IBM Connections - The Power of a Community Blog

In 2017, content is king and every company knows how important it is to have a blog or another platform for dedicated content marketing. What many companies overlook, however, is how beneficial it is to turn your IBM Connections Community Blog into an invaluable resource for your community. The key difference here is that instead of simply providing your audience information, you’re also providing them a platform to discuss ideas, problems, and questions with their peers.

Showing the value of a blog to your community takes a bit of time and effort, but it’s well worth it. Here are five important benefits that a blog will provide:

1. Offers Social Proofing

Perhaps the biggest reason that a blog is so powerful is that it can instantly gives you credibility. When a new Community member comes across your blog, they’re going to see articles that are interesting to the group, lots of other users engaging, and plenty of comments. This gives them confidence that your content is worth their while and that participating will not only help others but also put them in a good light.

2. Keeps your Community Engaged

There’s no doubt that when a group of people communicate well and have opportunities to exchange ideas, it results in positive outcomes for growth and success. If you’re the owner of the blog make sure to publish articles that are interesting to your target audience and manage comments so that varying opinions are not discouraged. Contributors will have different view points and that is typically what keeps the conversation going.

3. Works For You Around the Clock

Once you create a blossoming blog, people will have the opportunity to share ideas and make comments at any time without your facilitation. If you have a distributed workforce that operates in different time zones, this means the conversation does not have an end time, which ultimately leaves the team feeling more united and like a single group, rather than individuals spread across the globe. 

4. Keeps Your Finger on the Pulse

Throughout your community blog’s comments and discussion, you’ll be able to understand exactly how your community members think and what they truly care about. This insight is invaluable for bringing your community even closer together by proposing projects, events and other initiatives that appeal to the community altogether.

5. Acts as Secondary Customer Support

An active community will be able to help each other, and any questions that might pop up in the comments or through the course of active discussion will probably be answered by other community members. Additionally, your blog will be providing plenty of information and answers by itself. This combines to make the community blog an extremely powerful troubleshooting and service tool.

Interested in building a Community Blog in IBM Connections, but you need help setting things up? BCC can help implement IBM Connections.  

Looking to use IBM Connections as your collaboration tool and don’t know where to start?