Madison Who’s Who Blog

Networks within networks, communities within communities. Networking innovations can be likened to a single sell subdividing into more specialized units. Peer to peer networking groups arrange themselves around mutual business interests. A new type of community could be said to be made of peer to peer consumers.

“Communispace does not create the typical customer community. Their small private communities are designed to deliver feedback on products, advertising campaign ideas, etc. That contrasts with open, user-generated content communities such as Wikipedia or Channel 9, where a good deal of the site’s value is generated by larger numbers of participants who use it as a peer-to-peer support forum and/or a social network.”
(Source)

It’s an interesting concept that corporations are employing to seek out customer feed back, involve the customer in the R & D of a new product or to listen to the type of languaging their target group employs.

A leading hospitality provider has created a community of business travelers to gain insight into their experiences at their properties and to participate in their website’s redesign.

An insurance company developed a community of informed and accomplished professionals to gain insight into how influential people go about influencing others.

An advertiser created a community for 18 to 24 year olds to tap into feedback for campaigns. A 24 hour session brainstorming taglines with this energetic group generated a tag line that was put to immediate use in a national campaign.

It is a specific approach to networking within small, specially created communities that is designed to reap rich results and feedback from exactly the target groups with whom a company desires to convert into loyal consumers.