Twitter can be a great tool to use in support of your online community building efforts.
Here are 3 different online communities I’ve seen leverage twitter to facilitate success:
1) Adobe groups
Adobe Groups uses a twitter list to display the activity of 450+ of their members right on the community homepage. This list is maintained by their community manager and is a great way to engage with their audience.
Using this list provides value in a variety of ways:
(1) Does a great job at exposing the personalities of community members
(2) Gives members an easy way to keep up with each other (by simply choosing to follow the twitter list)
(3) Provides Adobe Groups Community Manager with insight into the activities of their members , exposing great opportunities to engage and reward.
2) The Community Roundtable
The Community Roundtable leverages twitter through the use of an account created specifically for their community @TheCR. I love the variety of ways they use this account to support their efforts
Recruitment
Welcoming new members
3) The Business Exchange
The Business Exchange community uses the twitter account @BXBW to support its Featured User program. In association with displaying the Featured User on the homepage, they do a tweet encouraging their followers to connect.
As a member of the Business Exchange, I can speak first hand on the value of this program. I had discontinued being active and nearly abandoned my account, and becoming the Featured User provided me with an influx of traffic to my blog and effectively re-engaged me.
What other examples have you seen of online communities using twitter to support their building efforts?
