Community marketing is a strategy to engage an audience in an active, non-intrusive prospect and customer conversation. This does three things:

• Connects customers with prospects
• Connects prospects with each other
• Connects a company with customers/prospects

There are two types of community marketing:

• Organic (created by users with no company intervention)
• Sponsored (fostered and hosted by a company)

Companies employing community marketing

While they may not call it "community marketing", many companies and nonprofit organizations are creating forums, user forums, developer forums and other community-driven vehicles. Among them are:

• Sun Microsystems: Java Forums
• Oracle Corporation: Technology Network
• Microsoft: Channel 9 Forums
• Intuit, Inc.: Developer Network
• Intuit, Inc.: Support Forums
• Quickbooks Blogs and Forums
• Simply Hired: Simply Forums
• PayPal Developer Network: Forums, Solutions Directory and Blogs

• Nonprofit
  • Mozilla Foundation: Spread Firefox
• Users are creating their own in just about every topic
  • Yahoo! Groups
  • Google Groups

Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL), one of the major companies developing database management systems, tools for database development, enterprise resource planning software, customer relationship management software (CRM) and supply chain planning (SCM) software. ... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, SEHK: 4338) is an international computer technology corporation with 2005 global annual sales of close to $40 billion USD and about 64,000 employees in 85 countries and regions which develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. ... Intuit Inc. ... QuickBooks is an accounting software product developed by Intuit, Inc. ... SimplyHired. ... The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. ... Spread Firefox, often abbreviated as SFX, is a community of tens of thousands of Mozilla Firefox enthusiasts whose goal is to spread Firefox as far and wide as possible. ... Yahoo! Groups is an electronic mailing list service provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! has over the years bought many other mailing list providers, including the popular eGroups, and combined them into one system. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Benefits

• Customer Insight
• Identification of customer needs
• Customer-focused Product development needs
• Instant Consumer feedback
• Competitive Insight
• Ability to quickly enter the conversation
• Ability to prime market for market introductions
• Fire Management and Damage Control
• Identify and engage Advocates
• Identify and engage Detractors
• Reduce support costs: Customers helping Customers
• Social Networking: Users with similar interests will connect and grow
• Knowledge Management: Grow body of information about your products
• Owning and leading the conversation in your industry
• The 'place to go' for information about your space - trusted vendor
• Demonstrate openness, transparency
• Demonstrate customer focus

Tools used in community marketing

Community marketing occurs when companies develop sustainable, positive relationships with their prospects and customers. In situations where it is difficult or costly to talk to all prospects (especially in today's globalized marketplace), leveraging web tools can be advantageous. Globalization (or globalisation) refers to the worldwide phenomenon of technological, economic, political and cultural exchanges, brought about by modern communication, transportation and legal infrastructure as well as the political choice to consciously open cross-border links in international trade and finance. ...

• For Profit/Non Profit Partnering
• Corporate Designed/Funded Citizen Empowerment Program
• Online forums
• Wikis
• Blogs
• Social networks
• Syndication
• Messaging systems (Instant messaging, Private messaging, or E-mail)
• Any other "participant controlled" tool

Resources: A wiki (IPA: <wee-kee> or <wick-ey>) is a type of website that allows anyone visiting the site to add, to remove, or otherwise to edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration. ... A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order). ... A social network is a social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. ... A screenshot of PowWow, one of the first instant messengers with a graphical user interface Instant messaging is the act of instantly communicating between two or more people over a network such as the Internet. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

• [1] The Community Action Network
• [2] The Sensible City