In the Dreamforce session “How to Build Online Community” there was some fantastic Q&A. Since most people don’t have time to watch the hour long video I thought I’d highlight a few of the responses.

Original Question from the Audience

We are using blogs which has been successful. We are trying to get started with other channels like a forum or a wiki. We've come to the conclusion that we need someone who 's full time job it is to keep this trhiving. How would you recommend finding the right person to drive this, to build it, an what kind of person should I hire?

Kingsley Joseph (Successforce.com Product Manager) 27 min 30 sec

Find someone who is good at convincing other people to do their job. Because there will be a lot of it. Once you open up and start taking input there are a lot of people who will want to talk to you. Most of the time the person you hire as a moderator will be swamped, or might not be able to respond to all the input you get. So what you want is someone who can say, this is the right person to respond to this post or comment, and send them an email, and follow up with them two days later if it’s not answered.

Michael Sippey (VP of Products at TypePad) 28 min 08 sec

This is actually now a job, so you may be able to find someone who has done this before. So someone who has been a community manager. They feel comfortable in an environment where they are going to get direct feedback and filter signals vs. noise, and find the folks that are giving good constructive feedback and amplify their voices, and find ways to dampen the trolls, the people who are just there to throw stuff against the wall.

Jamie Grenney (Director of Salesforce Ideas) 28 min 55 sec

In some situations you might be able to find people within your community. Those people who are on the message boards today and passionate about the product.