Marketing: Rules for Working with Online Communities

[mandy]

The power of virtual communities has been revealed in study after study, showing an increasing distrust of advertising matched by a surging trust in opinion and advice from postings and reviews published in communities, discussion groups, special-interest forums, blogs, and other online sites.

The critical questions for marketers are, first, whether these communities can be used to advantage, and, second, if so, how.

The answer to the first is a conditional yes, but the potential for disaster is ever-present. Take just one recent example: Microsoft's decision to seed the blogger community with free laptops and the Vista operating system ahead of the software's launch unleashed a storm of negativity, casting Microsoft again in a manipulative, Machiavellian light...

full article: http://multichannelmerchant.com/webchann...-04042007/