Five things you need to know about online communities

1. Communities are everywhere.
If you're a big brand, start thinking about your customers as a community. The hyper-connectedness that the Internet brings allows groups of consumers to band together pretty seamlessly. Facebook, for example, immediately adds you to a 'shared interest' group. It works like this: if you mention in your profile that you 'like' Lady Gaga, you'll immediately be part of a group of similar people who 'like' Lady Gaga.

Customers talk about their experience with the products or services they buy. Yes, it's word-of-mouth, but the internet turbo-charges this. It's very likely that there are already communities out there, formed by your customers, saying one thing or another about your brand. Disgruntled customers can band together to force a company to take action over a dodgy product just as well as happy, devoted customers connected in a community will amplify brand stickiness and drive continued sales. Do you know who these communities are?

2. Don't feed your intern to the community.
There's some common wisdom out there that says "leave dealing with the internet to young whippersnappers who are more tech-savvy." That's also a common mistake. Yes, junior staff —by virtue of age - tend to be more tech savvy, but they often lack the experience to deal with sticky situations. It is better, in most cases, to put a seasoned communicator who can manage complex relationships at the helm of your community efforts, supported by staff who know the tech.

3. Fan Spam isn't a community.
Let's have a bit of honesty here - how many of you have joined a Facebook fanpage or followed a brand's twitter profile just because a friend asked you, or your agency was working for the client at that point of time? Another popular device is to introduce a contest with mechanics that require people to follow the brand or "like" the fanpage.

While these are quick and easy tactics to up your fan-count, a savvy brand-guardian needs to know that a high follower-count does not necessarily mean a strong community. A better metric for this will be to measure how many of your followers are actually "engaged" through their activities as part of your community.

4. If you're going to manage a community, the plan doesn't stop at recruitment.
Far too often in our industry, we see community presences on social networks die off and become a ghost town. The reason for this is often the failure to plan for the long-term. It could be that there was no vision of what happens to the community after the campaign. Or, not enough funds were budgeted for the long-term. When building a community, it's important to plan, plan and plan. Have a content plan sketched out four-weeks ahead. Think about the community's long-term direction and how it reaches business goals. Look beyond the campaign, and plan for your community to be an ongoing channel for your brand to interact with its audience.

5. Like trees, communities take time to grow and bear fruit.
Successful communities need take time to mature in order to reach their full potential. This process can be accelerated through good community management. How a new joiner is welcomed to the community and invited into conversation, for example, can make a real impact. The end game - communities that are largely self sustaining and populated by brand-loyal advocates - is typically at least a two year investment. But when you consider benefits such as the measurable decrease in customer acquisition costs, the propensity to community - driven customer support and the fact that community members visit your sites nine times more than non-members and stay five times as long, community-building becomes a very worthwhile endeavour.