This is where things start to become very interesting. Do you have a particular area of expertise or an interest in some scientific or technological area that isn’t already covered by an existing TechBites community? If so, why not create your own?

Creating a New Community
The process is really simple (I like simple). You start the ball rolling by clicking on the Communities item in the main navigation and taking a look at what's on offer. Assuming the community you are thinking about doesn’t already exist, then just click on the Create a Community link at the top of the page:

On the resulting page you fill in the name of your proposed community, a description / mission statement describing what the community is all about, and a tag that will be associated with your community (this tag will be used by other folks to associate content with your community – it should contain only alphanumeric characters and hyphens; for example, Techno-Weenie-Stuff).

When you've finished, click the Create Community button you'll find at the bottom of the form. Note that the community won’t be formed immediately; instead, it will first be checked by our administrator to make sure that it doesn’t duplicate an existing community or infringe on an existing company name and stuff like that.

We will of course let you know one way or the other as soon as possible (it typically takes only a couple of hours; rarely longer than a day). Assuming we say OK (which happens most of the time), we'll activate the community and email you to tell you that it's there. Now the ball is firmly in your side of the court...

Launching the Community
Once your community has been activated, the first thing you need to do is to upload a community image/icon (160 x 160 pixels). Actually, you might want to start working on this while you're waiting for your community to be approved.

Next, you are in charge of writing the "Community Leader's Blog". It's a good idea to keep this blog as "fresh" as possible – I personally try to write a couple each day, but that's up to you. Also remember that (a) you are in charge of your community and (b) these blogs really don’t need to be long – just a couple of hundred words about some topic that's of interest to you and the other folks in your community.

A step-by-step guide to the way in which you use the Create Content Editor to create Blogs, Articles, Reviews, and Tech-Tips is described in an associated How To Create Content article. Suffice it to say that when you launch the editor and create your content, you can tag it with the communities in which you wish it to appear (you have to first become a member of these communities). If you create a content item of type Blog and you tag it for a community of which you are the leader, then it will automatically appear in the Community Leader's Blog area associated with that community.

Invite Your Friends
Don't just sit around waiting for folks to come knocking on your door ... if you've already made friends on TechBites, you can use the Invite Friends tab in your community to invite them to become members. Also you can use your regular email to contact all of the folks you know and ask them to come and visit the community and join it. And don't forget to contact the folks on your other social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Connect with Other TechBites Communities and Community Leaders
Another thing you can do is to visit related TechBites communities and post a message on their walls telling their members that your community now exists. Also, you could join those communities and then post a blog on them where this blog announces your community. In fact, it's a good idea for you to become a member of related communities and then when you post an article to your community you can cross-tag it to appear on the appropriate communities. Also, you might want to "reach out" to the leaders of those related communities – ask them to become your friend and join your community and ask them to cross-post their relevant content back to your community... get creative... you can do it!

Solicit Content
Your job is to lead your community and create articles for the fun of it, but you can't create all of the content on your community by yourself. So post a message on your community wall asking folks to contribute. Send messages to the members of your community asking them if they have any content they would like to post. If you know someone at work who has written an interesting technical paper or an application note, ask him or her if they would join your community and post it there. Again... get creative... you can do it!

Questions?
If you have any questions, feel free to visit My Profile and send me a message. Enjoy!