Communicating effectively and efficiently with Customers and Partners is easier than ever with Salesforce Communities. Communities can be established to meet many objectives and goals for marketing, sales, and service. But in order for your Communities to be successful, they require actively engaged members. Here are a few best practices and tips to ensure that the Communities you establish are successful and meet your objectives.
- Access to your Community: Ensure the right people have access to your Community. You determine membership through specific profiles or permission sets. If you’re including members outside of your company, you can also use profiles or permission sets to grant them access to the Community.
- Brand and Name your Community: Your Community “look and feel” should be consistent with your brand identity. Customize your Community to be sure that it is instantly recognizable as your company’s brand. You want customers, partners, and other members to recognize your brand when they enter your Community. Designate a friendly, recognizable domain to ensure it’s memorable and again, consistent with your brand identity.
- What’s Important to your Community: Hone in on the few areas that are important to your Community and limit your tabs to address this information. Select a landing tab that could be most relevant to your Community. Your other tabs (remember… not too many of them!) should address other specific “sub topics” for your Community.
- Test Drive your Community: Choose a select group of internal and external constituents to trial your Community and provide feedback prior to launching it. Not only will this build your relationship with these constituents, but it will also enable you to populate your Community with comments, posts, etc. so that when your Community goes-live, it already has valuable information and demonstrates an “active” Community from launch day.
- Designate a Community Moderator: Select a moderator for each Community you establish. Moderators are the life-blood of the Community, engaging members and addressing concerns, so be sure that whomever you designate is committed and accountable to engage with the Community on a regular basis.
Thanks for sharing. This reinforces that the technology is only as good as the people involved — both those involved with launching it (what is adjusted during the test drive phase) and those involved with sustaining it (community manager and community moderator).
I’ll add the importance of the community manager, who needs to define and connect the strategy that prompted these communities with the tactical use and support of the communities.
Our group is evangelizing this and welcomes your help.
Any thoughts on what the zones and topics should be? I am in high tech industry which has various products and families.
Nice thoughts! cannot emphasize more on the moderator.