Vanessa DiMauro

Your organization has decided to develop an online community to serve your customers. Congratulations! This is an important step towards building a social business. As the team gathers in the conference room with whiteboards, markers and lots of coffee, you start by talking about other online community examples the organization might want to emulate, or those that have caught your fancy. Features, content, look and feel are usually a major part of this discussion.

But chances are you haven’t considered a fundamental but critical question: will the online community be public, gated or a hybrid (largely public with a private, members-only area)? This is one of the most important decisions you will have to make, one that shapes virtually every aspect of how your community will operate and, in most cases, determine its success.

Social snacks are digital tidbits of information, ideas and personal presence which offer a quick taste of an online community's content and personality. An effective way to build awareness of a community, these virtual treats get distributed via the burgeoning ecosystem of online tools that support millions of short, sharing interactions daily.

Sometimes an online community can get overly focused on internal processes such as moderation, content development, member acquisition and engagement, and lose sight of the vast virtual world outside their domain name boundaries. Looking outward and sharing small samples of activities and content via social channels can give a wider audience a taste of the community's thought leadership and tone, fueling additional chatter, traffic and audience awareness for direct and indirect business benefit.

"Serious" community builders may dismiss the social snack as so much "junk content" -- too lightweight to have any value. After all,...

Seminars, publications, market research, and customer care centers are some of the most important tools in every business-to-business firm’s toolbox for understanding, attracting, serving and keeping customers loyal. But in a world of fierce global price competition, increasing transparency of business practices, and ever-rising complexity, these customer interaction channels are no longer enough for many B2B companies.

Today, software companies such as SAP and Taleo, business information providers such as LexisNexis, and consulting firms such as Palladium Group have moved much of these interactions to online communities they have built for their customers. While they are still in the early stages, these online communities are providing these companies with a competitive advantage: the ability to get much closer and become more valuable to customers every day, around the clock.

In the first of a multi-part series, my colleague Bob Buday of the...

You already have a community and you might not even know it. No, those damn developers didn't go creating something under the covers (well ok, maybe the did but that is a different discussion). If your company has an annual conference or customer summit, gather customers for insights, you have already exerted the power to convene.  And, through your successful events, your customers relish meeting with each other and with your organization's thought leaders.  How often have you heard customers say they wish they didn't have to wait until next year to connect again?   They share stories and business cards and promise to stay in touch.But, they often don't because the busy work-a-day life gets in the way. And sales vows to do a better job managing their relationships throughout the year. They do the LinkedIn thing, but really only show up at the customer’s door when it is time to sell again.