Axero Pulse » community software

Social Community Software For Business Marketing Strategy

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:00:54 +0000

A Valuable Lesson In Community Building For Your Business & Gaining The Upper Hand With Search Engines

Those of you who regularly read updates on our blog may have read the post titled “Social Networking For Businesses & Advertising Space – Is Your Online Community Space Really Your Own?” where we discussed the risk associated with building a community on a hosted social networking website or a third party network which you may have little administrative control over. While it doesn’t happen to everyone who has a Facebook group or a community hosted by a Saas company the possibility is there and it’s a risk that needs to be considered.

Communities that have been built for businesses are often fragmented across different websites as we have said often and mainly because these websites and networks offer a ready base of users and traffic that would have been difficult or needed more time to cultivate. It’s easier to go to Facebook or to Linkedin where your customers are rather than go through the process of getting them to your site and that’s what most would do. There is however an important marketing lesson to note here:

When you build a business website, all the content that goes on the website and all the content created as a result of activity on the website by others accounts for some value as far as search engines like Google go. Google notes the content on your website whether it’s blogs or discussion forums, documents, comments and so on and this has an impact on the page rank or how valuable a resource your website is seen as. Considering this is a very important strategy for generating better search traffic which can account for more customers and more sales, ideally, you need to keep as much of your activity and content on your own website.

The mistake that many tend to make is overlook this fact and they end up having a blog like yourblogblog.wordpress.com or yourblog.blogspot.com a community like yourcommunity.ning.com and articles posted at yourarticlesarticles.ezinearticles.com. While all of these are still helpful and a small portion of the traffic will still find itself to the main company website by way of links and banners, part of the search advantage from all this content is lost out to the sites that these communities are hosted on where this content is finally posted.

When you use a social software platform which can be integrated into your own business website, you essentially build all your community and content assets into your website and search engines trace all of this to one location or website. That could be blog.yourwebsite.com, articles.yourwebsite.com, resources.yourwebsite.com, community.yourwebsite.com, forums.yourwebsite.com and eventually you ensure that your website is a single valuable online resource for those searching for relevant information also giving you the upper hand with search engines.

While continuing to build communities on other websites is a good strategy to continue with alongside your main social marketing strategy, the emphasis should be on building value starting in your own back yard which in this case is your primary business website. After all that is where you ultimately want your customers and prospective customers to go and that’s where you expect to start the sales process. If you’re out building a community, keep it close!

Online Community Software For Customer Support

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:00:48 +0000

Social Networking & Customer Service – The New Business Norm

Let’s take a look at my last few interactions as a customer of some company seeking some customer service or support:

Last month the new 32 GB thumb drive I picked up at some store while I was traveling displayed problems copying data and file names would just turn to gibberish. I did a search for the model number and manufacturers name and finally found answers on a private technology forum. It seems like a number of people had the same problem with this piece and it didn’t take too long to find a working solution to my problem from those who managed to fix theirs.
We decided to do a long weekend break some time ago and heard of this resort from someone. I could have probably called him and asked him but instead I logged into a travel community site where some of the other members post their experiences on places they have visited and resorts they have stayed at. Sure enough, I found two or three good reviews on this place and that made up my mind to just go for it.
One of my laptops had a screen problem. Something I’ve never seen before where it started with a bad pixel, grew into a vertical line on the LCD display and then the lined kept multiplying. I went to the manufacturers website and posted my observations on the support forum there and within an hour someone from the community who had a similar problem got back to me through the thread telling me what to do.
I decided to check out a local band at a club we’ve frequented and grown to like. The problem is when a great band is in attendance, being a small place, it can get filled up quite quickly and we didn’t want to risk having to turn around at the entrance or wait in line. I logged into their social networking platform on their website and used the instant messaging system to have our names added to the attendee list to avoid any disappointment. Being a member of their online community has benefits!

The first and perhaps most obvious conclusion on my own actions above is that my first instinct as a customer in all these cases was to look online for the solutions to questions or issues I may have had. I didn’t bother looking for a phone number, calling someone or trying to directly contact the business. I went online. In some cases I found my solution on a website run by other consumers and general communities and in others like in case of the laptop, a community run by the business. Like myself, a lot of others just naturally prefer to use our pc’s or laptops which are always near us and look for some support online.

From the business perspective websites like the laptop manufacturers support forum or the club’s social networking enabled websites show these businesses know their customers look for service online and they need to be there when they are looking for it. If my behavior as a consumer is anything to go by, businesses which are not easily approachable online are missing out on being able to help their customers where many customers almost expect them to be. A business website which is social software enabled is in effect, that customer service rep waiting to help out. Think about this: what were your last customer service interactions online and did it make you feel better knowing the business had a website where you could find your answers?

Social Collaboration Software For The Sales Force

Tim Eisenhauer — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:00:26 +0000

The Social Business Collaboration Software Powered Sales Force

With the sales team being the front line in the quest for success for any organization, the need to strengthen their abilities as a team and equip them to function as efficiently as possible becomes paramount to their effectiveness. From businesses with smaller sales teams to ones with a sales force which can be hundreds and even thousands strong, there are a number of challenges which they can face which are unique to the sales organization. The ability to communicate easily and collaborate as a unit is perhaps one of the most common ones and while CRM software and blackberry’s are associated with making the lives of the sales team better, there is one other technology which is gaining ground very quickly…social networking software for collaboration.

Whether an in house sales force or a network of channel and partner sales representatives, the sales organization is often a widely spread very mobile organization scattered across locations or always on the move. Communication and content is a lifeline for the organization but the common complaint is a lack of a unified platform they can use to communicate on and work with each other. This often sees large numbers of sales representatives working as islands with no sharing of intelligence, best practices and a coordinated effort which could otherwise result in more efficient working and perhaps better revenues.

For the management, there are other challenges such as the need to send out individual communications with each sales rep with the alternative being to email or push out their communications and content across the entire sales force even though a lot of it may not be relevant to each one of them again creating an inefficient process. Training and development of new and existing sales reps is a constant concern with higher employee turnover rates than most other departments and the need to constantly update and enhance skills and information throughout the daily working process. So how is a social networking based business community platform going to address all this?

Building a collaboration network platform for the sales force is a great strategy. Sales teams at IBM, CISCO, T-Mobile and others have already experienced the results of leveraging collaborative social software in providing their sales teams with these platforms and here is just some of what has been observed by companies who have built such online networks for their sales organization:

Greater sharing of knowledge & best practices: – collaboration and social networking environments foster sharing of information and experiences which among sales organizations often translates to a widespread sharing of best practices. These best practices which are often posted by members of the sales team on the job come from practical experiences with customers and the practice of sharing this knowledge alone helps build a better sales organization.

Rapid turnaround time in getting answers to questions:- companies have seen with the ability to simply log in to the network and post a question on the discussion boards or forums, sales reps and channel sales agents find it easy to ask questions on handling situations, on product updates and other topics. What’s more is with all the other members regularly on the network, questions get answered quickly creating a strong process for ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Better objection handling:- it’s been observed that when sales reps come across customer objections while selling and post them within their network, they are replied to with multiple suggestions for handling these objections from others on the community. With everyone collectively pitching in on how to manage these objections, the learning curve increases and everyone gains from better success rates.

Constant pull-based learning & development process:- With the constant discussion, conversation, posting of learning content, presentations, blog posts, videos, webinars and other useful content the network also acts as a platform for continuous learning. Since it’s not pushed on employees it’s not seen as something they are forced to learn and rather, they are encouraged to participate in posting, consuming, commenting on and sharing learning content by seeing others do the same.

Single platform for distribution of content: Rather than have to email each sales rep or go through the other extreme of email the entire sales force with content and material which may not be relevant or useful to all of them, the collaborative network provides a single platform to which content can be posted to. Sales reps can simply login and take what they need whether it’s a product guide, specs update sheet or marketing collateral. This makes it easier for management to distribute content and spares the sales reps from being bombarded with what they may not need.

Single platform for communication and planning:- Perhaps one of the biggest plus points for management is having a single platform they can use to communicate with the entire sales team no matter how far they are spread and where they are physically located. Whether it’s sending out important notices or planning campaigns which need groups of sales reps to participate and discuss, the network provides a platform to communicate, plan and execute on what may otherwise be a daunting task.

Visibility into operations and recognition of performers:- The collaboration network brings a greater level of transparency into the working of the sales organization as well as to information which would otherwise slipped under the radar. Management can spot performers, contributions to the sales organization and spread the word on achievements to recognize outstanding sales reps and also to motivate the sales community as a whole to push the envelope and do better.

In short, the social collaboration software platform can bring a new level of cohesiveness to the working of the sales force and a unified sales force is powerful one. Quicker spread of information, better ability to plan and interact with each other and better communication can be targeted with building a platform exclusively for sales employees and a lot of businesses can benefit from the results seen by those who have been front runners in this space. After all if the goal is to push revenues, what better way than to equip the sales organization with the technology they need to bring home the results?

The Role Of Community Software In The Online Marketing Strategy

Tim Eisenhauer — Mon, 03 May 2010 13:00:49 +0000

Why Your Online Community Can Be Your Most Valuable Online Marketing Weapon?

Budgets for online marketing are divided among the several options available from spending on more direct advertising, sponsoring banners and buying Google Adwords to spending on SEO, social media marketing and similar tools. While each business works out its balance with the right mix of these it’s good to take an aerial view of the external community for customers and partners and understand it’s role in the overall online marketing context.

Here is a typical flow of an online marketing strategy:

first generate awareness –> accelerate branding online –> generate interest (generate sales leads) –> engage customers / nurture interest (or sales leads) –> retain customers and deliver customer service / support

If this is the objective of a marketing plan, then where would “building and online community” fit into the marketing equation?

Surprisingly, almost through all these stages! While with the right SEO techniques an online community can also generate early awareness among potential customers, one would typically attribute those costs to SEO, online advertising, email campaigns, newsletters, PPC campaigns and more push based campaigns. When it comes to online advertising like PPC, Adwords, banners much like offline advertising like print, television and radio, they are effective for a very limited time period.

That aside, they can only communicate a very small (limited) marketing message and still be very expensive. In case of Adwords, it’s usually a word or two, on television a few seconds, in print a limited number of words and pictures and so on. Eventually, to go beyond just creating initial interest you need to direct people to a place where they can get a lot more information and where you can communicate a more complete message whether a salesperson, landing page or website.

Providing customers and users with an external community to come together, collaborate and have discussions goes much beyond simply providing more information around your business the way a static company website would do. Other than providing customers with a platform to interact and share, it provides marketing with a platform to execute on many stages of an effective online marketing initiative.

Accelerating Branding: Social software platforms for businesses and building communities tap into word of mouth effect and sharing aspect which has made web 2.0 technologies stand out in today’s world. Companies that offer an external community for their customers on partners on their website have observed that after working on building their initial membership, the community in turn helps spread the word and attract a larger base of users with similar interest around the website. Features such as RSS, sharing posts, photos, videos and other content through email and other social sites trigger the spread of awareness about the community and results in a growth in the number of users. In turn, there is an ever increasing number of users who are aware about a business’s brand.

Generating Interest & Generating Sales Leads: While this can also be done by a more static website which can carry a lot of information which can drive interest, an social software based website has the added advantage of a variety of web 2.0 content such as on demand video, podcasts, webcasts, discussions, blogs and more which can all add to helping sell the business and quite indirectly as compared to a sales person. A product or business which is clearly backed by a community of customers becomes an attractive option to any user who can clearly see third party support and not just representatives from the business saying it’s good because they work there. With the ability to freely interact with other customers, ask questions, get opinions and find solutions to problems on the community, it can be an extremely effective tool in selling.

Engaging Customers / Nurturing Leads: Perhaps the area where an online community platform can score over any other solution, keeping customers engaged and having their attention over prolonged periods of time is where many marketing organizations let potential business slip through. Even after initial awareness, a user will only buy if they need something offered immediately. As for all the others, you need a way to keep them engaged and nurture them till they are ready to buy. Whether to develop customer loyalty or to nurture potential customers till they are ready to buy, building an online community is a great solution to hold on to your customers.

Customer Retention / Customer Service: A well-built external community for customers can go on to deliver customer support and customer service which ultimately results in satisfaction. Creating a central resource of support documents, building a knowledge base and providing a platform for them to find solutions to not just issues around products or services but a wider support platform where the community helps each other can result in happy existing customers as well as other users who can turn customers.

With social community software platforms being such versatile tools for marketers to execute on their various objectives, more businesses are pushing their online communities as one of the most prominent features of their websites. Used in combination with advertising and other media to reach out to customers, it provides a central base to gather, nurture and hold onto a business’s most valuable component…..it’s customers.

How Social Software Can Impact Your Organic Search Marketing

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:00:46 +0000

Build A Community And Build Search Marketing Capabilities

Staying on top of SEO and search engine marketing strategies is a constant challenge for any marketing organization, and the battle for the front pages of search results is ongoing. While one on-site SEO strategy like adjusting titles, meta tags, and adjusting copy to include keywords is a one time or periodic activity, the challenge is the daily ongoing work — and that may be difficult for a single person or a small team to take responsibility for and execute day after day. On a more static business website, this is much the way it works — and marketing alone is responsible for the content, updates, or other activity that can help generate more search traffic to the website. Building a community using a social software platform on the site however, changes the dynamics completely and can add a whole new dimension to your search marketing capabilities. Other than the fact that social software platforms such as our own Communifire are built on a search engine friendly architecture, by building a community that’s part of your business website, you are effectively outsourcing a critical part of your SEO activities to your customers and members and leveraging “the power of many.”

By reviewing feedback from businesses that have incorporated social software networks as a part of their website as a marketing strategy, there are some clear benefits that have surfaced. Here are some key benefits of extending your website to include a community with respect to boosting its search traffic:

Increased indexed content pages: One of the first outcomes of establishing an active community of users on the site is a spurt in the amount of content added regularly to the website, as well as the number of pages within the website. The increase in pages within your website will also see an increase in the number of pages indexed by search engines, creating a wider net of content on the web that can bring visitors to the site. With such pages and content being created constantly, this grows consistently over time without needing too much attention from the in-house team.

Build up of useful content and media: An active community inadvertently creates and publishes large volumes of fresh content within your website in the form of discussion posts, blogs, articles, photos, videos, etc. … and are generated daily, adding tremendously to the search marketing opportunities. This volume of content creation and addition to the searchable content is very difficult to replicate for a single person or a small online marketing team.

Wider promotion & social networking effect: Within a social networking environment, the community promotes, shares, and markets, their own content (as well as others) both within and outside the community creating a viral effect. This will give your website a greater reach and distribute marketing responsibilities to the community.

Build up of valuable keyword density: In the course of the interaction and discussions on the community section of the website, some of the primary keywords you need your site to rank for are likely to be frequently used in natural communication, building up the density of those keywords within the site. For example, if you build a community around network security, the words network security, anti-virus, firewall and so one are going to come up frequently during interactions and the site will start ranking higher for those keywords.

Creation of long tail keywords or keyword phrases: Discussions and content on the community are more likely to build more long tail keyword phrases within your website, which even SEO experts may not factor in. This happens during every day interaction and keyword phrases like “how to protect your peer to peer network” may draw some very specific and very relevant traffic to your website. Keyword phrases that arise out of natural language communication will build up on the community and in time be responsible for a significant percentage of all traffic — and more importantly some very relevant traffic.

Quicker link building: Communities and the activity they entail encourages quicker building of both internal links within the website (including to important offering and marketing pages) as well as inward links to the website as a result of members linking to the community and pages within from their personal blogs, websites and sharing of links with others. Link building is critical to the search marketing strategy and the more links that are regularly built, the better.

Page rank development: With more conversations, discussions, and resources built within the community section of the website, search engines are likely to recognize the site as a growing useful resource within the domain and reward the site with a higher page rank — making a great impact on the search traffic results.

It’s important to note whether you use a social software platform to develop your community section or develop your own community software from scratch, for this strategy to work effectively, the platform and the community should be on your website and within your domain. Third party communities hosted elsewhere may help with traffic and marketing, but won’t maximize the SEO potential the way your own community will. There are many areas to consider while developing your search marketing, but few can match the benefits of incorporating a social software based community on your website.

Build a community – build traffic.

Customization Of Look And Feel For Your Online Community Software

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:00:08 +0000

The Good The Bad The Ugly Of Social Networks & Community Sections On Business Websites

Have you ever come across a company website where the design, look, and feel oozed professionalism and gave you the feeling that you were viewing a “credible website” — until you logged into the community section, forums, or the social network section of the site and you find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings again? This is usually a result of weaving in a free open source platform to extend the website to include a community section or features such as forums.

A majority of the free software hosted options for communities are not built with complete customization abilities in mind. They offer functional solutions that allow you to customize some options, and at the most, offer a choice of skins to adjust look and feel — but, to be able to add on a community area or social network as a seamless part of the website, one needs to be able to get down to the code and components that govern the basic look and feel.

While selecting community software for your website, be sure to select a platform that allows you to customize down to the fine details, and that will allow you to integrate it with the rest of your website. Solutions like Communifire, that provide access to the CSS style sheets (which are well labeled and documented) make it easier for you to customize fonts, colors, borders layout, and adjust each aspect of the look and feel to appear as a extension of your existing site.

This way, when someone comes across your site and navigates through the community (where people do spend a lot more time) they have the same design experience and familiarity carried through the entire site.

This is the kind of experience you have while using communities on sites like CISCO’s and others where the social networking and community part of the site is really a big part of the overall site. It doesn’t look like someone had a great aesthetic sense while building their main website and then decided to shabbily glue on a community platform as an extension.

Here is a check list of design elements you should check for to see if you will be able to edit or modify them to gel with your look and feel while selecting a social software platform:

Layout, spacing, and borders
Images and icon sets – including avatars
Colors – including background, foreground, font, borders, hyperlinks, etc.
Fonts and text style / formatting
Ability to add on components and widgets, like forms and anything else that may be needed

The entire point of evaluating a good social networking or community platform is to avoid having to build everything from scratch — but you still want your community to give the end user a seamless experience. If you select a platform which gives you that, you’ll have a community that’s functional and looks right!

Social Networking Sites – Where Fans Rub Shoulders With Their Favorite Stars

Tim Eisenhauer — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:11:01 +0000

What’s common between Ellen DeGeneres, Brittney Spears, Ryan Seacrest, Kim Kardashian, and Oprah Winfrey? They all have between 2 million to over 3 million Twitter followers and staggering number of online fan followers. The celebrities and social networking relationship is making news headlines more frequently now, with Ashton Kutcher’s antics on Twitter, or some other celebrity taking swipes at their peers through their blogs.

Social networking and community software has been the technology foundation for a lot of PR companies and fan bases for popular movies, bands, artists, and celebrities … and this trend is simply going strong. Well known personalities who were once “access restricted” now “more human” and reachable through their community sites, blogs, or micro-blogging accounts. Social networks are now places where the bodyguards, PR agents, and entourage surrounding these stars seem to fall away. And celebrities have a place where they can just be themselves and freely exchange conversations with fans, while still having the physical security of knowing they won’t be mobbed while at their keyboards or iPhones. To them, these social software platforms are a great way to communicate with their audiences and reach out to them with the ever-so-important personal touch, while still keeping a safe distance.

To the fans and the audiences, this offers an experience like never before. It offers a chance to freely communicate or connect with their favorite personalities and makes them accessible like any other person on a social network. How else would we imagine being able to know what David Beckham has to say, get to comment on Fred Durst’s blog to kick start a discussion, or actually get Donald Trump to hear someone else’s opinion for once. Communicating with the famous has never been easier!

The social networking technology and social software platforms have become the PR agents of the online world, and provide a way for the stars to build stronger, more personal relationships with their fans. It’s lending a human touch to a space where it was badly needed and somewhat lacking. It brings together people with a common interest in a celebrity, a movie, a band, or person they admire and includes that entity in the conversation, giving everyone what they need. For those who have a fan base and don’t have or use the technology to back it, they may just be missing out on the new era.

Building Customer Retention And Customer Loyalty Through Online Communities

Tim Eisenhauer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:33:53 +0000

Online Communities Can Work Where Newsletters And Emails Don’t Deliver The Customer Loyalty & Retention Your Business Needs

It seems that more businesses are turning to the online communities as an answer to challenges with building and retaining their customer bases every day. Just the other day, I met with a business development team from a market research company looking towards developing an online community, after they started observing that their current customer loyalty programs (including a fortnightly newsletter) was just not as effective as it was a few years ago when they first started. While the newsletter resulted in some click throughs and reads from their 5000 strong email database, it lacked the participation and two way conversation they were seeking to have with their customers and prospects — which they felt was necessary to build a stronger relationship with them and create more loyalty towards the services and reports they deliver.

The organization had almost 6 different business arms, each catering to the research and business intelligence needs of a different industry vertical. And each arm wanted to create a single customer facing online community (rather than fragment it across the different verticals) and then allows the user to select their category of interest according to their industry or area of interest. This way, they could divert all their attention towards building one really valuable community and resource for their customer base — and then make it easy for each customer to find the information that’s most relevant to them within the community, rather than manage several smaller ones.

This model has the following benefits:

Having only a single location online to manage allows the team to focus on developing a single resource with quality, rather than scattering efforts over multiple smaller communities.
A single community makes it easier to promote, while still being able to provide customers a section within the community that’s their “go to” place to interact with the business as well as find information valuable to them.
The content within the community gets updated more frequently, giving it an SEO edge which benefits the business.

Using this model and leveraging a social networking online community software platform, the company hopes to gradually replace their newsletters and email marketing efforts with this more pull based model, which will allow the customers to play a more upfront and personal role in the company’s customer retention efforts and grow their online community rather than their email lists.

Venturebeat.com recently published a post around online communities helping build customer loyalty and the article said:

Online communities are one of the most efficient ways to listen to your customers. When your company hosts an online community for your small business customers, and you truly have the goal of listening and being a valuable resource for them, something special starts to happen. Your good intentions and efforts will begin to translate into actual business results for your customers, and ultimately for you as well. As you open your ears to their thoughts, concerns, and complaints, you gain their respect and confidence, causing you to no longer be simply a vendor who provides a service, but rather an indispensible partner.

With the right social software platform and a focused plan to bring the customers into the conversation, the online community could be your center of customer loyalty and retention.

Community Social Software – Towards Two Way Marketing Communications

Tim Eisenhauer — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:07:58 +0000

Turning Your Marketing Communication Into A Marketing Conversation With Community Social Software

I came across an interesting statement while browsing through conversations in a community on social software. It came from a sales communication professional working with a global hotel chain — and having seen marketing sales communications in the industry evolve in the 17 years she has worked there, she observed:

“Nowadays, no one wants another newsletter, so we’re hoping to make our online community a robust forum for sharing ideas and best practices in a conversational format.”

Marketing and sales communications are going through a change, just as they did some years ago with email and newsletters. As peoples in-boxes are flooded with marketing messages and SPAM’s, the effectiveness of these mediums have taken a beating over the last few years. Despite the practice of opt-in email marketing becoming more widely accepted, people who have been bombarded by push-based marketing communication are now moving towards pull based forms, where they can search for and consume the content that they are interested in rather than receiving these communications from businesses. The other real drawback that automated email marketing and newsletters have is in today’s context of Web 2.0 and social software, where conversation is the mantra — these mediums are more one-way communication.

Selling today is more about being able to solve your customers problems and less about pitching a product or service hoping they will take the bait — and this is where more traditional marketing and sales communication is losing out where online communities and social software enabled websites are making ground quickly. Communities that offer a platform for dialog between businesses, customers, and other stakeholders rely on this conversational approach and hope to solve problems and provide solutions to customers. It offers a platform to build stronger relationships with customers and helps them build trust in the businesses through this two-way conversation.

Communities used for marketing conversation can help address the challenge that many businesses face today with the change that’s become apparent with the way customers respond to newsletters and similar channels. Through blogs, forums, document sharing, videos, and other rich content that customers can simply access when they have a requirement or problem they need to address, business can strike those conversations using their community platforms. It needs a dedicated effort and may not be an instant shift, but the online community is looking like the platform of choice for customers and businesses — and marketing and sales communications will be more conversation centric in the days to come.

Social Networking Platform in ASP.NET

Vivek Thakur — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:58:44 +0000

Communifire our main product, is a unique social networking platform in ASP.NET. Basic social networking is out there with many vendors reaching out on the ever growing demand. Social networking is the way to go, and still many businesses have to catch-up to the bandwagon. What most of us do not understand is that the social networking is NOT just a simple collection of forums or blogs software or just videos and photo sharing. Instead it is a platform which encourages user interaction building up the community spirit amongst its members. Forums, blogs, videos etc are just tools of trade which it may/may not use to achieve the high level goals. The core engine of a successful community platform should:

1. Encourage visitors to sign up and become a part of the group by promoting content relevant to the business of the community: well designed landing pages, planned email campaigns and member-rating system helps to achieve these goals.

2. Provide simple and user-friendly means to add content to the community: easy to use CMS, attractive UI, faster loading pages are crucial for a community websites’ survival in the long term

3. Provide valuable resources to its members (which can be in form of videos, blogs, articles etc): these resources should be SEO optimized because 90% of people visiting your website would have landed there using some kind of search engine like Google. By having SEO optimized forums, blogs and articles you can convert a big percentage of these online visitors into community members

4. Provide a means to share these resources across the Web in a platform-agnostic way: this is where WCF comes into picture! Once you launch your community, other popular websites might need to index your resources and your platform should be ready to handle that. For financial communities, having a scalable system which can support legacy B2B and B2C interactions is very crucial.

5. Provide multi-disciplinary approach to notifications and information dissemination: Emails are passé, now RSS and ATOM feeds are a must in every community. Having dedicated RSS feeds for your community content will not only make the content easily accessible to a wider audience but also widen your range of offered services increasing the depth and effectiveness of information adoption. Besides, RSS never has a SPAM problem!

6. Flexible marketplace system: More members essentially implies a bigger “market”. Having a community section catering to buying/selling of goods/services is a an important business model add-on for your community adding to the revenues. WCF plays an important role here.

7. Centralize your interactions with the members: A template-email system plays an important role in sending custom emails to members on a regular basis. Such emails play an important role to keep the community “alive”.

There are a lot of on-going developments in this sphere and the next generation social networking communities *should not* aim to absorb and implement everything, as it may not be logistically and economically feasible. Instead the community platform should be flexible and scalable to “leave enough room” for upgrades and improvisations.