As introduced in a previous blog post on different types of community platforms, many organisations - companies, institutions, private communities, etc - are using community platforms in order to reach different goals, from marketing to communication or community building. Today, we dig deeper into several case studies hand-picked from recent business news in the hopes of making it easier to find out how a community platform can support you in achieving your goals.
Corporates
Thomson reuters: the multinational mass media and information firm is using different community platforms for 2 distinct purposes:
For project management and BPO: a solution based on Jive called the Hub. It is a key driver for many internal business processes that also allows employees to better collaborate and interact.
For customer experience: the multinational is also using an online community platform to help its small law firm customers to share experience, network, and gain valuable insights, trends, etc.
Pearson: Pearson drives social changes by using NEO, a platform also powered by Jive that merges 130 intranets, and gathers 44,000 employees on a stream divided into more than 15,000 communities. This platform has been built to connect all the collaborators and improve knowledge sharing, especially in the realm of products. Thanks to NEO, the information is flowing in a more efficient way, and Pearson’s employees better know the organisation and its products, which leads to improving the collaboration processes between teams worldwide.
Prezi: The presentation software is using Get Satisfaction to run its customer community platform. If the platform is first made for users to share tips, ask questions or exchange best practices, it also has the special advantage to be a very good source of insights into product development, user experience or market needs. Prezi’s brand manager and R&D departments must be closely watching this community.
Institutions
City of Little Rock: even a city can benefit from a community app. It’s the case of Little Rock in Arkansas, that launched its own community app with MyCommunityMobile to socially connect with the citizens, promote events, share information, make announcements, report issues, etc.
Milwaukee School of Engineering: this school is using its own social network to retain students and engage them in the school’s life before their integration. After noticing a huge drop off between acceptance and enrollment, it’s on the recommendation of a famous marketing agency that Milwaukee School of Engineering got its own community app. The result is quite impressive: from 2011 to 2012, they noticed an increase from 30% to 38% in the retention rate from acceptance to deposit.
Alliance Française: the french culture institute is using Minsh as a community platform in Bangalore, India. With their Alliance Française de Bangalore app, the institute can easily communicate with their students, share their calendar, and post useful information in a friendly environment, while improving the member’s interactions. The app has been warmly welcomed by the community (see their article - in french - about it, page 35): members are interacting with each other and with the institution through the app, where they also exchange interesting insights about the french culture and language.
Private communities
Plenty of clubs and private communities are using community apps to better connect their members and keep the information flowing inside the community. It’s the case of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which used Subsplash to launch its own community app so as to engage the members of the church in the daily life of the congregation. It is also the case of many other communities, like sports clubs, car collectors, or even lodges and fraternities. Many associations use their own community platform to better engage their community, improve the communication, and foster the identity connection between the members.