If you were PK, an alien character Aamir Khan played in a Bollywood movie, many big campaigns and a flood of online content would have you believe that the Internet has just invented communities.
But that's hardly true.
Like in a lot of other spaces, here again what digital technology offers is more visibility and reach, ease of use, access and availability, more engagement and impact for communities and its members.
Digital stretches the physical. It builds on what we had, and helps amplify its value.
So yes, while communities is the buzz word in the digital form, they've been around for a very long time.
The underlying truth is that while individual personas may be distinct, everyone belongs to a community, or rather many different communities. It's like how Amit Verma keeps reminding us on his Seen and the Unseen podcast, "We all contain multitudes".
Shared values, shared interests and shared experiences - they form the core of communities.
What communities do you belong to?
Think about the many different communities that you'd be a part: a local community that stems from the physical reality you live in - your family and relatives as a community, your resident welfare association (RWA) or neighbourhood society, your school community, university alumni community, your work or industry community that you interact with, your regional community, the community of your religion, your tribal community, your political community, your gym community or dance community, your volunteering and activism community.
And then so many of those communities that you may not physically interact with but feel intensely about - love for the same football club or music artist, fans of an author or deeply invested in the idea of a cryptocurrency. Even the Github community or the design community you go back to with questions, or business or brand community that you deeply relate with.
With brands there are examples of the OnePlus community or the Apple community, and even the Sephora community at huge scale. Closer home, the Whole Truth Foods is a direct-to-consumer brand building its business around content and community as well. And there are still so many more.
Different communities, different community quotients
Some belong loosely to a community, some very strongly. Each community may have a different community quotient.
Bonds are different, we know that from chemistry as well - some are strong covalent bonds, some weak ionic bonds. In a sense, the same may be true of our community interactions as well. Not all communities need to be thick, some serve better with thin engagements.
Here's an exercise. You identified some communities you belong to in the paragraph above, right? Now think about how strongly or loosely you belong to those communities.
For instance, I admire Shah Rukh Khan, but not a fan club member - I loosely belong the the SRK fan club community. But I'm a new and active member of the SaaS (software-as-a-service) community of Jaipur - my engagement there is very thick.
Think about your communities and how you relate to them.
While some of us have discovered our communities, others are still exploring. And some of these communities are very open, while others can very structured.
In fact social scientists believe a "desire for community is hardwired into the human brain." In their famous paper, The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation, Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary provided strong evidence for this belongingness hypothesis.
So this is perhaps true: sooner or later, there's a community for everyone.
How do communities interact?
Traditionally, it was the town hall, the community centre or the neighbour's home. Sports communities have playgrounds, artists have studios and students have classrooms.
Kings had courts, others had parks and Indian villages continue to have nukkad tea stalls that serve as thriving community meeting points. It's also where a lot of the business gets done.
In Jaipur, where I write this from, the royal family had their Diwan-i-Aam (hall for the regular audience) and the Diwan-i-Khas (hall for private audiences), drawing from Mughal influence in the region. Community members had different levels of access we learn.
That's true even now.
Different communities interact in different ways, and may have micro communities within them - leaders with special access, a private group, different groups focussing on different aspects within the community and so much more.
Communities ≠ not audience
One thing that's true is that communities encourage multi-way communication. They are different from audiences. An audience has a one-to-many flow of information or content.
There’s a commonality though – the mode of communication or passing of information (active or passive) for both community and audience is content, especially digitally. Another common feature is that brand equity is elevated by the extension of the brand – either on the blog or the community platform.
But those common characteristics end there.
While a community may have (and often requires) organised leadership from a community owner or community manager, it goes beyond an audience in many ways – enabling many-to-many interactions and deeper engagement for all members.
In some cases, communities also include direct communication channels or what we call chat / messengers in the digital world.
When the consumption of content begins transitioning from passive to active, communities begin taking shaped. That transition though does not come about unintended.
Active consumption of content and interaction need to be designed – there need to be easy access to tools that empower readers and members to take that action, and language that provides the nudge or invitation to be able to do so.
Communities go digital
Digital community experiences need to be designed, and that requires the right tools, language and approach - it requires a community strategy.
That is where the role of a professional community manager becomes critical to the long-term growth and health of a community.
Our world has thousands of types of communities with their different preferences and rules on communication and interaction.
Apart from their common desire for community, here's where they also now converge: adoption of digital technology to strengthen their bonds, amplify interaction and reach more people.
While physical meetings remain key, today a lot of community building and interaction happens on digital platforms, especially so for businesses, brands and new organisations. And when those digital community platforms for brands and organisations are built the right way, they unlock immense value for all stakeholders.
Your community on your digital platform
Traditionally, brands and organisations have relied on giant social media platforms as a means of building community. While that has value as means of content distribution, remember, that's largely one-way. And it's in a digital environment you have no control over and the audience is rented. It's the platform's audience, not yours and you are always competing with the million other accounts and pages, and the distractions of giant networks.
With advanced media technology (the coming together of the best of content management systems and social networks), the power to launch your own community platform is now available to everyone. It's quick to launch, easy to manage and with the right strategy and work, it's meant to scale.
I love this quote from Bharati Balakrishnan, APAC head at Shopify, “Consumers will spend their money, where they spend their time.”
That’s also what true communities do – they help organisations and professionals retain their community members, the more value members receive, and the more empowered they feel, the more time they spend with the organisation.
And when the time comes, it’s that time spent that is translated into sales for businesses, donations for social organisations or even votes for political leaders.
How do digital communities add value for brands, organisations & professionals?
- Increase visibility & reach
- Improve access & ease of use
- Empower community members
- Amplify engagement
- Understand the community better
- Deliver better experiences
- Strengthen belongingness
- Scale positive impact or sales
- Grow together
Community unlocks special value for brands
In particular, digital communities hold immense value for brands - not just to boost brand equity (brand experts already call community a moat), but also to:
- build a base of engaged brand loyalists
- get valuable and timely feedback
- deeply understand the customer
- nurture superusers and brand ambassadors
- harness network effects by enabling members to take the brand and its story into their individual networks
- grow sales by providing a seamless flow from content to community to commerce
Powering community networks with MainCross
As a comprehensive and easy to use network builder, MainCross powers many different community networks. With the evolving understanding of communities as above in mind, explore the immense value that MainCross adds to community-led approaches.
Your branded network & apps
Your content or community network carries your voice. As network owner or admin on a MainCross-powered network, you can set the branding, visual colours, button styles, logos, and language the way you like – retaining and amplifying the brand by providing a true community experience.
Having branded digital platforms also amplifies trust, improves reception and grows brand equity. The ability to add custom workflows makes it further easier to integrate features that may be crucial to your specific use-case and community.
You have the freedom you need
We discussed how some communities are very open, while others can be very structured.
We recognise that communities have different characteristics, and organisations have varying community-market fits, as they is now being called.
So our core product – the network CMS – provides the freedom to build different communities the way you like.
You choose to structure the community your way – completely public, or with private access control or a hybrid with different members having different layers of access across the community.
Remember Diwan-i-Aam (hall for the regular audience) and the Diwan-i-Khas (hall for private audiences). Well, you can build and run those at ease with different members having different levels of access on your platform, opening the gate to explore paid memberships, rewards and more.
For example, Intrapreneurship Knowledge Hub has a community network that’s currently completely open and public. Anyone can consumer the content, and once a member, anyone can post. Meanwhile, another platform, Hoten Hub has two feeds – one where members may post, and another where most members do not have access to publishing content, but anyone can consumer the content and see the updates.
Reach your members where they like
We discussed how some people belong loosely to a community and some very strongly.
Well, once members have joined your community network on MainCross or subscribed to an author, information can reach them way they prefer.
If they come to the community network, they see and interact with all the latest updates. If they prefer emails, then your community network also has digest emails that send out the top posts to members via email – in a format they prefer.
There are also email and Telegram notifications that go out when they take certain actions on the platform.
Empower your members
Everyone on the network has a voice. And every community has its own way of capturing and building on it for impact.
Some have town halls where anyone can speak, some prefer just question and answer type engagements, and some like small groups and focussed discussions, while others like large gatherings where the leaders communicate and members can respond through some limited community actions, like the clapping at political rallies.
This is one aspect where digital truly erases the limitations of physical events – even if it’s a one-to-many speech by a leader, members can read and respond to it at their time, and in as comprehensive a manner as they would like.
Multilingual capabilities of the platform add significant value here as well.
You as network owner have the power to setup your community network the way you in regards to type and access to user generated content – the power of member’s to post directly as well.
Yes, you decide if members should be allowed to post views, publish articles or create polls or surveys, or should member actions be limited to just comments on your posts.
You decide if they post on certain topics, and not on others. And you can as easily also open up user generated content for specific periods to run campaigns, invite ideas and to bolster participation.
Network effects
One of the biggest features of a community are the network effects they forge and unleash.
With a MainCross-powered network, you also get the tools that amplify reach by making it easy for members to share content, invitations and more to their personal networks on other social media and messenger platforms.
By providing all the tools to build forms, fill polls & surveys, share content, interact, send newsletters, register for events etc, the system enables network owners and admins to keep their focus on just one platform where the community can continue to grow.
What’s more is that all shares from the platform are referral links, and these can be used to gauge the level of member activity.
You can also set of badges that are tied to the level of participation and automatically provided to members – rewarding them on the platform for participation, sharing and inviting others. Live leaderboards to incentivise this activity are built-in as well.
One platform for the community means community attention is undivided, member intent is stronger and database is consolidated – all of which amplify network effects in the long-run.
Understanding your community
Analytics are key, and your MainCross-powered network provides significant data for insights. You just get an over of the number of members, posts, growth of the interactions – Network pulse to gauge the community’s health.
Not just that, at a deeper level you get data that helps you understand what topics work well with your community, who are the most active members, what medium for content consumption do they prefer, did people sign up using Facebook or email, or did they prefer the mobile sign up?
The dashboard helps gets answers to many such questions that are key to an evolving community strategy. The content publishing tools for polls, surveys and quizzes can also be used to understand more about community members. The use of geotagging and multilingual features provide key insights about the community and members as well.
And while MainCross powers your white-labled and branded community network, MainCross provides more value as a unified app platform for content publishing and distribution, community engagement and social commerce as well.
It’s a convenient to use and wholesome network builder, and truly understands that the each community deserves its own home.
Launch your community network with MainCross or setup a call to speak to your network specialist.
