Companies need to make their employees in their online communities true rockstars like Justin Bieber.

Many communities have managers, and sometimes companies have anointed the most active community members as moderators.

However, how many of them are truly famous in their space across the web? How many have rabid, obsessive followings? If they tell their followers to view a webinar or read a whitepaper, how many followers actually do and how quickly?

Companies often obsess over platforms and functionality and forget about the need to create fame for their evangelists. Don’t let the platform and technology only do the work. Personalization technology is cool, but having Justin Bieber in your community is cooler.

You only create this by having your employees in your communities following the rules of celebrity. Of course, at minimum, they should help people solve their problems. But, they should also be interesting people beyond work and in their personal lives and should share this.

Great example from my world — One of the community evangelists in my org. went to a conference and attended a keynote from the president of our business unit. Our president mentioned my community evangelist during his keynote and my evangelist received an ovation bigger than our President received. That is celebrity.