Apparently employees shouldn’t build their own online communities because:
- It would be easy for recruiters to identify the company’s top employees and poach them.
- The company might over-rely on the employee to represent them.
- The employee might have too much influence within his community (i.e. it would be difficult to fire them for fear of a negative backlash amongst customers)
- The organisations’ online community efforts might be overshadowed by their own employees.
These all sound great to me. If I worked at an organisation who used one of these excuses, I’d start building my online community now.
You can start by finding five people that talk about your industry/products and introducing yourself. Maybe you can set up a quick e-mailing list to stay in touch. Add them to Facebook too.