Throwing out the word “community during talks about social media is pretty easy.

You want to go online and “build a community” around yourself, your brands or your interests. Easy as that, right?

It”s not. You can read Seth Godin”s “Tribes” until you have it memorized or you can tattoo it on your back and that won”t make a community grow over night. It takes work. It takes hustle. It takes @garyvee style intensity.

Building a community is not a passive activity. “If you build it, they will come,” is a rare happening online. Those things happen virally, sure, but on the web there is NO Viral Button.

Want to build a community? Provide good conversation and content, share, help and listen. If you online pokies want a community, it has to be a place that people want to live in for a little part of their lives. If it”s scary or not well-maintained, then it won”t be much of a neighborhood.

Lucky for us, we see great online communities all around us in Oklahoma City: Thunder fans; LifeChurch members; severe weather wonks; Midtown, Downtown and Plaza District loyalists; Big Truck Taco flag-wavers and non-profit cause heroes.

Look around. What are those communities doing right? See it and do it.