How can you tell if you’re building a community or an audience?
The difference lies in relationships.
A group of people might have lots in common—values, motivations, status, cause, location, problems that need solving, interests, and more—but is their relationship only with your brand or is their relationship with your brand and with one another?
A group of people may share lots in common, but that’s not sufficient to qualify them as a community.
A community is a group of people with a shared commonality that interacts and has relationships with one another and not just with your brand.
Without interactivity and interrelationships, you don’t have a community but rather an audience.
If your goal is to build a community, consider how you can shift the conversation from belonging to your brand to belonging to everybody in the group. Instead of merely broadcasting to your audience, engage with them and create opportunities for them to engage with one another too.
