Archive for December, 2011
Communities – Building For B2B
Here I am at the end of Week 2 in the new role and I’m already knee-deep in documentation for a redesign of the existing community. Lots of questions have surfaced and I’ve had to spend some time sitting back and thinking about what’s actually going to be most beneficial in a B2B environment. As mentioned in my previous post, chances are clients won’t really want to converse with others inside a community, they’ll want to dip in and out, consume whatever it is they need / want and then move off again until next time.
The company I’m working for is SaaS based so a lot of the community space focuses on tutorial videos, knowledge base article, workshops and other bits and pieces. So what am I going to try and do to get clients frequenting the community on a more regular basis? Well, aside from the facelift there are a couple of areas I’m going to focus on. One area is activity, and another is personalisation.
Highlighting new and relevant content that can help clients easily find and consume information is an obvious route for me. The easier I can make it for them to find what they are looking for, whilst highlighting new content that can enhance their experience, increases the chances they will return regularly. The other area is about personalisation. By that I mean ensuring that anything “suggested” is based on their previous activity, contributions or account status. Hooking in to the existing system to provide direct lines of communication to their Account Managers, viewing customised videos and providing private presentations are other things I’ll be looking at.
The majority of clients we have tend to prefer speaking directly to a person so the biggest challenge will be to get them contributing within the community whether that’s on a blog, posting questions for the Support team to answer or contributing ideas for product development. It’s definitely going to be an interesting challenge and it’s taken me a few days to shift my view away from B2C which is all about multi-layered communication.
Communities – B2B vs. B2C, What’s The Difference?
Having finished my stint at Disney and taking a much needed break away in the sunshine today I’ve started a new role. The company I’m now working for operates in the B2B space and focuses on digital media and already a few questions have sprung up with regards to what I’m about to dive in to.
The biggest of these is the one I’ve included in the title. My experience over the past few years has largely focused on B2C online communities where you are building relationships with end-consumers, enabling and supporting them in building relationships with each other and acting as the face of the brand in a public space. So what’s different with B2B?
Whilst I don’t know the answer yet to me it seems like a lot of it should be the same; you’ve still got people to build relationships with, some of the metrics will remain the same, you can look for influencers and power users etc etc. There are however I believe some inherent differences (and challenges). The biggest one I can see straight off – how to foster relationships between “clients” if they are competing in the same field. More to the point, does this even matter in a B2B environment? Should the focus purely be on the “Client <> You” Relationship rather than aiming to build engagement through lasting relationships between users / clients?
On top of that, does content automatically become King by default if relationships only exist between clients and you, the brand? Is there some alternative in making a B2B community offer compelling outside of content?
Lots of questions floating around in my head right now but I’m looking forward to the challenge and it will certainly extend and change my perception of community management for the better!