How Do You Create An Online B2B Community?

One of the questions I hear the most when discussing B2B communities is “how do you make it happen?”  It’s definitely not the case of “build it and they will come.”  In fact, it’s not the case that you are going to build the community at all.  The community has to build itself, essentially from the ground up.  But of course, you have to provide the environment in which this can happen and ultimately you have to provide the spark. 

Because there are so many Web 2.0 technologies to choose from today, it is easy to get mired in the decisions about what functionality to put on your website and once the platform is up and running, to expect great results.  In fact, a lot of the press play right now is about “Web 2.0 companies and/or Web 2.0 technologies” – almost in a vacuum.  I really think the critical point is how companies are using Web 2.0 technologies – all companies, not just companies that are considered to be Web 2.0! -- and what kind of results are they getting, not the mere fact that they are using various technologies. 

But the hard work has just begun.  Building a community is a form of product innovation and the process is likely to be one of trial and error.  You may have to try a variety of “hooks” before something takes off.

The first step is to thoroughly understand your business ecosystem – your customers, partners, suppliers, and your internal organizations.  Almost everyone wants to create a deeper online relationship with customers, but you may find a more “natural” community in one of these other groups.  By natural community, I simply mean you might find a different group of people in your ecosystem for whom it is easier to find the spark to get the community started.  The key is to pick one group and map your business objectives to the desired online behavior.

In a practical sense, this could mean deciding that your biggest business challenge is product innovation (in a specific area) and that you want to engage your customers online (via a wiki, for example) about the product – to get continual, actionable, feedback from them.  If you are successful, you will have created a community because that group of customers will be as interested in what happens to your product as you are….

How do you actually get a set of customers to participate?  In a nutshell, you’ll need to seed the community.  This is true of any type of community and could take a variety of forms (including monetary incentives), but you definitely have to plant the seed.  You might simply ask a handful of people who are loyal to your company or your product to come to your site and start interacting.  If the conversation becomes interesting, others will want to participate.  The community will start to build on itself.  The key, though, is that the community will see that you are listening, that its advice is being weighed and in some cases, actually implemented.  When that happens, you are on your way.