there's a difference between community and audience
and not all brands (or people) actually have community
Community is not who follows you - that’s an audience. And it’s not who buys your product - those are customers. So what is community? I had the honor of talking about what community means to me with HURS and my dear friend
, queen of community, breaks down what community is and what it is not on How to be a Woman on the Internet.
A conversation on community for HURS
Q: How do you define community?
A: Simply put, community is a group of people who have a common thread that ties them together — whether it’s living in the same area or having similar interests or shared identities. As it relates to brands, I think it’s a group of people who may have initially connected because of a shared love of a brand but who actually connect beyond and outside the brand.
Q: What’s the difference between community around products vs. experience?
A: I’ve found in consulting with various brands, some of which involves building their community, I often see the priority being what they get out of it monetarily or in terms of social exposure, which greatly limits the extent to which people actually connect.
Q: Can community and commerce co-exist?
A: Working for both brands on community building but also creating a community of my own where the brand and sales are not at the forefront, I definitely see the difference in the types of conversations and connections being made. While I understand a brand’s need to sell product, I think it does a disservice to its community when the end goal is commerce. It’s important to not just see people for what they can provide a brand, whether that be the ability to buy or sell or the number at the top of their Instagram profile.
Q: How do you focus on authenticity versus chasing numbers?
A: Brands have such an opportunity to do more when it comes to community building and have so much power to create meaningful relationships within the group of people who are already fans of the brand. It’s so disheartening when brands put numbers at the forefront when someone with much smaller numbers can have just as much, if not more, influence. It really does take having the people who work at brands to care enough to do the diligent research to find the right people… Here in LA, I still see so many brands operating the same way they did 5-10 years ago and engaging with the same people every other brand is engaging with. I sometimes wonder if it’s that American sense of urgency to just get things done and check that box and with that, intentionality goes out the window.
I’ve had the privilege of attending lots of brand and “influencer” dinners and I have to say — when a brand asks themselves what kind of people with what kind of interests or values they want at this dinner — rather than the numbers they can provide, I have found the conversations to be much more meaningful and I walk away from that wanting to support and immerse myself in that brand even more. There needs to be different metrics than just how many people did this reach — but *how* did this reach people and how deeply.
Read the full piece on HURS, which includes answers from incredible community-centered women who work at Tekla, Soho House Stockholm and APC.
What is community? With , founder of With/Creators for How to be a Woman on the Internet
On community:
“What does it look like when it's not just the common attitudes, interests and goals, but shared values? For me, that's really what community is – bringing people together that have shared values…
What is not community? I think what's not community is anything that is short-term and transactional. And is not really thinking about how am I investing in this whole person and their experience in the world and making it better… Because community is considered a product and people are a membership… I think it's getting further away from being people-centered and more focused on how can a brand aggregate super fans to spend money and to be a part of something but they're not really connecting people. Someone wrote a really good definition about the difference between an audience and a community. And he said, an audience is when you bring people together to engage with your product. And a community is when you bring people together through your product to engage with one another.”
On real diversity and inclusion:
“We're not just thinking about what is the guest experience, but also what's happening back of house in terms of how is the money being spent and making sure that it's going back into these communities, because I think a lot of times people will really focus on, okay, like, let's just make sure the room feels diverse and multicultural and all of that. But everybody that you've hired are all of your friends that you always work with and you haven't gone outside of your comfort zone to think about, what does it look like to make sure that the front of house reflects the back of house and vice versa.”
On metrics of success:
“There's more metrics than just who's there with how many followers. It's how many new people each person connects with, what conversations happen. Was there a group discussion that people were able to have? You know, things like that, that aren't necessarily what maybe a brand might consider valuable.”
On IRL connection:
“There's something about Instagram where it's like, you know, I'm following people that I'm either acquaintances, with friends, with family with, whatever and one thing that happens with the internet is we start to disconnect with our community, thinking that we're connecting with them because we're staying up to date online…
It's easier for me to love your story or hit like on your picture and then disengage. But the real connection is… setting up a time to connect over the phone and have meaningful conversation... But it takes more work. And it takes more work to stay in touch with people.”
On prioritizing people:
“Whatever you do, and whatever you're building, I always just say - put the people first. And also start with the people that you're connected to already…
I think people forget that whatever you're doing, you're serving people. And sometimes that goes out the window when you're thinking about a bottom line or okay, I'm watching this thing and I need as many eyes on it as possible. Who is the person that was there first? Talk to them. Have coffee with them... I think a lot of times when people build communities, it's very me centered and it needs to be community centered.”
Read or listen to the full conversation with on How to be a Woman on the Internet.