Guest post from Lauren Harper, Community Manager at Focus.com

David Sprink once said, “Community managers are like Pokemon… everyone wants one but they aren’t sure why.”

The widespread adoption of social media across corporate America today has sparked the idea of creating and engaging with one’s “community” of followers, friends, fans, customers, prospects, and anyone else who might drop in on the conversation. Companies are beginning to embrace this cultural shift by creating these roles of community managers, but lack a complete and thorough grasp of who comprises their community and how to keep them engaged.

One of the many challenges gripping community managers today is figuring out new and innovative ways of keeping their audience coming back week after week, and unfortunately there isn’t just one best practice to follow in order to meet that goal.

However, there are pro-active steps that community managers can take to keep users coming back. Based on my experience, here are the ten steps I would take to help grow a community.

1. Find Your Community
The most critical first step that any company must take is to figure out exactly who the community is and really understand what they care about. That knowledge paves the foundation for all strategies going forward.

2. Build a Platform
Provide a platform that can sustain the community. The whole point of a community is to get people to interact, listen, and learn with and from one another. Thus the company needs to have a platform that is able to both handle and help facilitate those interactions.

3. Collect Feedback
The platform must have a place where community members can go to give feedback, ask questions, and share ideas. Whether that takes form in a “Contact Us” page, or even going as far as having a “Feedback” tab on every page of the website, community members need to be able to easily provide feedback.

4. Build Trust
Next, you need to build trust. It’s important for me as the community manager to personally reach out to any key customers, experts, analysts and/ or thought leaders to introduce myself and provide a point of contact. This personal touch helps to build rapport with the key influencers in the community.

5. Develop Your Brand on Social Media
This also translates into cultivating a personal brand in conjunction with the corporate brand on social media. In addition to the platform, I would reach out to the members of the community on popular social sites like Twitter and LinkedIn as another channel of communication. The more accessible you are the better. Community managers should also be hanging out and participating on other community sites and blogs. This is just one more way for me to promote the company brand, gain recognition, and hopefully drive more people back to the site. Twitter chats and LinkedIn groups are a great place for community managers to establish thought leadership and build new relationships.

6. Stay Up to Date
The next step is to keep up to date with relevant blogs, articles, webinars, and conferences. It’s imperative as a community manager to stay well versed so I can engage in intelligent conversations with my community members, which leads into step 7- engage in the conversation.

7. Dive Into the Conversation
Community managers need to constantly be stoking the fire of discussion. Spark engaging discussions that not only bring people to the site, but also make them want to participate in these conversations. The trick, however, is to ensure there is a constant flow of information without overwhelming people.

8. Take the Conversation Offline
Set up networking events as a way of cultivating the community offline, even if it is as simple as throwing a small get-together after a conference. In this world of amazing technology and social networking sites, you should never underestimate the power of meeting someone face-to-face. The ability to shake someone’s hand and look them in the eye has a greater impact than any conversation had online.

9. Test, Test, and Test
Test everything. In order to figure out what works and what doesn’t, it’s important to test new strategies all the time. You just never know what strategies the community will respond to without testing and measuring them.

10. Utilize Measurement Tools
Which brings me to my last point: embrace metrics and measurement tools. Use metrics to create better social media, engagement, and overall marketing campaigns.

These ten steps can help to create a successful community. The ultimate goal of any community is to create a self-sustaining environment where people can come together to engage in conversation about any specific topic or product. Every community has its own niche; it’s just a matter of providing a platform and setting that make people want to keep coming back.