Online Communities

After reviewing a variety of Web sites it can be seen that corporations who have online communities are the exception not the rule. Sometimes you are able to interact with other members but most of the times as a costumer you want to also interact with staff members of the company to get a deeper knowledge from the company.

However, businesses are realizing the power of online communities and the benefits they can offer. Unfortunately, a lot of brand communities often fail because they launch before they are ready (no members or activity), have too many features and there is no development strategy.

Some factors to take into account when managing an online community are:

▫Building communities involves building relationships. Brands with only a static website will probably find it very difficult to build a community by themselves as they aren’t used to communicating with their customers in the online environment.

▫People can be unpredictable - consequently, so can online communities. The challenge is in identifying when an online community is failing and then working hard to try to turn it into a success. Without management buy-in, the shutters may come down prematurely.

▫Offering guidance by establishing community guidelines and getting involved in the community in order to help shape its personality and culture it´s ok, but you can’t demanding certain behavior or members will leave. As a result, a real community will take time - the culture of the community will develop naturally. Friendships don’t form overnight.

Something that it´s important to remind are the benefits we might get from online communities. From the Assigned reading there were some points I liked. For example, eCommunity features add substantial value in cost savings on sales and support web Sites, they allow the company to improve knowledge of the customers visiting these sites, chat can lower customer support costs by up to 25 percent versus telephone-based customer support...