Tips, tools, and best practices for B2B marketers.

What’s the key to making online communities effective?

October 28, 2008 | Posted by: Lee

A recent study by Deloitte, Beeline Labs, and the Society of New Communications Research asked over 140 organizations (B2B, B2C, NPOs) about objectives, success factors, and management of their online communities. Here's a summary of what they found.

Online communities were the most successful at:

• Generating more word of mouth
  
• Increasing product/brand awareness
  
• Increasing customer loyalty
  
• Bringing outside ideas into the organization

Not surprisingly the factors that contributed most to success where also what makes off line communities successful. Specifically:

• Connecting like-minded people
• The ability to help others
• Focusing on a hot topic or issue
• The quality of the community manager or team

Biggest obstacles.

The biggest obstacles to making communities work were:

• Getting people engaged
• Finding enough time to manage the community
• Attracting people to the community
  

Some unexpected benefits:

• Our market will tell us what they want if we just ask
• Our customers are happy that we are reaching out
• The ideas generated by the community

Best advice.

If you're thinking about going down this path:

• Get commitment from the top
• Start with the business strategy (amen to that)
• Start slow
• Content is king (double amen)
• Participate, do not control - the community doesn't belong to you.