Like any real life community, the foundation of an online community like Dell TechCenter is relationships between its members.
The Dell TechCenter IT community focuses on professionals that work in a data center and has been going strong for over five years now thanks to the thousands of members who contribute to the online conversation (whether it takes place in forum posts, blog comments, or on Twitter) and the dedicated staff at Dell that moderates the site, answers customer questions, and creates new Dell related technical content for the community.
In recent days TechCenter members who have been interacting online for years finally got to meet in person. In December 2012, many Dell TechCenter Rockstars (who are among the top 1% of users on the site) came to Austin, Texas to participate in the Dell World 2012 conference to learn more about IT industry topics, interact with Dell staff, and get to know each other better.
As part of their experience in Austin, several TechCenter Rockstars collaborated on a panel to give insights on their community experiences and what makes a successful online B2B community. They shared their motivations for interacting with companies and other IT professionals online, and highlighted many examples of community best practices.
(Please visit the site to view this video)
In their 20 minute community session, TechCenter Rockstars gave insightful answers to many questions:
- What is the DellTechCenter.com IT community? (0:45)
- What do the top 1% of users on community look like? (3:05)
- Who are the Dell TechCenter Rockstars? (5:29)
- Why join a community and community advocacy groups like TechCenter Rockstars? (7:00)
- What motivates community members to participate in and share? (8:17)
- What are best practices in community motivation techniques? (10:19)
- Why is it OK to ask dumb questions online? (11:15)
- Do online B2B communities help customers trust a company more? (12:45)
- What products are a result of community collaboration? (13:30)
- Do online B2B communities effect customer purchase decisions & recommendations? (15:06)
- What are the essential ingredients of a successful business community? (16:25)
- Besides Dell TechCenter, what are great examples of online communities? (17:30)
- How do Tech Professionals / IT Administrators us Twitter?
The Dell TechCenter Rockstars representing in this video include (from left to right):
- Kirk Jantzer - IT professional at Careerbuilder.com
- Jay Weinshenker - Oracle Database Administrator at Luminex
- Todd Muirhead - Founding member of Dell TechCenter, now partner at VMware
- Jonathan Copeland - IT professional at City of San Antonio
- Tom Heskestad - Dell Partner & IT consultant at EVRY (Norway)
- Rod Trent - CEO of myITforum.com an online community focusing on Microsoft System Center
The moderator of the panel is Jeff Sullivan, Online Communities Lead at Dell.
The MC who introduced the TechCenter Rockstars session is Sean Carey.
The following slides were used during the presentation you viewed above:
Do you have any additional best practices to share or questions about community? Let us know in the comments!