These days companies equate building a community (online or offline) as easy as building a web site. Unfortunately, they are incorrect. It takes times, planning, and numerous other factors that are beyond your control. Here are some tips in building your community and knowing full-well it isn’t going to happen overnight:
- Say hi once and a while. Especially on Facebook and Twitter don’t just overload their news feeds with corporate promos / mktg messages. Be a real person!
- Highlight a community member and the work he/she is doing. That person will appreciate and talk about your brand on his/her blog, twitter acct, facebook, etc…
- Internally evangelize community learnings within your company. Let people know what you are doing and know how they can take part in this new type of communication.
- ask yourself is content more important than quality. Do you need a nice HD camera and spend the time rendering or do you just need a small Flip or Kodak camera and get your video up on your YouTube channel as fast as possible.
- Have a real conversation with one of your community members. Give them a call and hear what they have to say in ways in which your community and product can be improved.
- and finally it isn’t about how many fans you have, # of followers, how many registered on your site, but about how many are engaged and interact with you. If you’re product launch is 2 years from now start building your community now step by step, fan by fan, follower by follower.
-Randy
@djksar
The Life of Randy Ksar 
Posted by greeninsights on March 12, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Thanks for the reassurance that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Building community online is effortless in the sense that you can communicate with numerous people collectively rather than trying to stay in touch offline individually. Yet, it’s a type of communication that doesn’t seem to readily equate into personal and professional success.