Category Archives: Business

The difference between B2C and B2B communities

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Interesting comparison on the difference between B2C and B2B communities from B2B expert Vanessa DiMauro who says on the community managers’ forum e-mint: “B2B online community building is less common than B2C communities and is just starting to garner attention in the media. I have been working exclusively in B2B for many years and i can say the entire strategy, process, rules and metrics are very different than b2c.” Sound interesting to you too?

Worth also checking out Vanessa’s Leader Networks White Paper (pdf) on the subject of creating professional peer-to-peer communities.

One final thought from discussion on e-mint is that for B2B community management it helps if you have some business experience to bring to bear. For example Vanessa’s presentation makes clear B2B communities benefit from simple presentation, not overloading with information. One further issue would be to discuss the pros and cons of anonymity in this B2B space, and possibly the value of profiles. One to come back to, for sure.

See below for her slideshare on this subject:

Social Networking for Business: How is it different?

Proving social media ROI

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Thinking about proving ROI for business inspired me to look at this great SlideShare on metrics for online communities:

Metrics and Measuring Success in Online Communities

This nicely shows the range of issues businesses should consider with social media implementation and ROI. But what’s the quick and easy version? I have uploaded this one slide which focuses just on the use of KPIs (key performance indicators) to track value. Obviously the results each need to be owned and actionable. Also I have just used two examples from the four Balanced Scorecard (BSC) perspectives, when you’d need to use all four.

So after deciding your business objectives, group them under the four BSC perspectives, trying to if possible allocate across all four:

1. ‘Financial’

How do we want our shareholders/trustees to see us?


2. ‘Customer’

How do we want our customers to see us?


3. Internal ‘Business processes’

What business processes must we excel at to satisfy our customers, shareholders/trustees?


4. Internal ‘Learning and growth’

How do we sustain our ability to change and improve?

Then set measures and targets against each, both quantitative and qualitative, with a regular review of results set up, and with ownership to enable actions against these to help improve under-performance for example.

This balanced approach to setting up a way of monitoring SME social media effectiveness is my recommendation for demonstrating ROI in the simplest way possible.

The Process Of How KPIs Work