Understanding Online Communities

2. Centralised

Introduction

Following our last presentation on de-centralised communities this document will look to explain what we believe is the second type of online community, the centralised community.

In this presentation

• What is a centralised community?

• What value do they add?

• How can you work alongside them?

What is a centralised community?

Site

What is a centralised community?

• A group of individuals which are brought together through their interest in a certain topic.

• These can be found across owned and borrowed brand spaces.

• Owned includes websites and forums that brands/companies run.

• Borrowed will be their Facebook & YouTube pages etc.

What is a centralised community?

• These centralised communities can also be created via unofficial means.

• This includes fan run forums, websites, blogs, Facebook pages etc.

• These fan run spaces can often be just as influential, if not more so, than official ones.

• Centralised communities can also be created around a topic within a larger community e.g. news sites.

What value do they add?

• Centralised communities hold a large amount of influence around a topic due to their passionate conversational nature.

• Consumer trends and waves of interest often come out of these areas on the web. The most well known internet memes will usual start as a topic of discussion in a centralised community.

• Holding a relationship, either through official forum hosting or online consumer relations, with these communities is key.

What value do they add?

• Strong relationships will ensure that the communities feel valued and part of the topic/brand that they enjoy so much.

How can you work alongside them?

• With a strong relationship companies can gauge interest and sentiment around new initiatives, product development, campaigns etc.

• When launching a new product a company can give these communities information and gain valuable consumer driven earned media coverage.

• As long as they feel valued these groups will spread positive messages around the topic.

How can you work alongside them?

• Listen to what they are saying and their beliefs before planning any activity. You can gain valuable insight just from listening to these groups.

• Get them involved when you are looking for opinion. They are ready made focus groups for new or existing products.

• Target them with specialised content relevant to the topic area they love.

How can you work alongside them?

• Get them to be your brand ambassadors. Provide them with information before it goes out to decentralised communities, they will help feed it out and get you more earned media.

How can you work alongside them?

• Create a social community destination around the topic.

• Utilise social media tools.

• Provide moderation and thought leadership.

• Enable audience to educate and help each other, increasing satisfaction and reducing customer service cost.

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Steve Sponder - twitter.com/stevesponder - Version 1.1 - 22/03/2010

Want to find out more?

If you are interested in finding out more around our thinking, ideas and work, or just want a chat please feel free to tweet:

@headstream

@samhilary

Next week Transient Communities