Auteur: Joshua Paul

If you are planning a private online community for your business, your company may have more in common with Starbucks and Domino’s Pizza than you think. This is not because all three are creating online customer communities, but they are all utilizing customer behavior to improve customer relationships and strengthen their competitive advantage.  Recently, Starbucks […]

They are an executive’s worst social business nightmares. You launch an online community for customers, partners, or employees, then two things happen. Nobody contributes to the community. New members join the community, are not engaged, and then never return. These two scenarios create a spiral of fear that prevents many organizations from launching their social […]

Your private customer community should not behave like, and be treated like, public social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Pinterest. However, what if you could infuse some of the “magic” that makes these sites so wildly popular into your member or customer community? On a recent, episode of Socious’ social business web series, ProCommunity, […]

On the day that you are reading this, at least one of your customers is watching webinar, downloading an eBook, or fielding a phone call from your competition. Almost all organizations have competitors. Even the most innovative products are in industries where other companies are trying to solve the same business problems for the market. […]

The Story of The Well, One of the First Online Communities The Well is an online community founded in 1985. It was one of the first online communities and is amazingly still thriving today. While still growing, the average length of participation in the community exceeds 20 years. The discussions on The Well range from […]

Who doesn’t want to keep their customers and bring their biggest fans into the selling process? Who doesn’t want to decrease customer support costs? Who doesn’t want to have the pulse of their market to create more profitable products? The foundation for achieving all of these objectives and more is customer communication. Communication is the […]

You online customer community is a lot more exciting to you than it is to your customers or members. Very few people in your target audience are looking to join an online community or private social network. They don’t have the time, mindshare, or grasp of the benefits to join just because you offer a […]

What Should Online Marketers Know to Micro-Target Customer Segments? I recently asked a top-tier email marketing consultant about the one thing I can do to get the most improvement in my lead and customer email marketing? His answer: segment, segment, and segment. In the “old days,” you knew your customers’ industry, geographic region, and the […]

What Should Online Marketers Know to Micro-Target Customer Segments? I recently asked a top-tier email marketing consultant about the one thing I can do to get the most improvement in my lead and customer email marketing? His answer: segment, segment, and segment. In the “old days,” you knew your customers’ industry, geographic region, and the […]

Being heard is an underestimated motivator. Customers want their voices heard. Donors want their voices heard. And citizens want their voices heard. The Obama administration has put creating community at the center of its digital strategy. For instance, to help solve the problem of needing to respond to tens of thousands of requests from citizens, […]