[MUSIC] While many executives know a great deal about social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Renren, VK, and others, many don't understand the tremendous power of virtual communities. They are the large base at the bottom of the social pyramid and are the place where the deepest conversations happen. As I discussed in my book, Social IMC, virtual communities are where you want to be known as an influencer or an expert. It is where peer-to-peer recommendations are the strongest and where people make many of their purchase decisions. When we examine social networks, they have the following characteristics. They are created to link members together as families, friends, and colleagues. Their primary mission is to allow for conversations and the exchange of pictures. The creators of social networks are entrepreneurs who want to eventually monetize their site. Many, like Twitter, start by focusing on communication. Then after they grow, they add some type of revenue-generation device. Most social networking sites use registration as a way to identify members. For members, the registration page allows them to claim a spot on the site to develop their profile and provide other information to attract people with similar interests. It also gives each registrant a user name so they can contact others. The registration process is important for you to understand. While registration is the means by which network members can contact and engage with others, it has an important role for the entrepreneur. Because you must login each time you visit the social networking site, your activities can be tracked, analyzed, and aggregated into markets the company can use to sell to advertisers. They can also evaluate your behaviors to determine the intensity of your interest over time. While the registration process provides some information to the site owner, the profile page adds a great deal more. Remember WeFeelFine extracted age, gender, location, and other information to segment the market. This type of information is used by the entrepreneurs who add it to their advertising offerings. Virtual communities are the exact opposite of social networks. Rather than joining to socially engage, virtual communities are on a mission. They want to express their patience or address a life-change event. Most communities are created by members who also manage them. Their conversations are deep and focus on subjects of interest to the members. Virtual communities are often smaller than social networking sites, but they are many in number. They too have registration and profile pages, but they are used for very different reasons. In virtual communities, the members control the site and often reward users for supporting it. We call this gamification, which we will discuss in MOOC 4. While virtual community members analyze member activities like the social networking sites, it is used primarily to improve the site by growing the content members enjoy and to remove members if they are causing the community problems. When a virtual community requires registration, we call it a private virtual community. I like to restore muscle cars, and I'm currently working on a numbers matching 1968 Roadrunner, a Mopar car. As I am restoring this car, I seek virtual communities for help and expertise. Unlike social networking sites, virtual communities exist on many different levels. There are restoration, car restoration, muscle car restoration, Mopar car restoration, and Roadrunner restoration sites. Which one I frequent depends on the types of experts I want to engage, regardless of the type of virtual community. All have the same structure. At the center are the experts. This is where you will want to position your company or organization. The influencers are bloggers who help determine the topics and subjects being discussed. Their outreach, like their blog publications and tweets advertising them, engage members and draw them into the community. Members are the largest group and are the people interested in the community topics. They have different levels of engagement, depending on the strength of their interest. As we examine our social strategies in MOOCs 3 and 4, we will want to consider engaging virtual communities to reach the target audiences we want to develop. However, in the social IMC strategy, we will actually develop a private virtual community to attract, engage, and develop two-way relationships with communities of high value to your organization. As we will see in MOOC 4, private virtual communities are an effective way to build long-term relationships with our most profitable markets. [MUSIC].