How do you build a talent community?  Is there a step by step method of creating and building a community?  Today, I answer those questions differently. 

In the past, I described the approach to building community as a recipe.  With great confidence, I proclaimed there were 6 elements to the Talent Community Recipe—all you have to do is mix the right ingredients and your talent community is baked.

1. Strategy: Should the community be about “jobs” or should it be built around a “profession”
2. Brand: Name the community and establish mission/vision/goals
3. Engage: enlist internal champions and establish expectations
4. Content Planning: Set up content calendar and select content RSS feeds
5. Measurement: Set up method of tracking activities
6. Conversation: Invite members to the community and begin conversing

What another year of experience is that while the elements and ingredients remain the same, the end result can differ from community to community.  Because humans are involved, and for the most part uncontrollable; it is far better to consider the community building process as in terms of Talent Community Guidelines. 

There are some important aspects of a community that are important to a community’s success; they are things that should be considered before building a talent community.  These pre-community success factors are: 

• Passion: Find a group inside of a company that is passionate about something
• Observation: the community inside and outside your organization
• Social Behaviors: Note the platforms, customs, etc.—the way they operate
• Unique Promise of Value: Determine how to bring your unique promise of value to this community

Next time, the importance of “passion” as a pre-community factor will be highlighted.

In the meantime, if you would like to join in the conversation about talent community development, I invite you to join http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=1148747 and join in the conversation.

This group is co-managed by some of the leading thinkers around talent communities; Susan Burns(@TalentSynch), Britney Calkins(@bcalkins), Gail Houston (@ghouston), Kristin Kalscheur (@kkalscheur), Michele  Porfilio(@mporfilio), Sherrie Valderrama (@Svalderrama) and Stacy Van Meter (@sjvconsult).