1. Make sure that however and wherever your community is built, it should be easy for you to consistently and diligently (there’s that word again) keep tabs on the content being generated. Have appropriate front-line defenses to keep spammers at bay, they are getting trickier every day.

2. Usually the first, core group of members will tend to dictate the attitude and focus of the community. If everything is initial chaos, then potential members that might want to positively participate might be scared off. However, if you anticipate this situation and pick and choose your first group of members, then you can steer the mood of the forum to your liking and it will be much easier to manage. This will prevent ongoing headaches such as flaming and members constantly going off-topic in the future.

3. Make sure everyone knows what the deal is, but let the process of establishing community guidelines one that all members can participate in. The rules of your community need to be set quickly and clear. Make your community rules accessible, easy to understand, and let your members make suggestions to them.

4. Community is collaboration. What kind of attributes and atmosphere does your community have that makes people want to contribute positively? It's easy to get caught up in being a security guard and forget that you need to be a concierge first. The primary focus should be on getting people in, and then encouraging positive interaction. The secondary focus is booting people that act up.

5. The collaborative and somewhat democratic aspect of online communities tends to breed a sort of authenticity that eludes many forms of promotion. It’s about doing it for the right reason. Communities aren’t just about one point of view and hype. They are about problem solving, idea generation and building evangelism for your brand.

6. Attaching a web forum or blog “experiment” to a larger campaign is a fairly low-impact way to give this whole online community thing a try. This is a place where innovation and different ideas are the name of the game, so why not use this as a chance to swing for the fences?

7. As with any marketing campaign, metrics for social media are essential to identifying successes and opportunities. Sure, you’re used to measuring stats like visitors, time on site, referring sites, PageRank and site searches on your main website. However with any online community you also need to know number of registered users, number of active users, Technorati authority ranking, RSS subscribers, and much more.

8. With the sophistication of social media growing and the stakes being higher than ever, it’s becoming more important than ever to have your online community managed by a professional.

So who is the person for the job? Ideally, this is someone who can be a leader, encouraging people to register, registrants to keep returning and adding good content. Someone who knows when to step in the middle of discussions and threads that are digressing, becoming flame wars, or just off topic. Someone who can aptly promote the best material in order to attract like-minded readers. Someone who is in tune with the underlying goals of the site, and can make appropriate and resolute judgement.

9. Do your due diligence. Stay on top of your community and be constantly thinking of new and better ways to help it grow organically. This will give you the respect and longevity that all online communities desire.

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