There are many contrary things to what is frequently assumed about online communities. These include: Online communities should be small. The bigger a community gets, the less people participate. This creates wastage and makes it impossible for the community manager to identify and work with the top members. Famous online communities are terrible examples. Most successful communities were usually lucky. You will have unrealistic expectations, strive for growth and ignore proper community management. Look for mid-sized communities instead. MORE >>

Online communities existed before we even heard about blogs. Since social technologies and platforms popped up, the number of possibilities to facilitate, nurture and engage online communities has exploded. Strangely enough, communities are not given the attention they deserve by businesses. Most of the time, you will find community engagement and management ideas when looking [.]. Community marketing Relationship marketing Alan Moore community management online communities Tomi Ahonen MORE >>

Philip is Community Manager at Zmags. Previously, he was community manager of  FIFA UK at Electronic Arts and Digital Producer at The Walt Disney Company. G: How did you build your experience as community manager/strategist? Special interest fan sites and smaller communities with a core following were the order of the day for several years. did however take a break to focus on the strategy side rather than the management for a 2 year period and spent that time as a consultant / strategist before diving back in to community management. G: Does the size matter? MORE >>

Here are the first 1,100 words of the chapter on B2B social communities from my forthcoming book, co-authored with Eric Schwartzman, entitled Social Marketing to the Business Customer. The rest of the chapter will go into the various kinds of social communities and how to use them, with examples from the HR, food service, medical and construction industries. Does it set the stage for a deeper discussion of social communities? Spiceworks does a very good job of managing B2B communities. As the community grows, so does the value of the resource to all involved. MORE >>

If this is how you operate, your market is best defined as a club, one whose value is derived from by exclusion of others who do not share their predominant values or beliefs. Communities are Larger and Inclusive. Communities by definition exist to equally serve the needs of everyone within them. larger community may be more beneficial to your company if it can easily grow and scale to accommodate additional business. The Best Online Communities are Hybrids. Thus, you need to define your community to achieve the optimal degree of exclusivity and inclusiveness. MORE >>