Last year, much of the conversation in the social software marketplace was about the technology behind community -- platforms, features, reporting, etc.  Buyers were evaluating community vendors on the merits of the technology itself.  But as the market matures, the conversation naturally shifts to business solutions the technology can provide.  The state of the economy is only serving to accelerate the shift.  No one can afford to deploy technology for technology's sake in this economic environment.

During this maturation process, we've been discussing and pitching four primary business benefits for customer communities: customer loyalty, lead generation, peer-to-peer support, and consumer insights.  We're starting to see consumer insights really pick up steam as a leading application for online community.  We're not the only ones noticing this trend. Brad Bortner, principal analyst at Forrester Research, coined a term -- Market Research Online Community (MROC) -- to describe this valuable way to use community.  So when we decided to host an Executive Conference Call through the American Marketing Association to talk about how community can benefit brand managers, product owners, and market researchers, it seemed natural to ask Brad to join us.

The teleconference is tomorrow (June 9th).  We'll start out with a discussion between John Kembel and Brad Bortner about trends in market research and where online communities fit in the mix. Then we'll open it up for Q&A and discussion amongst the attendees. It's not a webcast, it's truly a great big conference call. I'm looking forward to the discussion, and as a marketer, very interested in seeing how the format works. Stay tuned and next week I’ll share some feedback from the event.

I'm excited to bring my outbound/corporate marketing perspective to Social by Design.  I've spent most of the last couple of decades as a marketer at a variety of high-tech companies, taking advantage of all the new marketing tools and vehicles that came along.  Today, I'm enjoying being on the other side of the fence, working at a company that's on the front lines of changing how the practice of marketing is done.  It's rewarding to watch the disruptive shift as marketers realize what an online community can do for their business.

I'm going to kick off my participation in this blog with observations about thought leadership from a community perspective.  We recorded a podcast last week with David Meerman Scott, who has authored three books about online thought leadership and has another book coming out next month.  In preparation for the podcast, I was re-reading his book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR.”  If you haven’t read it, I recommend it.

A natural extension of the discussion in the book is an exploration of how online communities can be used to establish thought leadership.  Many companies have taken the first step in this direction by creating a vehicle for their own company voice.  Perhaps they've created a blog to talk about their point of view on trends in the market, their company plans, etc.  This is a great first step, but I believe the approach that truly leverages the power of community and offers the potential for much more significant impact is hosting the conversation around a given market.  Pulling in the collective intelligence, or rather the collective thought leadership, of a market is where the real strength lies.

Several HiveLive customers are pushing the envelope of thought leadership with this approach today.  Here are a few examples: Designers Accord (community.designersaccord.org) uses their community as a destination for driving the conversation about sustainable design. An analyst firm hosts a community that offers both their point of view as industry experts, and at the same time asks their community for best practices information as well.  An organization for executive recruiters uses the community to talk about industry issues, such as recent discussions about hiring and recruiting in today's tough economic climate, and leading Agile development software vendor Rally Software uses their agilecommons.org community to host the conversation around Agile development practices.

Serena Software has another interesting angle on using community for thought leadership.  Community.serena.com is first and foremost a marketplace for a new Serena Software product called Mashup Composer, but Serena also uses the community as a resource for press and analysts, engaging them in a conversation about the mashup market and about the company.  This approach leverages community to "influence the influencers" in the space that Serena cares about.

I believe company-sponsored online communities will be a great vehicle for thought leadership as more and more companies invest in hosting the conversation around their particular market or expertise. If you know of an interesting online community thought leadership example, I’d love to hear from you.