Very happy to let you know that our free white paper, Six Online Community Vendors for Associations: An Analysis is available for download!

We wrote this paper as a direct response to questions we’ve been asked a lot by our association peers about where to start when thinking about whether to build a white label homebase social network or online community – once you know your members are comfortable interacting with you using social media, and are perhaps ready for something more inclusive than just your various official outposts on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

In the paper, we looked at the various things to think about when researching white label community vendors – front end considerations like user experience and social objects, and back-end specifications such as integration with outposts and compatibility with AMS systems. To prove our point(s), we asked six vendors we’ve worked with to step up to the challenge and answer all of our probing questions. The paper is NOT a big comparison table as you might traditionally find, but instead considers the variables you might want to ask if you’re not an IT person but someone from marketing, communications, government relations, PR, or membership – those who are more and more in charge of making this decision holistically on behalf of their organization.

We hope you find this helpful; please share it among your colleagues. (Blogger buds – there’s a handy embed code should you want to post about it. Thanks!) We also welcome any comments you might have on it, as well as suggestions for other white papers you might want to see. Enjoy!