Companies must adapt to the changing relationship people have with products. Sales influencers go far beyond product reviews and mentions in traditional media and analyst reports. Today, sales are influenced by a broad community of people that include customers, partners, staff, and enthusiasts.
It’s difficult to manage this community with current tools. Enterprise software and technology companies often find that the majority of their community does not actively consume information from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Hacker News. Inbound traffic analysis from these sites show curious enthusiasts with only a limited stake in the product.
The solution to engaging with influencers can be found in the open source world where technologists that influence purchase decisions engage with hundreds of ideas, concepts, technologies and packages on sites like StackOverflow, npmjs.com, GitHub.
The common element for all of these sites is that they are a type of marketplace for answers, packages, code, or ideas. Companies want to implement their own marketplace for influences. Some are building their own marketplace with custom software at high cost. Even with a successful marketplace launch, they are still burdened with labor-intensive processes to maintain the marketplace.
After managing influencer communities and campaigns for global technology companies for three years, Oppkey is now working with developers to build software to support the types of communities that everyone wanted to use.