Tips, tools, and best practices for B2B marketers.

If you want to start an online community, look off line first.

October 23, 2008 | Posted by: Lee

Many B2B companies are looking into whether they should leverage communities as part of their marketing strategy.  Whether your objective is to create a closer connection to your customers, connect customers to each other, or explore new ideas, it's important to build communities around something people are already interested in.

So how can you know in advance if people will be interested?

It's likely you'll never really know what the response will be until you try, but I did hear a great tip in a podcast the other day about looking at what your buyers are already doing offline and moving those communities online.  It's a great idea, so I started thinking how we could leverage that idea for our clients.

How do I picking the right topic to explore?

Start by identifying regularly scheduled industry events or meetings where your buyers get together to discuss topics of interest.  These can be centered around topics or specific roles.  Don't forget to look at local and regional meetings too.  Heck, you likely already participate in some of these meetings. 

Next, ask yourself:

• Which group would benefit the most from real-time, more frequent communications?
• Which group discusses topics that are I/my company can add value to?
• Which groups do I already have a connection with?

Prioritize the list, then start exploring the benefits an online community would bring to the participants.  There must be a clear benefit to the participants or you won't succeed. 

If you can sync the group's objectives with your company's objectives you're more likely to have a winning topic.

For those of you who've already started online communities, how did you go about selecting and audience or topic?