â–¶ Online Community Stakes: The Verizon -sponsored study, “Dangerous liaisons: How businesses are learning to work with their new stakeholders,” surveyed senior executives worldwide on their views of how an emerging group of nontraditional stakeholders is impacting corporate reputation. 33% say that online communities will be their most important category of “non-traditional stakeholder” in five years.
• While NGOs top the list of groups currently most important to businesses (27%), online communities are close behind with 26%.
• 42% believe that online social networks will be the most effective means of communicating with these groups.
• Some 43%, the largest group of survey respondents, see reputation damage as their main risk in dealing with online communities.
Source: Verizon