Episode Spotlight
Chief Community Officer Joel Welsh joins Rich Sloan to discuss strategies for using your own online community presence to power your business. Community websites are a primary way for people to connect with one another in the digital age, and they provide a proven method of building relationships with targeted customers. Also joining Rich is Ben Sun of Community Connect. Ben saw the need for like-minded people to network online and created three web communities that catered to specific ethnic groups: Asian Avenue, MiGente and Black Planet. Collectively they have a total of 13 million members and are growing every day.
Internet communities provide value across the board. They give the customer the feeling of making a connection with people who share common interests and culture, they provide advertisers with a well-segmented target market, and they provide a great way to track trends. Ultimately, according to Ben Sun, it is about “satisfying the need of the customer.” Finding a niche and filling it is the beginning of building a business. Then, like Community Connect, create the product that reaches people. These are the first two steps of making a connection with success.