Many people I have talked to are interested in starting their own online communities. Some already have one and need help with encouraging participation. I thought I would share a smart road-map to building a successful online real estate community.

We all know that if you want a successful community, you need people ready and eager to join and participate. The lifeline of any community is its members and the content. Keeping members involved and inspired to contribute is the biggest struggle but first lets start with a plan for your community.

First Step: Lay the Foundation

1. Write down some goals. What area do you want to influence? Write down the geographic area.
2. Make a list of influential people that you want to contribute to your community.
3. Reach out to influential bloggers and other community leaders.
4. Start a spread sheet of people you have access to and start reaching out to them.
5. Make sure you have some analytics running on your blog or social community so you can see and track your readership. 
6. Make a list of offline networks you have access to. Non-Profit organizations, trade groups, Chambers of Commerce, etc. - reach out to these groups and bring them online.
7. Find agents in your company that can be a part of the community and are willing to contribute content.
8. Interview people you want to be part of your community and record the conversations or better yet, do a video interview.
9. Start a database of content.

Second Step: Start Reaching Out

1. Start participating in the communities you’ve identified. You can participate by writing comments on blog post, or write a review and provide a link back.
2. Start emailing 2 people per day and ask them to contribute to your community; or do an interview with them.
3. Start featuring community members – people love their 15 minutes of fame! The more you interview and talk about other people, the more they will share your blog or community.
4. Run a contest and have some fun. Maybe give away an iPod or something for the best article submitted.  

Third Step: Start Promoting your Community.

1. Host a “best of” series on your industry blog featuring the best posts from the top bloggers.
2. Bring your online community offline. Host a party and invite your community members. Document the event and be sure to feature it on your blog. By building offline relationships with your community, you will get people more involved.
3. Reach out to the social networks and begin spreading your community throughout other online networks. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are great social networks to start with.
4. Become an online detective and never stop trying to find influential people to interview and get them following your blog.
5. Most of all, have fun! Don’t forget to ask your members how you can make the community better.

Following these steps will get you started and get you moving on the path to building your own social community. It is important to remember that it will take work – it takes time and persistence to build a successful online community. But it pays off - spending time to develop exisitng relationships is a great way to maintain contact with individuals and to expand your network in order to build new relationships.

It will pay off. Good luck!