Dear Matt,

When it comes to customer-facing communities, most of what I see from a B2B perspective is on-site communities focused on customer support, and to a lesser degree, customer reference/advocacy or co-design. Most of these are gated or by invitation only. I've seen very few examples of vendor-sponsored external communities that work. The best example of the external community (that was initially vendor sponsored but is now self-supporting) is www.complianceonline.com.

To be clear, the MAJORITY of what I see is community tools used internally for internal collaboration.  Writing for the B2B marketer, I believe there is a lot of opportunity to use community tools to support existing customers, energize them, and turn them into advocates. I think that the real value of social media in general is at the retention, loyalty, and repeat purchase end of the marketing/sales funnel. I think there is also value in the consideration and selection phases when prospects know they need to buy something and use the community to help inform their purchase decisions.  I think social media will have marginal impact on branding/awareness and very little (except for serendipitously connecting prospects with key thought leaders) in lead generation. Unfortunately, I see a lot of marketers thinking they can build a community and then market to it.  This approach, more than likely, will fail.

To you question about examples of firms that are doing a good job of integrating community into their Web site I would point you to Citrix, Intel, and Serena Software. Integrating customer-facing communities into the online Web experience is early stage.  Most companies are only in the early stages and few are "getting it right."