Virtual Communities
Darris Hoskins develops community building applications that allow your users to create customized profiles like MySpace or Facebook and engage in interactive conversations on platforms where your users can publish their content.
A community building strategy is designed to retain consumers and drive traffic to the user profile and messaging systems of a performance marketing web site. The types of communities include:
Open vs. Closed - Open or restrictive membership based on certain criteria or by invitation only
Themed Communities - Centered around a common topic or activity, focuses on a specific product or theme related to key marketing messages
Social Networks - A pure online community where relationships between users are the main focus and activity
What's an online community? - From Wikipedia
A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as newsletters, telephone, email, internet social network service or instant messages rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. If the mechanism is a computer network, it is called an online community. Virtual and online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. Many means are used in social software separately or in combination, including text-based chatrooms and forums that use voice, video text or avatars. Significant socio-technical change may have resulted from the proliferation of such Internet-based social networks.[1]
Common Features:
Activity for members
Online identity for each member
A profile page containing information about each member
A way for members to communicate 1-to-1
What can an online community do for your company?
Business Benefits of An Online Community:
Build a website that adds value
Create brand loyalty
Communicate key messages about your brand
Project your message to the world
Respond to criticism on you own terms
Customers will recommend your products
Gain new customers through viral marketing
Customers will help each other
Increase website traffic
Generate dynamic content
Improve your search engine ranking
Involve your customers in product development
Use your customers for product testing
Learn more about your customers
Get press exposure
Save money and resources
Generate revenue