July 23rd, 2008
Enterprise communities: build or join?
Determining how a company should engage with or create an online community is a critical process that reaches across the entire organization. There are many questions that a management team should ask itself before engaging this process as well. Aaron Strout, VP of social media for Mzinga, a provider of online communities and social networks for businesses, authored this primer on what steps enterprises must take while evaluating their community engagement strategies.
Benefits of “Build“ vs. “Join”
If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance your company is in the process of formulating an online community strategy. Somewhere during that process, the question of whether to “build” vs. “join” is sure to come up. While both strategies make sense, there are definite benefits that come with each:
- Building or creating a “branded” environment by either using open source technology like Drupal OR it can employ the services of a white label community provider like Awareness, Jive Software or Mzinga (the company I work for). This approach provides companies with benefits like:
- Full control of the user experience including the branded elements of the site, data ownership and business intelligence.
- Single sign on if a login is required for either the site or the community.
- Flexibility to migrate the community to different providers/hosts if necessary e.g. many times, growth of an online community may dictate the evolution from an open source solution to a white label provider.
- Joining or establishing a presence on already existing communities or social networks like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or Yahoo Groups. This approach also has numerous benefits including:
- Ability to “fish where the fish are” i.e. there are 80 million plus users of Facebook. Depending on the customers you serve, there is a good chance that a number of them are already signed up, have created profiles and are already creating relevant content.
- Little to no technical support and/or separate infrastructure.
- Low to no cost depending on the site and the branding requirements/number of community members involved.
Next: Why not build and join? –>
Jennifer Leggio, aka "Mediaphyter," writes about the "social business" side of social media - including enterprise, security and reputation issues. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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| 07/23/08
