Here's a presentation I'm working on that will be the core of a longer work (say it!! a book!!) I'm noodling over...

There's a documentary just out about the soldiers in Iraq called "Brothers At War". I haven't seen it and don't know much about the film (my son is in the Army, so I'll probably go watch it).

But the distributor - Samuel Goldwyn Films - is doing an interesting thing which directly connects with my image of "social media marketing" - they are offering the people interested in the film a process to get it shown in their area by preselling 1,000 tickets, and providing a kit (pdf) and support in putting together the group buy.

They are using Web based tools to build out a consumer-led marketing program.

Damn clever, if you ask me.

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We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That's the preamble of the US Constitution, and it's a great thing to think about when you're talking about launching a community. It clearly sets out what the community is for, and creates a simple, concise vision of what it can be measured against...

...to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...

Communities need constitutions. People who join the community need to be able to go somewhere and understand what the community is for - and what the rules are. People who sponsor (pay for them with money or labor) communities need to have some kind of benchmark to validate why they are spending their time and money, and a way of measuring whether the community is meeting that need.

Both of these are critical to the success of communities. Let's first look at it from the point of view of someone who may join a community; most people join organically - i.e. they don't read the TOS or evaluate vision statements. But they do look at the content and gauge the 'flavor' of the community. And how do you as a community guide, moderator or sponsor help shape that behavior? What do you point people to when you try and correct what you see as inappropriate behavior? Well, wouldn't it help to have something you can show them that makes it clear what you expect? And what the rules are for how you'll deal with them?

Now let's look from the point of view of the community manager. You face two masters - the members of your community, who want to know you're playing fair and what rules you're playing by - and whoever it is (and it might be you) who is sponsoring the community project (note that as above, 'sponsoring' can include devoting time or money).

The core question is 'why am I building community at all?', and 'why this community?' Those are important, because it's perfectly possible to build a thriving community - but have it be a failure anyway, because the community's rationale has nothing to do with - or is even opposed to - the rationale under which the community sponsor greenlighted it.

So in planning for a community, I'll suggest strongly (insist, if you're one of my clients) that a concise 'constitution' be drafted - so that we can think hard about whether it is likely to a) be interesting and valuable to the people we'd like to be in the community; and b) be useful and valuable to whoever is writing the checks.

I'm not just talking about 'commercial' communities here; communities of common interest, political communities, communities of fans - all of them have 'sponsors' even if those sponsors are loaning the community space on a server and bandwidth, and if the community was crafted and is being moderated as a labor of love.

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In a presentation I'm doing about social media and small business, I say that business owners should seek critics out and 'Embrace the Negative'.

Find the people who say negative things, and reach out to them too. Why they are unhappy? If you can - make it right. If you can't, explain what you learned and what you will do differently. Send a personal email, send them a coupon for $5 off the next time they come. Just like the positive comment - it's not the economic value that matters; it's the fact that you're paying attention.

Well, that's a lesson the White House seems to be taking to heart:

When New York Times columnist David Brooks accused the White House last week of "shaking confidence with its hyperactivity," no fewer than four senior administration officials reached out to explain - ever so politely - how he was wrong.

Overkill? Maybe. But it's what journalists have come to expect from an administration that's trying much harder than its predecessor did to influence inside-the-Beltway opinion makers.

President Barack Obama dined with conservative columnists at George Will's house even before he took the oath of office, and he continues to work the refs now. After a 35-minute interview with the Times White House team last week, the president called back to quibble with a question he'd been asked and to elaborate on the answer he'd given.

The communications team for President George W. Bush would have been much more likely to let the initial response stand and then blast the Times after publication - all the better for fanning the passions of a political base deeply distrustful of the mainstream media.

Andrew Rosenthal, The Times' editorial page editor, says the Obama White House has been more "proactive" than the Bush White House was, offering up policy thinkers to more fully explain the administration's positions - both before and after columns and editorials run.

"I've had more unsolicited offers for participation from the Obama people in 45 days than in the last eight years from Bush," said Rosenthal.

Think there's a lesson there??

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Most of the work I do is with organizations that want to 'create' social media tools to enable community. I think of myself as a community designer, sometimes. But as I've been thinking about social media and small business lately (for a project that's in the germinal stage), I've come to an interesting thought: It may be more important to think about the active users of social media; the participants in communities than about the owners of the tools or founders of the communities.

I have a politics blog, where there are five or six relatively active authors. But there are fifteen or twenty very active and engaged commenters - and to an extent the community is as much about them as it is about me. Several of them comment across multiple blogs and have well-established online identities and reputations.

Looking at the landscape of small business, it obviously makes little sense for the corner locksmith to sponsor a community. But it makes a ton of sense for him to participate in communities - if the right ones exist.

So two things are worth thinking about: First have we created the communities which would attract and reward local small business? I know that several folks are trying, from Oneblock to Citysearch; and second, how do we build a body of knowledge that would help someone build identity and reputation in someone else's community?