Expanding Your Online Community

Build, expand, strengthen your social impact

Social media has dramatically changed online communications. According to MarketingSherpa, social media now accounts for about 11% of the average online marketing budget.

Unlike traditional broadcast marketing, social media lets your customers carry on a highly personal dialog with your brand. And the whole concept of “one-to-one marketing” will never be the same again.

The secret to success is to have authentic conversations. Think of technology like blogs, forums, and discussion boards as amplifying customer opinion rather than improving it.

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Blackmores: Personalized Community

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Three key ways to tackle communities

Some companies choose to maintain complete control over their message by integrating blogs and discussion groups directly into their website. See The Knot case study.

Other companies choose to let the customers decide where the conversation should take place, relying on dedicated social sites to provide an appropriate forum. See Manchester City Football Club case study.

And more and more companies have adopted a hybrid model that allows them to incorporate brand-building blogs directly on their sites, yet go to where their customers are already active rather than building their own social groups. See Lifescript case study.

Or browse through some of our many other cases!

Six Questions to Guide Your Initiatives

Most organizations don’t yet know how to deal with social media:

“How do we handle these conversations?”
“How do we build community and encourage interaction?”
“How can we turn social media into a service benefit?”
“How do we turn our worst critics into our strongest ambassadors?”
“How do we measure our impact?”
“How can we integrate social media with our traditional communications?”

Difficult questions? Yes. Are there clear answers? No. But perhaps some of our current Sitecore customers can inspire you and the community builders in your company.

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