OPEN QUESTION - How important is building your own community for B2B?

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

I'm increasingly being asked for the best ways to build a community, or whether it's worth even building your own community rather than bringing people together on a platform like Linkedin - the core aims are to develop advocacy and in the long term utilise the community as a part of a demand generation strategy.

Ironic to bring this up on a non-social community but what does everyone think? Success stories or wipe out's? All opinions greatly received...

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi Helen Barlow​

Here are some thoughts:

- Remember that only 5-20% of your customers in most cases will interact on the Community so decide if it is worth building one

- Figure out your budget because there are some low cost platforms and high end platforms like we are using

- LinkedIn is open to everyone so do you want to just keep it for customer.

- LinkedIn will not help you with demand gen (for example, you can use an open community for top of the funnel activities) and a closed community for identifying which customers might be interested in cross-sell or upsell or even who are dissatisfied with your products (so you can reach out to them)

- LinkedIn is limited in terms of user created content and you can't use it elsewhere.

Happy to discuss in more detail if you want.

@nation: Should I do a webinar or have a place to post questions about community building and I can answer. : )

[Anonymous]

Scott K. Wilder​ - thanks for the reply - I am inclined to agree on the engagement metrics and limitations of using a social (i.e. linkedin/ Facebook) platform - but what are your thoughts on the role of a community in advocacy? Does building a user community on any platform open have a clear role in non customer growth?