What is community?
Communities are born when individuals who share a common bond come together to share interests and ideas. Thus, your workplace, your church, your local fitness club, for example, are all communities. The business world, in fact, provides fertile ground in which communities can form and grow. A company’s customers, for example, form a community in which ideas and opinions are shared, advice is sought and received—all for the ultimate improvement of that company’s products and services and its overall success.

The role of the Internet in community
Communities are formed and grow where communication occurs and interaction is allowed to flow freely between company and customer and between customer and fellow customers and prospects. Today, a primary form of communication is the Internet. The Internet exists, in fact, to foster communication...to promote the collaborative interaction of thought.

Where a decade ago, most companies were just beginning to think about having a website, today corporate websites are common. The majority of these sites consist of a one-to-many strategy offering static content much like a corporate brochure. Using the Internet to disseminate information in this way makes sense for certain types of companies. But for many others—those with robust customer bases in competitive industries, for example—this information dissemination strategy offers little “return” and doesn’t utilize the true power of the Internet. To unleash this power, you need to offer dynamic interaction.

Communities are the next “wave” in website advancement; they will unleash this power through the dynamic interaction building “champion” relationships, word-of-mouth promotion, peer-to-peer support and virtually impregnable market barriers of entry for those who are first to own their communities.

Market changes
In Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities, authors John Hagel III and Arthur G. Armstrong recognize a market change, writing, "There is an unprecedented shift in power from vendors of goods and services, to the customers who buy or use them. Businesses and organizations who understand this transfer of power and choose to capitalize on it by organizing virtual communities will be richly rewarded with both peerless customer or member support and impressive economic returns." Fostering interaction among a business’s customer/prospect community, via the Internet, makes those customers key players in the continued growth and success of the company.

What role does Solidvapor play?
Solidvapor, Inc. is in the business of helping organizations build their communities. We don't create the community, of course, because the community already exists. Yet through a unique blend of services, Solidvapor helps organize the community, bringing its members together and fostering communication among them—all of which ultimately charts the course for a fuller relationship between an organization and its many customers/prospects.