Anyone who’s built a successful community of any kind knows it’s not an overnight project. It takes commitment, hard work and plenty of trial and error — whether you’re a solo blogger or a billion-dollar software brand like SunGard.

In her BlogWell case study presentation, SunGard’s Leah Patterson explained how the brand is building its internal and external communities from the ground up — and how it is finding a lot of early success.

A few of Patterson’s tips:

  • Start experimenting internally. SunGard started with an internal community hosted on Yammer that today has more than 10,000 employees participating in more than 550 groups.
  • Earn buy-in by getting leadership involved. SunGard’s CEO has started using the company’s internal network to share the feedback he’s getting from the customers he meets with every day, as well as to ask for input on company initiatives.
  • Apply what you’ve learned with external communities. Building on its internal success, SunGard has created a series of topic-focused communities for their customers to share ideas, network, and access helpful information.

And if you love this presentation, be sure to check out our upcoming BlogWell in Austin on February 2.

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8 Responses to “Andy's Answers: How SunGard is building business-to-business communities”

  1. [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lee Odden, Kathy Meyer and others. Kathy Meyer said: Andy’s Answers: How SunGard is building business-to-business communities http://bit.ly/fFP9NE [...]

  2. @oldstriker says:

    If you are B2B marketer looking to grow your community on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook then take a look at http://www.engagesciences.com

  3. hcorna says:

    There couldn't be more of a better example than Seth Godin's Tribes and the ebook that his tribe created that you can download for free- http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/10/f…

  4. Trackbacks are useful tools, but require extensive testing…

    Well, that was easy….

  5. SocialMedia says:

    B2B and Collaborative Consumption to save the day…

    See links for interesting information about Collaborative Consumption….

  6. B2B and Collaborative Consumption to save the day…

    See links for interesting information about Collaborative Consumption….

  7. MMP123 says:

    Our experience and recommendation is that you move the community from an experimental stage to a phase where the community is formalized into the business context-business process. This of course, if the company wants to get some true business benefits out of it. Otherwise, the community will stay as a community of interest and not a community of practice.

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