Why sell your community internally?
The more involved the different business units within your company are in your community, the more embedded the latter will be within your online ecosystem and within your business. Involvement from other business units can vary in intensity, but in general terms every area of the business can gain from the rich data produced by your community on a day-to-day basis.
A community can directly deliver value to at least three areas of your business: Customer Care, Product and Development and Marketing and Sales. For Customer Care and Support a community can potentially result in big savings on call deflection as well encouraging higher levels of peer-to-peer support and self-service. A community can help your Product and Development team improve current and future products. A community can help your marketing team promote products and leverage their branding efforts. Marketing and branding units can also incorporate the community within premium or loyalty programs by providing special access to freebies and promotions to premium community members.