TMCnet Online Community News
Educational Content Leads to High Ranking and Dedicated Visitors for Ingate's SIP Trunking Community
Ingate and TMC (News - Alert) began their relationship in 2006 when Ingate saw a need to educate the business community on SIP and SIP Trunking. Without the resources to manage this effort internally, Ingate turned to TMC to help develop an educational seminar in conjunction with TMC’s ITEXPO (News - Alert), which it still continues to host to-date. The next step was keeping people engaged and educated in-between these events, and Ingate found it “difficult and time consuming” to maintain this initiative on their own. When introduced to idea of sponsoring a SIP Trunking Online Community on TMCnet, Ingate decided it would be a great way to “continue to educate our customer base in between ITEXPO events, and people who couldn’t make the events” states Steve Johnson (News - Alert), President of Ingate, who also saw TMC as a “natural partner because [TMC] has a significant reach to the audience that we need to talk to and is viewed as a trusted source of information.”
The Keys to Success: Partnership and Education
Ingate welcomes partnerships on their Community, stating that having a large amount of information available on their Online Community strengthens the value of the Community to its visitors. As such, the site has a co-sponsor to their Community, Broadvox (News - Alert), who also contributes content to the site. The more content the better, according to Ingate, because site visitors will want to return again and again, and share content, as they continue to learn from the information on the Community.
The content developed on the SIP Trunking Community is vast and includes videos, white papers, case studies, articles, and much more. Ingate has found that videos work very well on the site, as well as their bi-weekly educational and “non-technical” eNewsletter which has, according to Johnson, “gotten a tremendous response from our readers.” Ingate believes that the reason why their videos are so successful is because they are very short, high-level, non-technical and focused on a single topic- making it easy for any reader to understand. Ingate is also in the process of developing an eBook with their TMCnet editorial team as a way to collect the materials created for their Community in the past into a cohesive resource piece.
Keeping it Fresh and Collaborative
Ingate has found that a key to success, in addition to providing educational content, is providing new content on an ongoing basis, stating “people want more information, and there’s so much demand for educational information on this topic. The more new information you have, the more hits you’re going to get.” Ingate has also found that keeping most information “un-gated” is effective because the goal of the site is to be educational and a go-to resource that people can return to again and again rather than a sales or marketing tool.
In addition, the SIP Trunking Community promotes collaboration through its blog, Twitter and link to their Facebook (News - Alert) account. It would like to continue to promote collaboration on the site and implement new social initiatives on their Community.
Measuring Success
The SIP Trunking Community ranks highly organically on major search engines and is consistently in the top 5. Ingate has also received a large amount of leads from the content on their community that they gate. The SIP Trunking Community is extremely popular, and has a very high volume of unique visitors and page views every month. From January to March, 2011, the site received 635,773 page views and 161,811 unique visitors. And, these numbers increase over time as Ingate and its partners provide more and more quality content to the site.
To discuss how to implement the methods outlined in this article on your own TMCnet Community site, please contact a member of your dedicated TMCnet team.
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 has been building Online Communities for over 10 years, and continues to be the market leader at developing these successful communities for our customers. To learn more about the TMCnet Online Community program, please contact Anna Ritchie [email protected] or call 203-852-6800 x 107. You can also visit us online at http://www.tmcnet.com/community/Default.aspx
Anna Ritchie is product manager for TMC's Online Community Program. Previously, she worked as a change and communications practitioner for a global consulting firm, and as a freelance marketing and communications specialist. She received her master's degree in English from Seton Hall University and her bachelor's degree in English from Loyola University.
