B2B Brand Building: Online Communities - Pt.2

Yes, the internet is changing the way B2B marketing connects with their partners, sell to their customers and engage with the experts, and as part of B2B brand building, it is an important new element in the marketing mix.

But what is a B2B enterprise online community meant to do?

There are three different types of enterprise communities and there are often significant differences in their goals and behaviors. The three community types are:

Support communities
Engagement communities
Employee communities

Support Communities
A support community focuses on technical support issues and provides a place for customers to ask and answer questions. The forums are often supported by technical experts from the company who answer some of the most difficult questions, moderate conversations, and manage the overall health of the converstation

Companies engage in communties to reduce technical support call volume and thus reduce total cost of support.

Partner Communities are very similar but are intended to support a select, entitled user base, which is generally part of a partner or reseller program.

Tip #2 – Join in! – Don’t forget to comment, encourage and give genuine feedback. It helps everyone. Great B2B industry examples include:

Intel Leap Ahead
Juniper J-Net Communities
Oracle Forum
Symantec Technology Network

An interesting Article by Gartner: Yes, “What is the Business Value

Are there others B2B examples or links to share?

My next post will discuss online engagement communities.