The 10 Rules of Building Community

The blog was resurrected yesterday and already I'm dropping bombs!  Today I'm providing the ten rules of Building Community which I included in my Community Manager pitch to talkto!  Enough of the dramatics andon to the value added info:

Community Manager is the buzz term for Social Media Marketers.  A firm's community manager is responsible for engaging customers through social networks with the following goals:

1. Coddle prospective users
2. Gain user feedback
3. Mitigate criticism  
4. Spread the Message

These goals are all aligned with the principles of Inbound Marketing which is the gospel of Hubspot (note they've been voted the best place to work in Boston...cough...cough...look over here).  I don't need to preach the benefits of social media or Inbound Marketing (their blog and book cover it thoroughly) but can interject on the subject of Community Building.  Community isn't something you can build overnight.  It also isn't something you can buy or expect to produce immediate benefits.  Your community efforts can fail miserably if your only interest is to find sales.  Here are my ten rule rules for building community:

1. The user is always right
2. Go where they are
3. Always be fresh
4. Be Responsive 
5. Foster Relationships
6. Encourage your evangelists
7. Amplify your supporters 
8. Address your detractors
9. Get outside voices
10. Be Patient

By no means is this an exhaustive list of best practices for building community but it is a good start.  Looking forward to comments and will elaborate on each of these rules over a few upcoming posts.