Digital Business Communities: Leveraging Social Networking for Corporate Networking

Man has always been a social animal. He is always chatting, talking over the phone, text messaging, blogging. Every hour, every moment he is interacting and engaging with the world around him. His need for association and affiliation has led him to the development of families, villages, towns, cities, kingdoms, states, religion, communities, etc. As the legendary Aristotle states "Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view for some good, for men always act in order to obtain what they think good." As the world evolves these social groups transcends into even more complex versions, bringing us to the phenomenon in this age of cyber technology, monikered digital communities.

Till a few years ago Web 2.0 was the concept understood and followed only by computer techies and geeks. But the recent years have seen a incessant rise of digital communities with participation of even the non-techie mass, through Social Media. I have been fortunate to lead web communications for my company and in the months since taking up this role, I have realized that today, digital communities have touched the realms of the corporate world too, Apart from the consumer orientation of social media, it has grown imperative for business-to-business marketing and communications. Blogs, Social networks, Bookmarking, Folksonomies, Wikis have become important channels for companies to communicate with their customers.

Companies have come up with innovative ways to grab eyeballs and mindshare on their online presence through such community initiatives. I have been learning the importance of the same and developing our community initiatives at titled "FTCommunity" a platform of collaboration of all participants of the financial world. And I am amazed at the interest that it has garnered in the financial community inspite of the rise of the social networking sites. Just goes to show the need and the dearth of company specific digital communities.

Digital corporate communities based on technology driven tools and services simply allows us to do what we have always been doing- engaging with associates and customers, in a much more efficient, easy, cost-effective and far reaching way. It is now very simple to engage with an almost unlimited number of people, overcoming all barriers of time, cost and place. Every industry can strive not just to be a part of this frenzied trend, but to leverage it as a part of what they are already doing, to do it better!

If studies are to be believed, the average time spent on the web per week is on the rise, and there isnt a better way to capture mindshare than enhance your web presence. So, if Google has captured the mindshare for search, the Bings and the Wolframalphas are trying their best to outclass it. The number of social networking and bookmarking sites are also testimony to the fact that companies seek to be all over the web so the demand for such sites will be there and new ones would keep coming even if you have Linkedin and Facebook and bookmarking majors like Digg and Delicious.

The bottomline is, if my experience in the months passed, understanding and learning the web is anything to go by, the web is the contemporary counterpart of physical existence. So all you professionals out there, if you don't know a thing or two about SEO, Offpage Optimization, Affiliate programs, Digital communities and so on, it's time you put your act together and enhance your web presence else you would be lagging behind in the rat race even before realizing it!