Online Community
Building an Online Community on the Internet
Sarah is a marketing director for a large corporation. Most of her company's customer
community already has access to the web from home or at work. Sarah is a visionary who realizes the potential of
building an online community.
The company's target market is made up of a coherent community who share common interests.
They are members of the same organizations and are looking for ways to communicate with one another. Sarah would
like to use the company's web site and the Internet to provide a forum for this community. This accomplishes two
goals; 1) the company will get a lot of marketing good will; and 2) this will dramatically increase the number
of opportunities to make people aware of the company's products and services.
Before Calendar Central
Sarah had her staff added a Chat Server, Bulletin Board, and Calendar of Events to the
site. The Chat Server and Bulletin Board have gone well. They are accessed frequently and are easily managed.
The Calendar of Events has received a tremendous response and accounts for fully two
thirds of site visits. This has also proved to be the most time consuming part of the site. They receive about
20 postings a day (from 400 organizations) requesting that an event be added to the calendar. Someone has to receive
the email, screen it, and update the site. One of her staff spends half his day on nothing but managing the Calendar
of Events.
Viewers of the Calendar appreciate the information, but are frustrated at having to scroll
through long lists of events to see the one or two that match their interests.
After Calendar Central
After spending just 30 minutes installing Calendar Central, Sarah's group contacted the
different organizations in the community. She gave each organization permission to publish their own events directly
into Calendar Central. Instead of sending email, each organization can now login and enter their own information.
Each organization is restricted to entering events in the particular categories and locations relating to their
organization.
Since the organizations are entering events themselves, the Calendar of Events maintenance
is limited to adding new groups who would like to publish events.
Using Calendar Central, Sarah also chose to give each organization permission to embed
the calendar within their own web site. There is a banner add displayed above the calendar which markets the company's
products and services. Now, instead of one site for the company, it has a marketing presence on 400 sites.
Viewers coming to the site are very pleased with the new graphical calendar. They are
able to select the locations and types of events they are interested in - that's exactly what they see.
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