Comments on: Custom Corporate Communities: Planning and Getting Started

By: Online Community Metrics at Fast Wonder: Online Community Consulting

Online Community Metrics at Fast Wonder: Online Community Consulting — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:55:30 +0000

[...] spent much time writing about metrics on this blog. In a previous post, I talked about my general guidelines for online community success metrics: The metrics that you select will depend on your specific goals, but common community metrics [...]

By: Dawn

Dawn — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:58:21 +0000

John,

Excellent point. I’m a big fan (as you know) of using open source solutions wherever possible, and there are some really strong open source community platforms right now (like the ones you mentioned.)

By: John Eckman

John Eckman — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:03:30 +0000

I’d certainly hope that in addition to the commercial white-label platforms, companies should look seriously at Free and Open Source platforms like Drupal and Joomla, or at building a custom community on an open source portal framework like Liferay.

Nothing against the “out of the box” white label folks – they can setup and manage great communities – but you miss a chance for deeper customization and you buy into a long term commercial relationship with a built-in success tax (more users, more cost, generally).

By: Shawn

Shawn — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:03:46 +0000

Dawn,
Another interesting post. You are just full of good ideas. One thing I’m wondering is about the usefullness of an on line community or communities revolving around evangelism, spreading an idea or set of ideas to folks to create passionate users of a new idea or product. In my work both as an upstart entrepreneur and in a more traditional newspaper industry job, I’ve experimented with using on line groups not only as simple communication tools but also as a way of disseminating ideas about how to do something. In journalism, it has largely revolved around disseminating passionate core values and approaches among a team of very green journalists who may not always have gained the experience and knowledge coming out of journalism school that some may expect. In the case of my new interactive blog network PostRanger.com, I’m thinking of how I might be able to use some kind of social network to disseminate ideas about how a totally new kind of network can be used.

By: Dawn

Dawn — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:14:30 +0000

Mike,

Thanks! I’m also working on a post about how you should (and should not) promote your products in communities and through social media that you might find interesting. It’s still in the half-baked stage, but I hope to have it done in the next week or so.

By: Mike Mathews

Mike Mathews — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:19:28 +0000

Good post. This codifies what I tell my clients as we discuss getting into social media. Currently, the discussion of community is only the basis for a much broader discussion of marketing requirements, but I can see the trend will eventually move into using social media (I mostly work in older and more established industries, so the social media transition is slower).

I look forward to the day I can bring you into a client planning discussion.