Every company wants to be more connected to its customers and prospects, and Web 2.0 is opening up vast possibilities to do so through online customer communities.

In this high-energy, highly interactive workshop we’ll explore what attracts people to a community, elements needed for a community to gel and thrive, the fine line between community facilitation and management, how to measure progress and success, and how to use insights from the community to inform key business functions like sales, service, product development, and public relations.

We’ll also go behind the scenes of successful communities to see what makes them tick. And we’ll share the results of a new industry study of 150 companies who are successfully using communities. Be ready to move, to think, to share, and to get out of the usual communications and social media boxes

You’ll come away with:

Understanding of the five key guiding principles of successful communities and how to overcome the three most common obstacles

How to create and facilitate a community environment that fosters participation and conversations

Techniques on gleaning strategic insights from the community to shape and inform key business functions like sales, product development, customer service

Insights, based on a new industry study, on how to measure community effectiveness that go way beyond visitors and clicks

Beware the technology: 10 questions to use in evaluating community technology platforms

How to get started

For marketers interested in learning how to develop and manage online customer communities to advance business goals like customer insights, product innovation, customer advocacy, CRM, and reputation management.