Online Communities Offer Myriad Opportunities for Marketers
* Don’t sell ads. By selling ads, you could appear to be cheapening your brand. Offer the members of your community every benefit you can think of, allowing them the freedom to move in their own direction. This helps to create a community that can generate revenue through other methods.
* Search for alliances. You won’t need to spend more money to bring in more users if you form strategic alliances with other communities and old-content-owning corporations that’ll bring new members to you. “If I’m offering music on my mobile-phone-based social network,” Silver says, “then I will make a list of every organization with a theme song that might swap its song, which I may offer to my users as a ringtone, in exchange for my logo or Web site beamed to their group.”
- People:
- David Silver
- Joe Keenan