Why Online Communities?
Enterprise online communities offer your organization an interactive channel to communicate, connect and build relationships with your targeted audience.
The most successful, sustainable online communities are created with a specific purpose, are designed around users needs and are proactively managed and nurtured.
At Ramius, we define a "purpose-driven online community" as:
- an interactive online environment that connects and engages a targeted audience around shared activities and information to achieve a specific objective or outcome.
For such a community to thrive, it must deliver real value to your target audience and keeps them wanting to come back.
Attributes of a purpose-driven community:
- Has a clear objective or purpose that delivers tangible value to your target audience (e.g. customer support, networking opportunities, information source, etc)
- Includes a defined audience of participants (internal and external)
- Is strategically aligned to business drivers and goals
- Gives participants a sense of community ownership by providing the ability to easily create and share content
- Provides expert guidance, support and facilitation when needed
- Includes a definition of success and corresponding metrics
- Has a defined process that allows you to measure, monitor and adapt to community outcomes
Build Competitive Advantage
With the right approach, purpose-driven communities can lead to significant competitive advantages:
- Humanize your brand through open, two-way dialogue with your target audience
- Obtain direct, immediate feedback on your products and services
- Provide a channel to deliver information and services to customers, partners and others
- Enable your target audience to interact, share best practices and create original content
- Elevate your brand by identifying and rewarding community participants who help to grow and nurture the community
- Extend product reach and open new market opportunities
- Improve operational efficiency to maintain a competitive edge
- Foster innovation through team collaboration
- Formally capture industry-leading expertise, knowledge and intellectual property (IP)
Leverage Ramius
With CommunityZero® software from Ramius, your organization can build secure, scalable online communities to communicate, connect and build relationships with your targeted audience.
Of course there is some management needed to encourage adoption and grow the number of active users to reach a critical mass. That's where our experienced Professional Services team can help.
Using our Online Collaboration Methodology, we will guide you through a best practices approach to community building that aligns your community to your business objectives. Success is a managed process delivering measurable value and tangible results.