… that is the question. I’ve seen many discussions listing the pro’s & con’s as to whether a company should build a community or not? But I think they’re missing the most important question that should come first.

Where are our customers? And have they created their own communities?

Tom O’Brien calls it social media madness when clients want to immediately build a community.

He makes the point that communities are not about increasing the value of your brand. They’re about the common interests of the members. And if you respect that you’re welcome to join them, but those that practice traditional marketing & push their messages won’t be welcome long.

So before you say, ‘Let’s build a community’, please take a minute to step back. Here are some steps:

Use brand monitoring

• remember that discussions in password protected forums won’t be caught

Identify where people are talking about your products at?

• this may surprise you

Have they built communities already?

• if they have, they will prefer to stay there amongst others with their interests

If there are a number of micro communities, here are some ideas:

• offer a central place to aggregate them so that people can interconnect
• encourage user generated content & provide a place for it
• connect with your advocates & reward them
• invite influencers to participate in a group blog
• provide places for gathering product development information

And most importantly interact with the customers throughout.

So what may have started off as a question, "Should we build a community?" turns into these types of questions:

• What is best for our customers? What would they prefer?
• How can we as a company facilitate them in their interaction?

What are your thoughts on this?