In other words, people use the Internet to create and/or nurture their offline and online relationships. Of course, many also go online to find new people, build new friendships and relationships, which may even morph into real world relationships. A Pew Internet & American Life Project study in 2007 found that 91% Americans go online for communicating or keeping in touch with other people they already know in real world. But first let us observe closely the all-important intersection of Internet, psychology and sociology, where online communities exist. We now therefore explain what can brands or Internet companies can do to build successful online communities. Even if that is taken care of by exploiting all the levers on disposal, getting those signed-up users to stay active and contribute to a community takes the real grind (just ask Google+). Getting new users to sign-up is an uphill task. Artificially creating new communities, or scaling up an existing one is not exactly a walk in the park. The strongest online communities grow organically, started by users themselves. Glean intelligence from community users for strategic marketing decisions (Xiaomi is a good example here).Create a self-sustaining platform for information and knowledge sharing among the customers, so that the brand’s role is kept to a minimum.Help increase the value a customer gets from the product/service by meeting her information and social interaction needs.Provide an owned brand-building platform to attract new customers, and retain existing ones (particularly earn reputation, trust and loyalty).When explicitly building a community around a brand, the marketer seeks four key benefits: Right from those days of Bulletin Board Services (BBS), Usenet newsgroups and IRC, consumer brands in general and Internet companies in particular have always thought of creating and nurturing online communities around their product or service as an exercise that drove significant business value. Sometimes, building a thriving online community was their raison d’être (the gaming companies were a prime example). Users would spend hours discussing new games, hacks and tricks and gameplay for the most popular games of the day. Back in the nineties, online communities organically grew around gaming, particularly around the gaming consoles from Sega, Nintendo and Sony.