7Summits Agency

Don’t silo your community

When considering launching an on-domain community many organizations struggle with where it will fit within their current organizational structure and who will be responsible for taking ownership of it, e.g: Sales/Marketing, Communications/PR, IT, HR and or Support etc.

Once this organizational decision has been made most organizations then struggle with where community fits within their current suite of digital platforms and initiatives.

Initiative(s)	System(s)	Owner(s)
Website	Web Content Management  (WCM) + Analytics	Marketing, IT
Online Catalog	eCommerce	Marketing, IT
Demand Generation	SalesForce	Sales, Marketing
Recruitment	Applicant Tracking System (ATS)	HR
Intranet	Sharepoint, PeopleSoft	Communications, Operations, HR
Social/Community	Jive SBS 4.5	Distributed?

Confused on where a community fits into their current suite of platforms and initiatives, some organizations experiment and create another entirely separate digital silo for community lacking any integration into those projects already in place. However, by thinking of community as an experiment and burying it deep inside your corporate website a great opportunity is being missed.  To truly activate and benefit from community it must be integrated with all of your digital initiatives and efforts, and this in turn will ultimately drive user adoption and success of the community.

Again, the key to success lies in unifying and integrating community everywhere. Two companies that do this extremely well are Dell and Intuit.  While using and interacting with the Dell and Intuit websites and or products you get a sense that they see community as an enabler for their business not an isolated initiative. For example, this past week I was having an issue entering in my time tracking worksheet for the week, we use an Intuit web-based product for time keeping that integrates with our accounting systems. Sure enough when I clicked “help” I was directed to their support community, and within their knowledge based tool was my answer. This answer had been ranked and rated by the community as helpful and relevant. Intuit also does a great job of embedding community within their desktop applications. On many occasions I’ve had questions about my taxes while at different steps in the process, contextual answers from the Turbotax community were easily surfaced directly within the application often answering my questions.

When launching a community learn from the experts, and like my Intuit example, turn your community into a business enabler versus just an experiment. Granted Dell and Intuit have been doing this a while, but that doesn’t mean their success can’t be emulated.Think of the money Intuit saved on my two support questions that could have resulted in calls, and the frustration that was circumvented by offering me the answer to my question right there and then. Unifying your digital efforts and integrating community into your existing efforts is the key to driving engagement and ultimately adoption within your community.

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