online community | Social Signal

You've spent tens of thousands of dollars creating an online community site. Your organization has a big vision for how this new community can engage your customers, members or the public. Your developers, communications team and fundraisers are all bleary-eyed from the effort and dollars it's taken to get you to launch day. Now what?

The web site's done. The launch date is set.

Now - before you open the site's doors to the world - you have the chance to take a few key steps that will play a bigger role in shaping the community you’re creating than any other measure you’re likely to take.

So take a deep breath, and think about the kind of community you’re about to host. Think about the tone you’re trying to foster, the culture you’d like to see take root. Think about what success looks like.

And then take a few critical steps to starting your community off on the right foot:

My last post talked about how open systems teach us that we can, in fact, self-organize and find solutions, in a world that so often seems to be telling us to be passive and compliant.

In my case, the solution cleared a traffic jam... with more than half the cars already on their merry way by the time the police arrived.

Someone needs to tell the folks at Glad: Unless your customers pay for the privilege of wearing your logo, don't build an online community around your brand. That's rule #1 in marketing with social media -- and reason #1 for instead taking an approach we call reflected glory marketing. In reflected glory marketing you create a web site that resonates with your brand, but focuses on something your customer cares passionately about.