Online Community Vendors
Five things to keep in mind
We believe in wearing out the tools you have before investing in new tools. If you’ve reached that point, and you’re ready to review white label online community vendors, here are a few things that we feel are very important to keep in mind…

1. User experience: Does the platform accommodate the way your members use the internet, or is it something you believe they’ll easily adapt to?
2. Social objects: What are your social objects? Or another way to ask the question: what will your members do in the community? The vendor you select should offer the feature set to accommodate that activity.
3. Culture and vision: How well does the vendor’s vision of online community match your organization’s vision? Is it more social and people-driven? More content-driven?
4. Outposts: If your organization has a presence in outposts like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or others—or you’re planning to have a presence—it’s important to consider how your white label online community might feed your outposts and vice versa.
5. Compatibility: You want to make sure the vendor you choose can work seamlessly within your IT infrastructure, certainly. We put this last because we bet it was already at the top of your list.

New Whitepaper (coming soon!)
Keep an eye out for Six Online Community Vendors for Associations: An Analysis, featuring Higher Logic, NFi Studios, The Port, The Social Collective, Socious, and SusQtech. As soon as it’s ready for download, you’ll find it here.

Originally posted @ Association Marketing Springboard (Now SocialFishing)