Building a Community is Like...

I've been talking to a lot of different people in the past few months in diverse industries, from healthcare to IT the word on everyone's lips is, "Community". I've started to ask the question, "So, what does that mean to you? What would be your goals to having a community?" and from those answers start articulating what the word "Community" means to the person sitting across the table from me.

I've been thinking a lot about the role that a community of people can play in an organization, particularly in the for-profit world since companies are what I come in contact with every day. The conclusion? Building a community is closer to a political campaign or managing a team of volunteers than anything else. In both cases reliance on the passionate converted to carry the message back to their network is the holy grail and the way is to use the passion and energy for the brand. At the heart of every successful viral marketing campaign are the people, period, end of story.

Anyone else have thoughts?

Comments

[charlie]

Love the post! I ask myself the same question everyday. The word Community sure gets thrown around a lot these days. It's what i like to call Crazytown! Here at threadless, we have a community of designers, bloggers, the whole spectrum of creators. The threadless forum is our community center. A community center that gets frequent traffic. More traffic than the brick and mortar community center in my hometown. I find it amazing, that there is such a divide between online life and "real" life. What is a community? Really? I know more about a designer from the UK then i do my next door neighbor. Is that community? I get the feeling that 100% of people have an easier time dealing with someone/something online. There should also be another name for online communities. like Onlineities. haha Either way great post!

[chiah]

Great comment, I sometimes feel like since I and most of my friends work in tech that I take it for granted "online community" when that's not the only game in town. There's local chambers of commerce, churches, Yorkie meetups, etc etc. Onlineities, maybe we can make that be the word of the year since it's "unfriend" this year.