Social media offers numerous opportunities for HR teams to do their jobs more effectively, and a fundamental part of this is the talent community. A talent community is a place that is created for targeted, qualified individuals to engage with company representatives to develop a sustainable pipeline for sourcing, recruiting, training and development.

Having a strong talent community affects pretty much all segments of your talent management tasks. It allows you to plan your workforce, manage your employer branding, develop strong cultural fit and maintain relationships with alumni.

As with any community, however, there are some things that help to make your talent community viable. Here are five things I think you have to ensure in order to build a productive talent community.

1. A clear purpose.Understand what you want to achieve with your community.
2. Boardroom buy-in.Social media needs to be an accepted part of your organizations’ culture for initiatives like talent communities to work. A Chief Social Officer can help you achieve this level of cultural acceptance.
3. Know what success looks like.Clear goals for your community will help you determine success metrics.
4. Good community management.Community management is like tending to a garden; if left unmanaged, weeds will grow. Having at least one community manager will help keep things operating smoothly.
5. Living to learn rather than living to win.Becoming social means opening up, being honest and transparent. Mistakes here are inevitable, but how you respond to these mistakes will determine the longevity of your talent community.Research by Stanford underlines the importance of focusing on how things are done as opposed to whether you succeed.

Suffice to say that this isn’t an exhaustive list, but I believe that if you get these five things right then you have a good chance of succeeding with your talent community.