Online Business Communities – A Strategic Imperative

Companies across a wide spectrum are embracing online communities as a means of business innovation. Whether they are comprised of customers or clients, employees, partners or vendors, online communities are beginning to transform customer relationships, marketing, product innovation, and customer service. This opportunity to cultivate vibrant external ecosystems represents a largely untapped frontier for farsighted businesses to:

• Create a deeper relationship with their customer base that facilitates customer interaction and feedback, leverages customer knowledge and demonstrates responsiveness to customer needs.
  
• Create a viral marketing capability that makes customers a key marketing arm of the company via referrals, buzz, experience sharing and product/service endorsement.
  
• Create an online content hub that drives customers and prospects to the company’s website for product and service information early in the buying process and facilitates repeat visits to the site, resulting in de facto customer user groups.

While Internet businesses have substantial experience with community-building as a means to build an audience for monetization purposes, enterprises are just beginning to grapple with the concept of online communities. Our research has shown that many companies do not yet perceive the level of effort required to cultivate a community once the technology is in place.

TMNG Global is at the forefront of understanding how to build and cultivate dynamic, vibrant communities…..not just from a thought leadership perspective, but from a real world “how do you do it” perspective. Our suite of services is designed to help businesses change the way they listen to, and engage with, customers, vendors and partners. We marry our client’s business objectives to the optimal online community roadmap. Our suite of services includes:

• Strategy Review – TMNG Global’s strategy consulting division, CSMG, performs an assessment of the client’s current end-to-end customer experience to determine the most effective offline and online measures needed to deepen the customer relationship and increase the level of online community participation.
  
• Editorial and Marketing Integration Plan – TMNG works with the client to develop a cutting edge content strategy that will drive customers and prospects to their website, facilitate repeat visits, and encourage online interactivity.
  
• Community Development – TMNG works closely with the client to define what an online community means to them in the context of their business objectives, develops the strategy and implementation plan, and provides operational support services for managing those communities.
  
• Hosted Technology Solution – Via our delivery partner, iBelong Networks, TMNG can also create a custom network of interrelated portals (such as intranets and external websites) linked by common databases, registration systems, and content syndication. Each portal contains modular core functionality.

TMNG Global is committed to assisting our clients in understanding the power of online communities and to achieving their business objectives through the use of such communities. Contact us to discuss Web 2.0 and online communities.