In the coming weeks, you’ll hear more about our online community from me. I’m happy to inform you that we’ve made progress in rebuilding it so our users are even more connected, successful and can share tips and advice with other users. Here are some thoughts I have about it as we work on the next phase of community at Infusionsoft.
I’d like the community to start fresh, from scratch. The benefit from starting fresh is two-fold. First, you assure that anyone who accesses it doesn’t go to old threads and topics from eons ago. Second, you also allow people a little more creative flexibility to talk about new topics, new ideas interact a little differently. Similar to how a crab leaves its shell, our community is molting to better serve our users and for more people to connect together.
Initially, it won’t have any snazzy integration with Infusionsoft, but it’s in the works for our people to research and be able to make it seamless to connect the two systems together. We’re able to do a lot more with the forums than we have in the past. It will have a familiar appearance to forums and message boards that you access across the web today. It’s important to flatten any learning curves and complexities to provide for good communication between people. I also want to make it something we call our own – you know, our community, our ideals and our own sense of order.
I have a vision for what I want to see. I want to see customers sharing questions and answers on topics that relate to Infusionsoft. I also want people to talk about things they hear and see in the industry of marketing, marketing automation and CRM. I also want to have our partners to be a key part of the community’s (subsequently, everyone’s) success. It doesn’t mean it’s the biggest or most maniacal community — it’s our community and will become the central place people visit to talk about Infusionsoft.
Some people might wonder about why domestic (‘brand’) communities matter when external communities like Twitter and Facebook exist. We want to be where our customers are for sure, but there’s value in hosting conversations on your own platform. It adds validity to the discussions and of course, the content is ours – not subject to being removed or changed whenever another party sees fit. Cumulatively, we have a strong community externally and internally and being able to host your own discussions and further the dialog is a great step for everyone involved.
Stay tuned for future announcements on the launch of our new community. Just between you and I, the community is already there, I’m just building a better place for it to grow.
[Image credit: darwinbell]
Posted In: Customer Service
