Amy Gahran recently posted a great post about forming online communities. If you're looking to start an online community for your business, start by joining the other communities out there. Odds are the group of people you want to communicate and network with already have a place they frequent online. Join that space and begin interacting now so that when it comes time to build your own network, you have the thoughts and opinions of others in your community. You should also be allowing your employees to frequent these spaces online and communicate with others in these social networks.

What do you think? Do you have an example of joining a network and communicating with them before you start your own? Also, do you think your employees should have access to these social networking tools so that they can begin to build an online following and join the communities?