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Online community experts from four B2B companies shared their experiences at an Association of Online Publishers forum yesterday in a session chaired by RBI managing director, Dominic Feltham. Here are the highlights from their presentations and the final Q&A.

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John Welsh, digital director, UBM Live, a global media company with over 200 websites and 200 print publications

Welsh advised delegates that by connecting with individuals who have bigger networks than their own, they could expand their own circle with ease.

"Even if I only know five people, if I'm in touch with a super networker, I know 500 people," he said.

"This is about rolling up your sleeves and getting on with it (...) The development of technology allows me to do all sorts of things."

Editors should communicate with their audiences from conferences and events, he recommended.

His 'equipment' - a flip camera, laptop and blackberry - allowed him to share the findings of a recent web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, he said.

"By God, were they [the online audience] interested (...) My colleagues back in London could also see what I was doing," he said. 

"You've got people outside the conference making their views known about that exhibition. Do we [B2B publications] hear what they say? In this world, you hear what your customers want."

Don't sell your advertising on 'bald statistics'; instead use nuanced information about users and the site to sell to business clients, suggested Welsh.

Paul Hartigan, CEO, PharmiWeb Solutions, which publishes a news and jobs site for the pharmaceutical sector, PharmiWeb.com and other healthcare information portals
A challenge - but also an opportunity - for PharmiWeb was the slower uptake of the web by the pharmaceutical sector than in other industry areas, said Hartigan.

Reporting is also 'heavily regulated': products, for example, cannot be promoted directly, he said.

Social networks allow new types of communication and enable new conversations, he added. His company, for example, created a service where doctors could upload information about patients in an anonymous fashion and work with each other online.

Community functionality is 'all about creating a richer and deeper engagement with the audience that we're addressing', he said.

Hartigan urged delegates to consider using third-party applications, such as Twitter, rather than investing too heavily by building in-house.

PharmiWeb, to date, has implemented its services with a combination of 'buy, rent and build', he said.

Tony Hallett, editorial director of technology and business of CBS Interactive, an online content network including ZDNet, CNET, GameSpot and last.fm.
Hallett's examples covered a range of ground: Gamespot has over a million registered users in the UK, but some of its other publications are more niche.

"If you have a good community people will come back; people will be loyal to the brand," he said. Most their brands rely on display advertising rather than subscriptions, he said.

He reminded delegates that networks 'nearly always require extra work'.

"Community isn't a silver bullet. You have to work at it - it's not something that naturally flows by being there," he said.

Big firms are realising the importance of communicating their brands via B2B publications online, he said.

Technology brands are realising that search engines favour results from Silicon.com, rather than from their own sites, he said.

Ben Heald, CEO of SIFT, a company which provides online 'community solutions' to over 400 clients in the non-profit and public sectors as well as to media publications
Heald said it was a natural progression for B2Bs - which focus on engaging with people through events as well as the printed medium - to interact with online communities.

"Online is all about people; face to face is all about people," he said.

Various marketing exercises had shown SIFT where, and where not, it was easier to engage with users.

Using the tag 'SocialCRM' for a Twitter conversation had worked well to market an Oracle product, he said, but added that it had also raised problem areas - it was difficult to get marketing directors to ask questions, for example.

"You probably can't do things with marketing directors as visibly and audibly as Oracle hoped you could do," he added.

A V8 racing car online application using TAS software had also 'worked really nicely,' he said.

Heald also emphasised the importance of looking to third-party services before spending money building your own - something SIFT learned the hard way. After investing in building one social network, it realised the community was already out there and so pulled the project - not a pleasant experience, Heald added.

It is important to involve editorial, as well as sales people in the advertising process, Heald said.

"They're [editors] absolutely fully involved in making money. When account managers go for meeting, the editor goes in too," he said.

Heald also stressed the importance of the 'integration of online community with advertisers'. For SIFT, little attention is paid to selling banners and buttons on sites. Far more important, he said, was focusing on specialist advertising to niche groups. 

Echoing earlier comments from John Welsh, he said: "You don't go in there with bald statistics [when selling advertising]. The money you can make out of community sites is much more than banners and buttons."

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