Community is important. Not just community as it relates to your neighborhood, but community online, for consumers of brands, within organizations, and so on. Community is everywhere, and it provides us with a sense of friendship, belonging, and security.
Building a community within your organization or for your customer base is a great way to help them feel connected both to each other and to you. Without community, your employees and consumers will not feel a strong sense of loyalty or belonging. Community doesn’t just happen, though. It takes conscious thought and effort. It takes time to get started, and it takes time to maintain it. Community has to be built.
So, how do you build a community?
You have to start with a purpose. Without purpose, your community won’t come together, and it almost certainly won’t last. Think about what it is you want for your consumers and employees and what you want them to get out of your community.
Do you want them to develop friendships? Do you want them to collaborate? Do you want them to share product suggestions and turn to each other for answers involving your product?
Figure out what it is you want your community to be and what purpose you want it to serve. The purpose and the community as a whole should be focused on your consumers and members. It should be focused on improving or enriching their lives and bringing them together for one reason or another.
Once you’ve decided the purpose behind your community, you should keep the focus on your consumers and members, involving them and empowering them to take an active part in your business. People are always happy to give feedback, which can help you build upon and improve your business. Keeping your consumers and community members involved in your business and empowering them will help them feel a greater sense of belonging and more connected to your brand.
In addition to purpose, involvement, and empowerment, you’ll need tools to help support and sustain your community. For a community within your organization, that might be a tool like Google Docs or a chat tool that can enable and encourage your employees to collaborate and develop healthy relationships.
For a community of consumers, that might be tools like social media – specifically social media groups – where they can share photos of how they put your product to use, ask questions, and give advice on how to solve problems they face using the product(s) you offer.
It’s important to remember to have fun, too. Having fun has a number of benefits aside from just, well, being fun. Studies have shown that having fun with other people is more fun than just playing solo; according to the study, around 70 percent of the time, subjects reported having more fun when they shared an experience with someone else. That being the case, incorporating fun into a community can help the community become even stronger.
GAMEE is one app, in particular, that is helping community building through collaboration and fun. A social gaming app, GAMEE lets participants play bite-sized games anywhere, anytime. Participants can challenge friends, boast about successes and accomplishments, and keep up on the newest, latest games. Oh — and it’s absolutely free.
By incorporating GAMEE into your community and encouraging members to join and connect with each other, you’re giving them permission to have some fun and strengthen their connection. They can build other connections as well. In the first few weeks, most players will play against people they already know, but as they see growth in followers and begin following and competing against others in fun games, they expand their network and make other connections, welcoming them into the community.
Participants and community members aren’t just limited to playing with one or a few others, either. Some games can host up to 80,000 players at once, making it a great way for your entire community to connect together. In addition to the connection your community members have thanks to you and your product(s), GAMEE can help them engage on other levels as well and throw in some fun, making them feel a stronger sense of belonging and want to invite others to join your community as well.
There are so many different types of communities, and each is important in its own way. Our neighborhood communities can help us feel safe and connected and provide us with backing and support if we ever need anything like a cup of flour or help moving a couch. Our work communities give us a sense of security knowing that we have others to turn to for support on a project or who can relate when we’re having a bad day.
Whatever the type of community, building it and strengthening it is important. What are some of the communities you’re a part of and what makes them so important to you?
