Know Your People

Figure out who your audience (potential community member) is
Figure out what they want to do when they get to your community
Figure out what tools they need to do that
Figure out why they want to talk to each other under your brand name -- what value do you bring?

Get the Right Tools

There are a lot of platforms out there -- it's important to get the right one for your needs
Find one with the tools your members will need
Find one that fits with your internal strategy & resources
Get one that's a little more than you need, so you can grow into it

TOS & Community Standards

TOS written to appease your lawyers
Community Standards written to be a guide for community
Use CS to shape the culture that you want your community to have
Moderate against the CS, use them for educating your members on what is acceptable
Culture is easy to set at the beginning, hard to change

Community Engagement
It can be hard to get started in a community when you're new -- hard to draw attention to yourself when you're the newbie
As mgr/moderator, ask a question that everyone has an answer to and nobody minds sharing. It needs to be appropriate for your brand/subject/space/people.
Some platforms have levels, rewards, etc to encourage positive behavior. Even a simple acknowledgement from a moderator can be enough.

2006-06-19 "Figure out what they want to do when they get to your community" is a tremendous discussion topic, in and of itself. I'm studying the profile, site, and attention data challenges of this issue. Does anyone know of case studies or white papers on the subject? richreader@hidden

Key Takeaways:

1) Ask a simple question everyone can answer
2) TOS vs. user guidelines
3) Understand values then components