When building an online community, there are some underlying principles that hold true whether a company is large or small, and among those is a genuine commitment to openness and fostering a dialogue. When starting a blog, companies need to be prepared to embrace those principles; they must also be flexible and open enough to apply them and willing to commit resources to promote them.

Intel digital strategist Bryan Rhoads recounts the founding of Intel's blog, Technology@Intel, and points to three critical success factors for developing an online community:

1. Early management buy-in. Though blogging started as a grassroots initiative among employees in 2003, CEO Paul Otellini recognized the benefits of blogging and launched his own employee blog the next year. Other Intel executives soon followed, culminating in a fully IT-supported platform by 2005.
2. Willingness to share information. Team-based wiki collaboration led to the enterprise-wide “Intelpedia,” which today contains over 15,000 articles from employees defining, collaborating in and documenting the vast Intel workplace.
3. Investing resources. In 2008, Intel launched a global training initiative (Digital IQ) that invited employees to participate in social media. Within weeks employees began directly sharing their experiences and knowledge on places like Twitter, Facebook, technology websites, BBSs in China and other worldwide support forums.

"We created all of these social spaces to foster dialogue and make important contributions to a widening range of issues relevant to our customers, to our employees, and to the future of technology," says Rhoads.

Fast-forward to 2010, and Intel now offers corporate blogs in over 25 languages on topics ranging from corporate responsibility and research to jobs and customer support.

The Po!nt: Building a successful online community is a process, not the flip of a switch, one that requires a strong vision and active commitment from all participants.

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