Business-to-Business Internet Marketing, Fourth Edition - Lifecycle ...

What To Build Into Your Community
Using Business Communities and Exchanges 245
Suppose you have decided to consider building a community. How do
you really go about it? Here is a basic plan:
1. Determine the type of community you need. First decide if your
community will target only employees (an intranet), customers
or suppliers (an extranet), or a public community on the Web.
Intranets and extranets will require special security measures to
protect confidential information and limit access to authorized
participants. You may wish to restrict access to a public community
as well by establishing subscriber or membership rules. Even
though your goal for a public community may be to gain widespread
publicity, you may wish to allow only qualified individuals
to make use of the community’s services.
2. Set objectives for your community and establish an operating
budget. Set some realistic specific objectives for your community.
With a customer community, for example, set a goal for how
many customers you expect will participate. Project the customer
service savings and revenue impact of the community. Also establish
a community operating budget, both for start-up and ongoing
development and maintenance costs. A community is more
complicated to build than a basic Web site, and it potentially involves
more back-end support because it is so interactive in nature.
Be sure to anticipate the cost and manpower required to
support the activity generated by a community.
3. Establish a community structure. Learn what a community is,
how it operates, and what it includes by visiting other business
communities and actively participating in them. Typically, you
will want to consider including the following in your community:
Information Center. This is usually the heart of the community.
Depending on the type of community you establish, this
area would contain information about your industry, your company,
and other companies’ products and services, white papers,
special reports, directories (if appropriate), pertinent news,
research links, tools, and so on.