This is a short transcript excerpt from a YouTube conversation (recorded Sep 27, 2022) exploring whether specialised technology is required to run a B2B community. The hosts argue that technology platforms are optional: the priority is meeting members on whatever platforms they prefer (LinkedIn, Facebook, WhatsApp, email, etc.). Operationally they monitor alerts across channels and respond where members reach out, encouraging a mindset of serving clients on their terms rather than forcing a single "shop front" platform.
Chapters
Do you need a technology piece to run your community? You've proven me that. That's no, but I want to get your understanding. How do you do that? You are serving us members everywhere. So yeah, generally the tendency is that, oh, I'm going to launch a community, I'm going to create a Facebook group or I'm going to run, I'm going to run a community, I'm going to go to one of the tools, whatever, whatever took somebody to go to Guild, I'm going to go to whatever. You guys don't have that because you have a policy of engaging on the users terms wherever they use. So.
And you. Exactly, exactly.
How do you manage that? How do you manage that? It's crazy. I mean, honestly, how do you achieve that scale? Because it's. I can't even keep myself.
Well, it's. I mean, remember we've been doing this for years and, and so we are very fortunate that we've grown up with it all. To begin with, people only ever had to use Academy and then came in LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter. So we've laid up our knowledge of it. But actually from a day to day point of view, we're just watching the alerts all the time, wherever we are and seeing them. And people come to us through Facebook messenger, they come to us through, as you say, all the places. We can try and encourage people to come to one place. But, but the point is that if you're serving your client, you meet them where they want to be met and that's the difference now that's the incredible advantage that we have now. We've not got a shop front in Farnham on the high street that says you've got to drive to see us. We now can come to you where you want us to be. And it is just a mindset that you have to have because otherwise you're not going to serve your clients how they want to be served.
I think, yeah, I think Ben is absolutely right. I think the other thing, Ricardo, is everyone has their preference. Some people love WhatsApp, some people hate WhatsApp, some people love Facebook, some people hate Facebook, some people love email, some people hate email, some people love LinkedIn.
