So you are tasked with building an Online community. Guess what: you are not alone. More and more companies are trying to elbow their way into social networking space.

The challenge is to approach it in the right way. You need to ask yourself and by extension your organization, not only, how would we benefit from an online community, but: how would a member of your online community benefit from participating in our social network? And while it may seem topsy turvy, this should become the objective of your effort, the foundation of your endeavor. Everything down the road should be measured against that goal.

Why? Too often the efforts of moving into a social networking space are driven by lead generation objectives where networks are created as a barrel into which prospects are lured to be shot at with marketing messages. In other words, the community is basically just a lure to hold them down or to distract them while the company performs its marketing ritual of "exposing them to our brand and messages."

Communities have to have a life of their own. Internet users are savvy, time pressured, and, believe it or not, seeking meaningful connections. People want a community where they can voice THEIR opinions and read about the opinions of real people. You'll know your social network is successful when people start saying how much they like the site because of the other PEOPLE who visit it. Similar to real life, people draw other people into communities, much more than any brilliant marketing efforts. The richer the community, the more they enjoy congregating, the stronger the draw.

If you are not ready to open up to such a community, perhaps the money would be better spent on as Mark Cregar of Emerging Marketing Blog calls it: dull, old school tactics like stellar customer service, product innovation and compelling marketing. Anyhow, these issues need to be addressed first as boring as they sound.