Photo cred: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skinnyde/146763376/

The sacred cows I mention below have been on my mind for several months now, but I was inspired to take action after a community management panel that I attended at SxSWi. My intention with this post is not to suggest that we do away these sacred cows, but to start to be critical of them. I fear that these 3 cows, in particular, are being accepted as gospel, and those new (and not so new) to online community building really don’t challenge them.

As with many good things gone wrong, these cows all began with good intentions.

Cow #1: You don’t own the community, the community owns the community
Original intention: To stop (mostly brand) community hosts from being overly-controlling of the community, and being too directive of community interactions.

Why this cow should be challenged: No ownership = absolution of responsibility, and weak or no long term stewardship. The host *does* own parts of the community experience, and certainly has the responsibility to create a virtual “clean, well-lit place” for their brand or organization. Perhaps a better cow would be: “You don’t own the community, but you have a responsibility to be a good host, leader and listener”. Speaking of listening…

Cow #2: Start by listening

Original intent: Listening was an easy (and fairly passive) way to get brands and organizations familiar with the social web.

Why this cow should be challenged: Ok, this one isn’t necessarily bad, just a bit misguided. My recommendation to clients is to start with a conversation about your goals for engaging on the social web. A listening strategy is key to managing a successful online presence, but brands and organizations also need to interact. Another disturbing trend I see with “just listening” is that some brands are wholesale farming out listening and interaction to their agency of choice, as opposed to creating direct brand to customer or organization to stakeholder relationships.

Cow #3: Go where your community is

Original intent: Don’t just buy a platform and expect your community to show up – (a.k.a. Build it and they will come).

Why this cow should be challenged: Many organizations are doing a poor job of evaluating the opportunity for community on their own domain, and are setting up outposts on large social sites like Facebook because it is relatively easy and (initially) inexpensive. In our “Participating int he Social Media Ecosystem” research project from January of 2010, we saw that only about 1/2 (56%) of the participants had a comprehensive social strategy in place – meaning, only 1/2 of the organizations had spent time assessing and researching where their community currently was, and the opportunities for on and off domain engagement.

Assuming that the best place to engage members of your online community is offsite (say, a Facebook fan page) is probably a big mistake, and a lost opportunity to help transform a static corporate site into a more social experience.
Those are my top 3 Sacred Cows. What do you think? And, more importantly, what are yours?