Communities, what are they and how are they built?
Community this, Community that, What is a community anyway?
And more importantly, what do I need to build one?
What is a community?
From a geographical point of view, a community is a group of people that live in the same place or have a characteristic in common, like identity, religion, educational background or race.
From the point of view of a social interaction, a community is a group of people, who may or may not live in close proximity, who interact socially.
What is social interaction?
Any interaction between two or more people. That's why we say that someone is "Socially isolated" it means they are not interacting with other people.
What is Interaction?
From Physics and in simple words, the way in which something affects something else.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. - Isaac Newton, 3rd law of motion
Put in a social context, the way people affect or influence each other.
With those concepts out of the way, lets jump straight into the juicy stuff.
Can social interaction be Digital?
Yes, it has been proven by the so well known Social networks like Facebook or Twitter, which in their name tell us they seek to encourage the interaction between two or more individuals.
Because of that, we can say that any "Social network" or "Social media" content that doesn't drive interaction is not serving it's purpose.
Going back to the concept of interaction, we said it happens when two individuals affect each other, and produce a reaction.
As an example, Facebook went from "likes" to "Reactions", in an attempt to better emulate this behavior on a digital world. With the press of a button I can affect what another person sees on it's device (Action and reaction).
How do we build a community?
Following those definition we can come up with a very simple recipe, get two people or more together and make them interact with each other, Boom! #Profit. You are welcome, thanks for reading, see you next time...no.
We know the basic ingredients of this recipe, now let's cook.
What keeps a community together?
- A sense of belonging, could be in the form of a membership or by the feeling of support and acceptance of other members of the community.
- Integration and influence, Members participate actively in ways which can affect the entire community such as engaging in discussions about topics that the community considers important or by participating on activities organized by other members.
- A Shared emotional connection/experience
ex, going to the same concert/gathering, watching the same movie or reading the same book
The more of these components we can integrate into our community, the stronger it will become.
Put special attention to provide at least the following when building your community:
A place for reunion
People need to gather somewhere, having a place where they can hangout is the most basic requirement for building a community. It can be your backyard or a digital space like Discord or Twitch.
If you can provide a schedule and frequency for the "gathering" even better, by doing that you increase the chances of having the same people participating more than once and creates the opportunity for them to interact with each other.
An identity
Name your community, make a symbol if necessary, people want to belong to something and feel special for that, having a name and an identity will help you to provide that.
Activities
Provide activities or ways in which the members can participate, these should be planned based on the type of community you are involved and the medium (Digital or in person).
Having group activities is also very important because by participating on these activities people will have shared memories, and shared memories gives people a topic to talk about in the future, generating more interactions.
Conclusion
With this we covered the concept of what is a community and the most basic requirements to build your own. There are differnet things you can build your community around, like a specific interest or a person, but that will be a topic for another day.
Hope you find article useful, now you can go and build a strong community or improve an existing one.
Photo by Matheus Bertelli