Gimme Some Love Want big buzz and stellar sales? Reap the rewards of building a community that gives you feedback about your product.

I got my first taste of user groups when I worked for Apple. Speaking at user group meetings was one of my great pleasures. Their members were unpaid, raging, thunderlizard evangelists for Apple and sustained the company by supporting its customers when Apple couldn't--or didn't want to--support them itself.

Now that Apple is the homecoming queen again, there are lots of people claiming credit for its success. The Apple user-group community deserves a high-five, too. How can you create a kick-ass community like that?

1. Create something worth building a community around. If you create a great product, you may not be able to stop a community from forming, even if you try. By contrast, it's hard to build a community around mundane, mediocre crap, no matter how hard you try.