In such a platonic zone, communications have to be meaningful and engaging to keep attention spans going.
Business interfaces are undergoing a symbolic change by adopting this changing trend to reach out to their customers. Here it becomes mandatory that discussion forums and social media platforms, that businesses use, offer its followers good content and facts.
Keeping this in view, there are two types of communities that exist - communities of interest and community of practice.
First questions first. What are these communities we speak of? How can businesses capitalize on strengthening their web presence through this?
The purpose of any online community or forum is to draw like-minded persons to act and interact. From the business point of view, e-communities and blogs act as advertising tool for the brands. This automatically makes businesses more personalized, balancing out the thin line that seperates hard-core growth and development.
To put it in the simplest of terms, communities of interest are wide and varied. It may be from anything to a single product discussion to wide ranging academic discussions about the industry. The key is to offer maximum information, articulate relevant opinions and criticisms be accepted gracefully.
Communities of practice are much more specific as professionals of the industry interact based on the shared experiences, ideas, strategies and practices.
In fact, most businesses set up such e-communities to cultivate a good rapport with their employees, outside official framework. This hints at the breakdown of the traditional chain of command in a big corporations where a CEO or President is usually a "name" for most employees. While such communities may not purely materialize in a face-to-face interaction but keeps the ties at all levels going.
So coming onto the important question how do such e-communities thrive for business. The answer is 3 step list of things to remember:
1. Delineate a clear and purposeful community. Having common interests is a key driver to start any interaction.
2. The real time focus should be on making the community knowledge-based. Unless the basics are clear, arguments and opinions shall remain superficial without real value to the members in the forum.
3. At the end of the day despite doing everything right, only some communities thrive while others become makeshift hangouts for baseless controversies and pointless chatter. That's not value addition in any sense. The ultimate purpose of all e-communities is to utilize the accessibility quotient of social media platforms to go that extra mile for building customer base.
The cornerstone of building a business or a e-community is based on certain core values that remained unchanged throughout history. In essence, technology is but an adjunct to human factor, always.
We hope that the tips help our businesses carve out a valuable and enterprising community. Share with us your tips to strengthen online communities so that businesses can grow holistically.
Follow us regularly for some great web wisdom.
Post a Comment