Get Bundled! The All-in-One Community

In this series we’ve shared many different community types.

So far we’ve covered:

• Employee Communities
• External Social Networks
• Support Communities
• Acquisition Communities, and even…
• Dating Communities!

That’s a lot of communities! As the community takes on a life of its own, most organizations find themselves facing the need for more than one community. So, you have to ask some questions as your organization’s communities scale.

• Would you have to use a separate community platform or site for each one?
• Do you have unlimited money and time to manage all that?
• Would you be able to stay updated and informed on all the innovative technology and strategies within your enterprise?

Probably not. Fortunately though, a single online community can serve multiple purposes and objectives.   

Think of it like Community "Bundling"… much like you may do with your cable provider. Why pay separately for Internet, Phone and Cable when you can get all these services together for one low price!? No, I'm not selling you broadband. But, to that point, why use a separate site for employees, customers and prospects? You don't have to.

Here are a few examples of ‘bundling’.

• When phone companies offer a lower price for phone and internet service, that's a bundle.
• A gift basket of a bottle of wine, cheese and crackers and candy is a bundle.  It's not sold at a discount.
• A veterinarian that offers a service for new puppy owners that includes well check visits, shots, spay/neutering, and flea control products is offering what marketers call a "product bundle".
• When a computer store sells a printer, paper and an extra ink cartridge, that's a bundle.
• A grocery store that offers "dinners to go" is offering a bundle.
• A spa that offers a relaxation package of a massage, facial and manicure is bundling. 
• And now… an online community for several different purposes!

At Avectra we use one community: AvectraCommunity.com for our staff, customers, partners and prospects. Configured with the proper security permissions and integrated with our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database, Avectra has the ultimate community serving several types of stakeholders.

This diagram shows the relationship with the various communities we've discussed (excluding dating of course).

As you can see, the Internal communities are for staff and partners. External communities are usually for prospects and brand community. Customer communities are usually a hybrid. But again, with the right integration and configuration, one community can work for all purposes.

Tips: 

• Stakeholder Strategies: When using one community for multiple purposes, each purpose needs a clear strategy including goal, communication plan, engagement campaign, staffing, etc…
• Make Community Integral: Remove other forms of communication where possible such as email, side conversations, Skype, Google docs, etc… If there's other ways to communicate that people are used to, they'll use those instead of the community.
• Integrate: Your community should be your "User Experience" site, but you shouldn't spend an exorbitant amount of time "Administering the "Users". By integrating your Community with your CRM, HR System, and other databases that already has your user data, you prevent managing multiple systems with redundant data. The more overhead it takes to manage the data, the less time your staff spends on community and content management.
• Content is King: As stated in previous blogs, good content drives community engagement, which in turn can drive commerce (or conversion of a call to action). Make sure you focus on WHY your users are accessing the site. It's usually for content such as discussions, resources, whitepapers, survey results, market research, etc. Whatever the valuable content is that each stakeholder wants, make sure you drive that information into your community and make it as available/aware as possible.
• Community Management: It takes more than just one person to make a community successful. You need multiple people across your organization who take ownership of their area of the community. Each stakeholder group (employees, partners, customers, prospects) should have a community manager. Also for an employee community each department should have a person in charge of their community area. For example the Sales Team, Finance Team, R&D team, etc. should have a designated point person to ensure their department is utilizing the community for communication/collaboration.
• Be Persistent and Open: It's a marathon, not a sprint. A community is a long-term strategic initiative and full engagement won't happen over night. Often users are slow to adopt a new way to communicate, but don't give up. Make sure to reinforce the community as core to your communication. Be transparent and open with your audience about why it's important (to improve their experience). Encourage your stakeholders to offer feedback on how to improve the community. Be open for change, but determined to achieve full engagement.
• Engage and Measure: Make sure to stimulate engagement with several approaches. Ensure email notifications remind users about activity. Use reputation points and leader boards (similar to Foursquare) to incentivize and reward your users for activity. And remember to measure the activity and trends over time. Melissa Parrish shares some great metrics on Community Benchmarking.

Want to learn more about Avectra Community? Or even better, learn how Avectra's community product MemberFuse™ can be the all-in-one community solution for your organization? Give us a shout!