Ramit recommended this link.
It's powerful, contrarian, stuff. Watch it.
One comment is important for branded community builders, people do not want to engage with brands online.
Unless we have a problem (ala. customer service), we don't want to spend our spare time interacting with brands. There will be a few exceptions. There will be a few companies with hardcore fans. But you probably don't work for one of these companies (or you would have a community already!)
At several conferences over the last year, I've asked the audience how many participate in online communities about brands. Usually 2 – 3 people raise their hands (and this is an audience that develops branded communities!)
People don't want to talk with brands. People don't want to talk about brands. People want to talk about topics they're interested in.
Two points here. First, if you're a brand, you need to build the community around a topic people are interested in. Second, If you're a brand, you don't need members to talk about you for you to benefit. This is hard to understand. You don't need the conversations to be about you for your organization to benefit.
You get all the key benefits from communities: increase spending per customer, higher retention rates, reduced costs etc not from the discussions being about you, but from cultivating a group of people within a branded community. The less you force people to talk about you, the more people will talk.
