Online Communities: Potential and Promise

Online Community Management for Businesses and Non-Profits

Deloitte’s ‘2008 Tribalization of Business Survey‘ is intended to inform the strategies of firms seeking to harness the value of online communities engaged around brand discussions, idea generation, and product discovery in the enterprise.

[Okay, I'm teasing a little here, the italics are meant to highlight a small sample of the jargon actually used in the article. What the authors mean (I think) is that the survey provides information that helps firms make money by communicating with groups of people on the web. Full disclosure: we non-profits also use language in ways that mystify, but I think the root of the issue here is that it's hard for (for-profit) research organizations to talk about how to make money from people they organize into communities but don't actually pay. A topic for another day...].

While obviously intended for a corporate audience, the findings should boost the confidence of many non-profits, and provide some insight.

Key Insights: Desire to Help, Shared Passions, Community Matter; Engagement Generates Knowledge; Community Management not Marketing

The survey reveals that successful communities are those about “people helping people” and whose members share a particular passion. (This is the confidence boosting part – any non-profit organization worth its salt was launched on this premise).

But it also provides a few pearls worth pondering.

First, the factors that most contribute ot community effectiveness:

• Ability for members to connect with like-minded people
• Ability for members to help others
• Community focus around hot topics/issues

Second, rich interaction and knowledge sharing generates collective insight.

Third, marketing has become community management, but one-to-many communications is not the same as community engagement.

Hmmm…..

Beeline Labs and the Society for New Communications Research also contributed to the research.