Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, just released a report on Online Community Best Practices. Its one of the most comprehensive and practical reports on building community that I have seen in a long time.
From my experience, the biggest challenges with online communities is to get a critical mass of traffic and consistent activity momentum amongst the members. I like the conceptual model of "Life Process of a Successful Community" and would add to that that the hockey-stick growth isn't always so consistent. Instead, most of the high-activity communities that I have helped to create have been more of an upward growth with large spikes of activity that were in direct relationship with major product and/ or marketing initiatives. Often, communities are unprepared to deal with increased community activity spikes and all of the associated needs that accompany it (site performance, moderation needs, spammers, increased support, etc).
I've seen many a community effort fail because of a belief that "If we build it, they will come". Successful communities require ongoing planning, management and MARKETING! So many companies underestimate the need for community marketing. In addition, some tolerance for trial and error until you optimize a good balance between the engineered platform experience and the organic member experience is required. As the report suggests - when building a community its important to plan and take a phased approach....and to conservatively drink the koolaid in terms of forecasting growth. At the same time at Crimson Consulting we counsel our clients to plan marketing activities that will help to fuel community activity and be prepared for the increased management necessary to support growth.
