Online community or forum is a place where people exchange information or socialize. If you are planning to have your own community and forum it can be can be easily done nowadays. There are many free and paid tools and sites available which will help you build your own community or forum. Having your own forum requires lots of time, dedication and constant monitoring. So before you build an online community or forum you should have a clear purpose of why you want to start one yourself.

These communities and forums are great way of increasing traffic to your sit. You can use them to increase awareness about your business. One of the easiest ways you can create a social networking is to use free tools available like yahoo groups, flickr, Facebook and blogs. There are other sites like Ning which will help you to create your own social networking site or your own forum. Blogs are a great way of positioning by putting in your posts which will serve as a base for further networking and positioning yourself as an expert. You can start discussions on emails by forming your own group by using free tool like Yahoo. These mails can be moderated like any other forum and inappropriate content can be edited. You can start your own forum or discussion board by using free networking site like Facebook. You can go one step ahead and create your own social networking site by using some website like Ning.

One of the key points to remember for any forum is that the starting will be slow. As most the people do not like to be part of newly launched discussions you need to build up the momentum so that people start coming to your forum. You can initiate discussions yourself or can get the experts in the related field to provide their opinion on the subject matter. Communities and forums thrive if the users have freedom to pose any question they have. It might be a very simple question posted by a new member who might not appeal to more expert member, but a helpful tolerant atmosphere must be encouraged. There should be a no tolerance policy for miscreants or people who start commenting in a negative way on others.

You should provide answer to all the questions posted to you promptly and in a satisfactory manner. Always encourage feedback from the users and learn to accept criticism. If you have made a mistake you should accept it.