browse and explore,” DiMauro says. “Therefore, the design needs to make it easy for the member to find what or who they are looking for. If a professional can’t use the community while [answering] the phone or conducting a conversation in his office, then it is too difficult.”
â–¶ Make the content count. “Enterprise communities connect information with a purpose. The content must support a business process,” DiMauro says. “Effective b2b communities need to serve as the concierge of interactions and information for the members. Each piece of content or interaction needs to be present for a reason.”
In the same vein, the content needs to be clear, concise and topical. Editorial calendars and a framework for editing member contributions help keep everything and everyone in check.
â–¶ Make interaction and engagement requirements for success. “The most important thing to get right is picking an interactive model to support the community,” DiMauro says. “Create a value proposition that is so compelling that members must engage to survive professionally.”
Your enterprise community should have features and functions that support users’ needs and the business’ goals. Failure to align business goals and community features will guarantee failure, period.
â–¶ Evaluate the community’s effectiveness and integrate the intelligence it generates into your organization’s business model. DiMauro emphasizes the importance of using metrics to measure the value the site contributes to your business, and to mining data for trend analyses (for a list of the specific metrics she recommends for measuring the effectiveness of enterprise communities, see sidebar).
In terms of specific best practices for measuring the effectiveness of b2b communities, Connie Bensen, chief community officer of Techrigy, points to the following:
1. Identify objectives;
2. Prioritize;
3. Choose what to measure, and which tools you will use;
4. Benchmark; and,
5. Identify trends and report on them.
Then, DiMauro says, “Integrate the community into your broader organizational operations, and leverage what you learn across sales, marketing and product development.”
But remember: While enterprise communities are places to gather intelligence about an industry or business sector, they are not marketing platforms.
“Community members provide valuable information, content and feedback,” DiMauro says. “Then, marketing provides value-added services and products to members in exchange for their interaction.” PRN
CONTACTS:
Vanessa DiMauro, [email protected]; Connie Bensen, [email protected]