"Are you creating spaces for people to shape the brand with you, or are you just offering more places for them to consume it?" You voiced my thoughts perfectly 🤌🏾😮💨💕
Love this piece. I think a smart move for brands who do give a shit about community would be to eat some humble pie, admit there’s not a real
world need for another discord and popup brand community, and instead allocate those $ to existing, aligned (actual) communities who’d benefit from the support and thus advocate for the brand.
Nikita, this is very timely as I'm moderating a panel on this topic tomorrow at CADRE. So many brands talk about community, so few invest in it appropriately. Thanks for such a great piece!
I've come to this late, as i'm looking into community engagements myself and this piece is great. I love the openness to see that community needs real human engagement not just blast media on a different scale.
Such great points of consideration for this buzzword! Especially the point of not every consumer wanting to be within a community, I think about this so often from my personal preferences and wonder what a possible solution for benefits without the spam mail can be?
I've been noticing that people are so used to things being transactional, that they won't receive because they don't want to be "on the hook" to give. Maybe we need to be better at accepting community support as much as we need to be better at giving it.
You put to words what I have been feeling for so long! Even the word “community” feels so perverted now. I always imagine the need for community as the spider man meme - everyone thinks they want it, but we’re all pointing at someone else to do it so we don’t have to.
This piece is a breath of fresh air. I've worked for companies where community is at the product's core and others where it would make no sense to rally people around the product in that way. Sometimes, you're not selling things people want to connect about organically, and that's okay!
Not to mention that creating 'community' online has all types of negative psychological impacts for the users,
both for the lack of reciprocal and real interaction on the psyche and for the impact of replacing yet another in person dynamic event with notifications and two dimensional script
Big yes to this piece. I work for a big company mentioned in one of your points (but UK based) and the talk around community is there, but it's yet to have a substantial meaning, especially to stakeholders who are happy to see it as just a branch off of a campaign. I'm still fighting the good fight about what it means to build a community when you're a brand. I think it would be great to bring this post into future conversations, so thank you.
Thank you for this! My company writes/hosts youth soccer tournament software and every event wants to be a community… but it never works because of something I’ve called the 90 Minute Attention Span. Their community isn’t your event or even the sport of soccer. It’s their friends, neighbors, schools, other interests (gasp!) … why apps for events are a pretty terrible idea… 20+ years of trying to explain this to events and still they don’t get it. I will probably start quoting bits of this post to them now and again 😀
"Are you creating spaces for people to shape the brand with you, or are you just offering more places for them to consume it?" You voiced my thoughts perfectly 🤌🏾😮💨💕
“Not every consumer wants to be in a community” this! And not every founder or creative wants to build one.
Love this piece. I think a smart move for brands who do give a shit about community would be to eat some humble pie, admit there’s not a real
world need for another discord and popup brand community, and instead allocate those $ to existing, aligned (actual) communities who’d benefit from the support and thus advocate for the brand.
Nikita, this is very timely as I'm moderating a panel on this topic tomorrow at CADRE. So many brands talk about community, so few invest in it appropriately. Thanks for such a great piece!
aw, thank you Dina! So glad you enjoyed reading! I collaborate with Alexa regularly, tell her I said hi - what a fun panel!!
I've come to this late, as i'm looking into community engagements myself and this piece is great. I love the openness to see that community needs real human engagement not just blast media on a different scale.
Such great points of consideration for this buzzword! Especially the point of not every consumer wanting to be within a community, I think about this so often from my personal preferences and wonder what a possible solution for benefits without the spam mail can be?
if I could restack this 10 million times I would. You took every word out of my mouth!!
I've been noticing that people are so used to things being transactional, that they won't receive because they don't want to be "on the hook" to give. Maybe we need to be better at accepting community support as much as we need to be better at giving it.
This was so valuable. Thank you!
You put to words what I have been feeling for so long! Even the word “community” feels so perverted now. I always imagine the need for community as the spider man meme - everyone thinks they want it, but we’re all pointing at someone else to do it so we don’t have to.
This piece is a breath of fresh air. I've worked for companies where community is at the product's core and others where it would make no sense to rally people around the product in that way. Sometimes, you're not selling things people want to connect about organically, and that's okay!
Not to mention that creating 'community' online has all types of negative psychological impacts for the users,
both for the lack of reciprocal and real interaction on the psyche and for the impact of replacing yet another in person dynamic event with notifications and two dimensional script
Big yes to this piece. I work for a big company mentioned in one of your points (but UK based) and the talk around community is there, but it's yet to have a substantial meaning, especially to stakeholders who are happy to see it as just a branch off of a campaign. I'm still fighting the good fight about what it means to build a community when you're a brand. I think it would be great to bring this post into future conversations, so thank you.
Thank you for this! My company writes/hosts youth soccer tournament software and every event wants to be a community… but it never works because of something I’ve called the 90 Minute Attention Span. Their community isn’t your event or even the sport of soccer. It’s their friends, neighbors, schools, other interests (gasp!) … why apps for events are a pretty terrible idea… 20+ years of trying to explain this to events and still they don’t get it. I will probably start quoting bits of this post to them now and again 😀