Digital Communities: These Peer Networks are the Future of Business

A great case for the value of Communities:

An online community lets you control your branding and deliver messages while offering prospective customers and partners the ability to ask questions and receive answers directly from you or other community members. …

These peer networks are the future of business. That’s because they’re all about facilitating dialog in a place where recommendations can flow freely and willingly.

That’s more important than ever in a world where consumers trust peer recommendations at such an astonishing level — 70 percent, as opposed to the 10 percent who trust advertisements. And the consequences of not adapting to the current environment couldn’t be more dire.

Source: How DX Can Make Your Business Exceptional

Todd Marons draws the customer experience case. Dion Hinchcliffe even goes further illustrating, how Communities have matured up to becoming a business model:

Community is becoming the organizing principle for digital experience. At first, using the scale of community as a shock absorber for engaging at scale, companies are finding that community makes virtually every customer and workforce function better by unleashing co-creation. Marketing works better (advocacy), sales works better (community reference checks), operations work better (social exception handling), customer care (community-based support), and so on. The same across digital channels as well, from Web site to mobile application: When community is present, the channel works better.

Source: On Digital Strategy | Dion Hinchcliffe | Notes on Internet and Business Convergence