Community Building

From Sandro Groganz, Open Source Marketing Consultant

Community building has a lot to do with behaving nicely. Treat your community members just like you would treat a good friend visiting your house. Never ever push community members to do something. Never ever tell them they are stupid. Don't make them feel that you use them as cheap labor.

Instead, you will want to see your community flourish just like you want to make your company successful. This means that you should support each community member the best way you can. In fact, simple providing all necessary information to them suffices in 95% of all cases.

Make sure, you guide by example. In your online forum, answer within 2 days latest providing some useful information. Alternatively, ask others to help or say you will investigate further. Help to solve conflicts, don't make them worse. Official rules for your forum are nice, but members will in the end behave the way you behave.

Most importantly, don't do all the work yourself - which is anyway impossible. Acknowledge that your company is not superman and that you welcome any help from the community. Once the community starts to contribute, don't take away their work. Credit those who do the work and they will do more than you ever expected.