What beer and online communities have in common

Australians males like to think of themselves as experts in many a field and this Babel Tower of wisdom peaks around a few particular topics... namely sport and beer.
Working for a company that specialises in a number of areas including FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods - basically what you find on the shelves in your supermarket) and sensory research, a colleague and I thought that we would go out and ask certain beer drinkers what they thought about, well, beer.
Actually when I said "go and out and ask", as keen as I was for an all Australian road trip, time was limited so we started an online discussion instead.
Now this colleague of mine is a pretty phenomenal researcher. I started the conversation and he then did things with the information that I  have never seen before and probably illegal in more than one Sovereign State. But none of that is relevant here. What came out of it was that for all the talk about fancy brewing, magic ingredients and blessings by Armenian grandmothers, if the water is no good the beer will be relegated to teenage party games that involve a length of hose, a funnel and promiscuous naked mole rat. But when you start with a good source of water, you have the ability to turn out the worlds finest brews. Just ask those vowed-to-silence Belgian monks.

Left: The effects of using poor water to make beer (http://brianakira.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/african-naked-mole-rat-heterocephalus-glabor-03.jpg)

So what does this have to do with Social Media? There are some fantastic platforms out there. Some like Ning are free, some like Vision Critical's are for corporation with budgets or the cashed up aristocrat looking at starting his or her own political party. Add to this all the apps that are out there and there is no shortage of tools on the market. But the main essential ingredient of your community, the water, is the members. For all those great tools and platforms, if the conversation is not relevant and engaging to the target member, then you can forget about having a fan base to rival Harry Potter. There are people out there who believe that they can create this audience simply by pouring cash into the community, but that is like making beer from water sourced from the sea and run through a desalination plant. The water with the certain je ne sais quai cannot be bought or manufactured. It requires an investment of time and preparation to go out of your way to find it.
But why does throwing money at it not work? Sure people will come and participate and interact with your brand, but it is in a shallow manner. They have no real interest in your brand and their responses and interaction in any discussion will likely to be short or simply making statements that they believe you want to hear. Their attention is pretty dead. As for true, if any, interaction between other members you can forget it. Like respect, honesty is earnt.
Social media can mean huge cost benefits but it also requires putting a different type of effort in. Throwing the thousands of dollars you saved from reducing your traditional marketing and research approaches into buying "fans" for your social media efforts is money down the drain. Instead of signing cheques, it means thinking laterally and creativity. Most of the highly succesful strategies succeed on very small budgets, such as the Tourism Queensland best job in the world campaign or the Blendtec adverts that started on a US$50 budget. So instead save your money for something useful.