Audience or Community

Quite simply: communities are sustainable, audiences are not. What brands, entertainers and many more try to create is emphasized by 'staying power' and not 'commonality'. In an environment where the audience's engagement goes beyond an event, gathering or occasion you can start to experience community.

Community can define an event but an audience can't define a community. When you look at some causes and brands, they have been able to create huge communities: Scion, (RED) movement, Habitat for Humanity to name a few. There is a die hard belonging as well as a desire to associate. Watch an absolutely great movie and afterward, does everyone share numbers and email addresses and get back together? Nope…at least not around here…

Some people even go as far as 'identifying' with brands that have become part of our social awareness: Coke, Nike, Kleenex, etc. Definitely strong brands that have created more than an audience…but they're not communities.

Chris, you've brought up some absolutely great points (again) and I'm compelled to see how this impacts other conversations I'm involved with since brand and community are so lacking in the industry I spend most of my time in. You've got a great community here…

Great observation Chris. The desire to be a part of a group runs deep. The level of engagement we choose is an interesting topic (chair forward / chair backward). Some people are by-standers, some are jump-in-the-deep-enders, listeners, quite advocates, and leaders. To have a meaningful community you need them all. Communities, in most cases, can have high attrition resulting in the need for constant recruitment. For example, Team in Training which is a fundraising arm for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I joined that community when my Mother had Leukemia. My team raised almost $200K. After my Mother passed away I quickly dropped that community. Not because it’s a bad community, but because its personal value diminished and was a personal reminder of something very painful. However, the result is I became a Triathete, a competent fundraiser, and joined a new community and found like minded people, and so on. My point is that there is an ebb and flow from passive audience member to community member, that can be very empowering.

David Baeza
Twitter: davidbaeza

I would propose:

Community = connection built around a bond built through a shared experience, or a large collection of shared interests and values.

Audience = connection built around identical place/time position, and singular shared experience.

RE: What do people need to do to engage you? How do you move from being part of the audience, or just a customer into being part of a community?

My suggestion: invite participation…at whatever level. More speciically: teach the community to do something cool, interesting, better than they can already do…using your product/service.

RGA still has one of the BEST examples, imho: http://www.rga.com/award/rockstar.html

What would engage me is the prospect that by engaging I could get more valuable information. Much of the comments I tend to see on blogs are really about people voting on the writers opinion, or agreeing with it or disagreeing with it. I want to see new information from you, but more importantly from the other members of the community, as a result of my engaging in your blog.

I love the swivel chair idea. : )

Excellent post where truth surfaces throughout. Thanks. I'll re-read this many times.

This is an exceptional post, Chris – even from you where exceptional is the standard you’ve set. While many choose to only be audiences, even if they won’t participate I just wish they would make the effort to send others so those others could benefit too.

Being only an audience is ultimately selfish. Yes, time is short. Yes, we have much else to do. Those don’t excuse you from never giving back anywhere. You don’t have to give back everywhere but you really should give back somewhere.

such a great post Chris

i started out wanting an audience and found that a community is so much better

Love this, Chris. I’ll take a stab at your question… community requires CONNECTION! It’s those two elements you mentioned, feeling like you are among like-minded others and then feeling the exchange of energy within the group. I happen to think that this sense of being connected is what we all crave as humans, whether it’s within your family life, professional life, and among your friends… which is why people create communities.

So what is required in order to achieve that? Both to lead a community and be part of it, you have to SHOW UP. The real you. You know this already, Chris. Authenticity, willingness to engage… and blah, blah (as my 5 yo says!)

And no, I don’t think it’s always necessary. To extend your metaphor, I can go to a movie or attend a lecture and get what I want out of that experience… without hugging everyone around me and connecting with my fellow movie goers. That’s okay too.

In my case, I created what I most needed and am most passionate about… which is a community of moms. And I’ve found that there are indeed like-minded others who also feel the need to CONNECT through our shared experience.

I’m not so sure about your leader-as-necessary concept, at least as you describe it, for Social Media- | Social Networking-based community. What seems to be missing is the obvious – this concept of chairs out | in is based on the POV of the observer. In this case always somebody looking to convert for intention – PR | marketing | et al

I think there is a lot of lurkers in a lot of communities. One of the first ones I belonged to is Redwingsworld.com and this is a pay site which is basically a private message board. There are only a few active people but they are really strong.

I am working for FWIX and I have found it hard to get people to contribute. I am sure there are a ton of lurkers there as well. They stop by but they never join the discussion. I have been involved with message boards for awhile and have taken a liking to them. I think this is why I like message boards to chat rooms.

But I agree engagement is the key. I am still learning how to be engaging. I have worked for the LLS and when I was using their Twitter account I felt like it was a PUSH advertising and NOT pull. So I am working on fixing this as well.

I think when you can finally get the right combination it should work. But I have always been active in communities I am NOT so sure how to involve people who aren’t nearly as engaged as I am.

Not cringing at all! Blue Man Group is exactly what I mean. Saw them in Chicago and thoroughly enjoyed myself, though I know folks who hated it, probably the same folks who are attending live theatre and pass a bucket of chicken while seated in the front row. WSJ wrote about it: http://bit.ly/6ePCZ

Onward!

Maybe the chairs are pointing differently, but an audience comes and stays for the show and leaves afterwards. Similar for a community meeting: it has a start and an end.

A blog is a regular or almost continuous stream of information / content (the blog posts).

A blog is more like a TV talk show where the host performs every day (Oprah, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Dr Phil,…) with the big difference they can use their guests to make their talks interesting.
A blogger needs to be interesting ,write interesting content all by himself everyday.

Additionally bloggers need to promote their content too.

..and why are you not blogging again Kathy? ;) Love all the dialogue here.

*Wonderful* to see J. Mander's “Four Arguments” cited here! That's an absolutely essential book, decades ahead of its time….