TMCnet Online Community News

Top Five Tips for Using a Third Party to Develop Your Online Community

 So you’ve made the decision to employ a third party provider to manage the content on your online community. Congratulations! This step is an important one because you’ll be working with experts to broaden your brand’s visibility and credibility amongst the thought leaders in your industry. To best take advantage of what your third party can do for you and your brand, here are some helpful tips:

1.      Let them do what they do best, while you do what you do best. You’re not an expert in SEO, but you are an expert in the products and services your company offers. Stay that way. You want to keep producing the best solutions possible so that when an interested potential customer explores what you have to offer, he or she is persuaded in favor of doing business with you. You’ve selected a third party to help you gain visibility for a reason. While it is extremely important to be involved in the content of your online community (as we will get to later), it is equally as important to not postpone, delay, or counter important decisions that that provider makes regarding your content. Ideally, you get to develop your solutions while the third party promotes it on your online community. 

2.Contribute to your online community, yourself. While giving the third party content marketer the room to write and design for you, your thought leadership and industry commentary is invaluable as well. When you are the one contributing to your online community in a way that does not necessarily promote your products, but confers and ruminates in an academic way about industry developments, you position yourself and your brand as a leader in your respective industry. Use your online community as a portal for such leadership.

3.      Editorial calendars are cool. This one is pretty self-explanatory. Work with your editor/writer/third party content marketer to plan what is going to go up on your online community over a period of a couple of weeks so everyone is on the same page.

4.      There is a difference between “marketing” and “content marketing.” The third party that you have hired to contribute and monitor content on your online community is not your marketing team, and this notion is extremely important to keep in mind. You still have a marketing team, and even if you don’t, you are still ultimately responsible for your marketing plan. Your content marketer will do a sparkling job of boosting your visibility on search engines, and positioning your brand as a primary resource for reliable ideas and thoughts within your industry. But your business is still your business. Try to make that gray line a little more distinct when working with your third party. (This also relates to #1.)

5.      As always, it is vital to include industry news on your online community. Your third party provider should be diligent about staying on top of what is hot and coming up. Be aware that this industry news includes the news of your competitors. (Gasp!) It’s OK. Actually, it’s more than OK. Hosting competitor news on your online community boosts its visibility on search engines, and also points out that your brand is an open-minded one. Your authenticity will get an extra enhancement. 

Connect with Us and Join the Conversation: What are some ways you work with a third part to develop content, or your community?

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About TMCnet Online Communities

TMCnet Online Communities are news-generated, content-rich portals that position your company as the leading “go-to resource” for your industry group. TMC (News - Alert) has been building Online Communities for over 10 years, and continues to be the market leader at developing these successful sites for our customers.  To learn more about the TMCnet Online Community program, please contact Anna Ritchie  or call 203-852-6800 x 107. You can also visit us online.

Juliana Kenny graduated from the University of Connecticut with a double degree in English and French. After managing a small company for two years, she joined TMC as a Web Editor for TMCnet. Juliana currently focuses on the call center and CRM industries, but she also writes about cloud telephony and network gear including softswitches.