Andy Hadfield's Cowboys & Engines Blog:
"Community before commerce. In the words of John Hagel III and Arthur G. Armstrong (authors of Net.Gain), 'put community before commerce.' That is, the purpose of these efforts
is to build a community, not sell more stuff, so cool it on the commercialism. The community exists for its own benefit, not yours.
Communication comes next. Build in the capability for people to communicate with each other via message boards and Internet mail lists. Peer-to-peer communication is more important than being able to communicate with the company. You're hosting the event, but it's a cocktail party, not a lecture.
Place the community's interests above your own. The big picture is that a vibrant community will help you, but getting to this place means sacrificing short-term intere
sts. For example, people should be able to freely discuss and endorse competitive products. Tolerate criticism. Not only should peple feel free to plug competitive products, they should be able to criticize your own. This freedom produces two desirable results: first, good public relations because tolerating criticism on a company-sponsored site is unheard of; second, free and voluminous customer feedback.
Encourage 'personalities.' Remember how one of the keys to the success of MTV was veejays with an attitude? The same is true of a Web site, so encourage your employees to develop online personalities to show that corporate thought police don't control your site."
These are concise, and excellent, and they represent a huge challenge for most organisations which are more used to doing exactly the opposite ie they put commerce first, rarely engage in genuine communication, place their own interests first, avoid criticism at all costs and prefer a bland corporatese over personality.
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