Companies Investing Massively In Online Community-Building

Online communities are all the rage in corporate America.According to a recent survey by Deloitte, Beeline Labs and the Society for New Communications Research, 94 percent of companies say they plan to maintain or increase investment in their online communities, while only 6 percent plan to decrease investment.

The survey also showed that enterprises see online communities as providing strategic value, as 29 percent say they look for new ideas from their communities, and another 23 percent expect involvement in online communities will result in better customer support.

Ed Moran, director of product innovation, Deloitte Services LP, said that, "Despite risks associated with participating in online communities, the internal costs of community formation and management and the fact that we are in the midst of a profound recession, organizations' continued and enhanced investment in online communities underscores the perceived potential for the value that they may provide to the enterprise."

According to Moran, the increased use of online communities is also blurring the traditional boundaries between partner companies and even between companies and their customers. "Social media and communities [will] continue to play a significant role in the way in which companies are interacting with employees, customers, partners and the larger business ecosystem," he said.

Of the companies surveyed, a majority agreed that increasing word-of-mouth (38 percent), customer loyalty (34 percent) and brand awareness (30 percent) continue to be the top business objectives of online communities, followed by idea generation (29 percent) and improved customer support quality (23 percent).

However, in the majority of companies surveyed, marketing continues to be the primary driver of online communities, resulting in a significant gap between community goals and organizations' capability to fully leverage these communities on an enterprise wide basis.