Business to business media owners planning to strengthen the community of their readers, or stand-alone networking and events businesses are keen to develop active vertical online professional networks, whether in the guise of forums, discussion groups or pure networking sites.  Yet many struggle to build numbers of active members and encourage contributions.  I don’t claim to have all the answers, but below are some approaches that I have seen work for other businesses or on the professional network  that I run myself (it’s the Specialist Media Network on Linked in): (more…)