Explore opportunities to build your own B-to-b community

Community

Online communities are not valuable to every site, but in some cases the online community does create some potential business opportunities. One of the important reasons to consider building an online community first is to help create a leading position in a given field.

We look at a case in which Siebel systems is a leading global sales automation software company, announcing in February 1999 that it would build a commercial portal sales.com, according to the company's chairman, Thomas Siebel, Sales.com concentrates on the most comprehensive resources in the world, providing all the tools, information and services needed by professional sales staff to help the professionals to work more effectively. To implement the plan, Siebel plans to collaborate with Sun Microsystems, Dun & Bradstreet, and Miller Heiman.

In December 1999, Siebel announced that Sales.com would absorb sufficient investment capital and restructure into an independent joint venture.

Sales.com's actions have enlightened its competitors: How could we not have thought of that?

This is a classic case of a traditional business company entering a new field, whose main means is to rely on the Internet and apply the Business-to-business community concept to its marketing goals.

Of course, sales.com is very large, many companies do not have such a strong capital, but on the Internet, small companies can also be designed to look like a big, any online company, regardless of size, can build their own online community, or at least a "target site."

To build your own community in that way.

If you are aware of the importance of building an online community and are planning to proceed, here are some of the basics of building a community.

1. Decide the type of community you need

Is your target audience a company employee (intranet), Customer or supplier (extranet), or a public community on the Internet? An intranet or extranet requires the design of special security measures to ensure the security of confidential information and the competence of the participants. You also want to set up user or membership rules to restrict access to the public community, but if your goal is to build a public community with a wide range of attention, you may want qualified individuals to use Community services.

2, decide to establish a community to achieve the goal

Define specific goals for your community and make operational budgets, such as the expected number of participants, predict Community impact on customer service inputs and revenues, and establish community operating budgets, including start-up costs, development costs, and daily expenses. Building a community is far more complicated than building a basic web site, because because of its special interaction characteristics, a community contains many potential late-stage support, so it is necessary to fully estimate the possible cost and manpower requirements to ensure the normal operation of the community.

3. Building Community Architecture

By studying other business communities and being actively involved, you can understand what the community is, how the community works, and the basic content that the community includes. In general, your community should consider the following factors:

(1) Information Center

The information center is usually the core of the community, depending on the type of community you're building, the information Center can be about your industry, company, Business directory (if applicable), related news, search links and search tools, and other company information, such as products and services, white papers, special reports, and more.

(2) Community service

You may want to provide value-added services to members of the community, such as a timeline for major events, links to Web pages, free newsletter subscriptions, program demonstrations, and free downloads, among other things.

(3) Interactive area

The key to an online community as a community is its interactivity, usually including the ability to communicate and even trade with members of the community, and perhaps the simplest way to provide interaction is to create a bulletin board for community members to post questions, answers, and comments that all members of the community can read.

In addition to bulletin boards, interactive forms with email, forums, and chat rooms, you can provide several or all of these interactions, in fact you need at least one interactive technique, as this is the basic feature of a community.

Creating an interactive feedback mechanism is also a good idea, even a simple online response form that can help encourage community members to present their comments and suggestions. Feedback and interaction build the soul of the community, from which you will find a lot of valuable advice to improve your community website.

(4) Online trading or "electronic commerce"

If you are building a community to make online transactions, your community needs to integrate some databases and E-commerce technologies. You may want to trade online with customers and potential customers through the community, or through the community to promote the purchase, sale and service of goods.

(5) Partners

Many trading communities are built on partnerships. Some people may want to join together to create a community, others may want to be patrons, and others may simply use the community to improve their own visibility and sales opportunities. Partnerships with ideal companies and organizations have many benefits, in addition to sharing the cost of investment in the community, and collaboration with well-known partners can also contribute to enhancing the credibility of the community and more in line with user expectations.

4, the final sprint before the Community release

As you can see from the above note, a community is in fact a more complex Internet station, do not underestimate the end of community construction work, the establishment of member services and response procedures, preferably the network database integration in operation, and make sure that all the technology you used in the community in advance detection and functional, Make sure that the server or host is functioning properly, that all activities are monitored and that each part is working properly ... All this should be done before the community is ready for public release.

5, the dissemination of community and publicity

Publishing an online community is similar to releasing a new product-most business-to-business marketers are familiar with the content. Publish your community with the same marketing strategy as the product release: Launch campaigns, try to get newspapers to report, even hype about special topics, and advertise if necessary.

6. Maintenance and development of the community

Once the community is built, it needs constant attention and maintenance. The community is an active, unstable place where members of the community want to update content, link paths correctly, trend discussion topics, and quick response interaction systems. Community maintenance is a fundamental element of a successful community, and there is a need to constantly explore ways to improve and develop your community. (From: OIC Idea Entrepreneurial Club)