Posted by Marshall Krantz Responses (4)

Marketing maven Guy Kawasaki has posted on his blog a list of eight ways that companies can create communities of users around their products and services.

Kawasaki's ideas seem rooted in the digerati value of "open source," a term that refers to the development of the Linux computer operating system but whose ideological foundation is the democratization of power.

Thanks to electronic networking, people can collectively take matters into their own hands to a much greater extent than before. Best for organizational heads to go with the flow, channeling community power as best they can rather than fighting it.

Kawasaki's blog post got me thinking about how associations can embrace communities that spring up online even though the communities may not fit neatly into an association's organizational structure.

Associations that are quick to identify and foster communities of interest that are related to their mission can boost their own recruitment efforts.

Ways to help: Provide technological resources to encourage social networking under association auspices, and organize physical meetings to strengthen and expand online communities.

The phenomenon of communities that form online and come and go depending on the passion and interests of their members will only proliferate as society shifts from generations of the technologically timid to the digitally adept.

Look at the success of the social networking website, MySpace.com. In little more than two years, the website, which centers on young people's passion for music, has grown into one of the most visited sites on the Web.

Rupert Murdoch of the News Corporation found the business proposition of MySpace.com so compelling that he bought the company last year for $580 million. That's quite an endorsement of social networking's power to help build communities.

Thanks to Sue Pelletier for the pointer to Guy Kawasaki's blog, Let the Good Times Roll. You can read Sue's take on "The Art of Creating a Community" in her face2face blog post.