So, you’ve hit the big red button and launched your community.  You will hear crickets chirping unless you tell the world about your new space.  Hopefully you have an audience of some kind before you decided to launch (viewers, readers, or customers), so the first thing to do is invite them.

1. Send a nice invitation to your email list
2. For brick and mortar, put up signs in your physical locations; can use QR codes too
3. Promote your community on all corporate items (business cards, stationery, email sigs, profile pages for other social networks)
4. Tweet interesting content from the community; start your own hashtag
5. Promote within your Facebook groups and newsfeed and include links to your community on your LinkedIn corporate profile (or personal profile if appropriate)
6. Start participating and visiting other sites where your target audience gathers (be careful not to just jump in and promote your own thing...establish yourself first and let it happen organically)
7. If you are already running traditional ads (radio, TV, online banner ads) include your community in there as well
8. Make it easy to find; don’t bury your calls to participate within your own website
9. Make it a priority for your entire staff to help draw people into the community
10. Do you have access to celebrities?  Use them to draw interest.  Visitors love the ability to get insider information or interact with people who are normally not accessible.