The importance of building a Community
Why should you focus on building a community as a creator?
Dear Creators,
We hope you’re doing an amazing job waking up every day and going through all your tasks.
We have been building a community at Platform For Artists since 2017 and one of the most commonly asked questions we get is what is the importance of building a community rather than an audience. What exactly is the difference between the two and why is it important to know?
It's true, building an audience is different than building a community. Community and audience are intertwined concepts, but they’re not the same thing. Your community, if you have one, is a smaller, overlapping subset of your audience. When we talk about an audience, we’re talking about all the people we can reach with our message. Usually, audiences include multiple channels like social media posts, blogs, a conference you spoke at, or a video you uploaded on Youtube.
The audience is quite a broad term—referring to a wide variety of ways we reach people, for a variety of purposes, and a variety of ways that they interact with us in return. On the other hand, when we refer to a community, we should be referring to something quite specific that sits within the broader category of the audience. With community, your primary goal is to elicit a response back (and eventually share the task of starting conversations) rather than just broadcasting your message to an audience who receives it.
Why should you focus more on building a community? Here’s why:
Community starts a conversation: When you build a community, the need for a conversation and a dialogue increases. With community, your primary goal is to elicit a response back (and eventually share the task of starting conversations) rather than just broadcasting your message to an audience who receives it.
Communities have better retention: If you have a community that is engaging by nature, then whenever you will be selling something your community will pay attention. The biggest reason for this is that your content has provided value to your community and they have a say about they feel about your content amongst each other. Community building plays a big role in generating leads as they have a better retention rate.
Feedback, ideas, and cross information: A community is fostered by conversations and a conversation is a seed to feedbacks and ideas. When you put out your content, your community will be there to tell you what can be improved and what do they want to consume.
Membership and identification: It should be clear to both you and your community members that they are a part of your community, and not just your audience. This should feel elevated and special. This will give your community member more relatability when they consume what you create.
The real value of building communities online is that it brings together people who have a common interest or goal.
When people share similar views on a specific topic, they can also discuss related topics such as content, products and services, and a great many other corollary issues. Establishing a community will allow you to process subscription payments and sell memberships very easily, as well as payments for special events or online classes.
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If you liked this post why not share it with others who need it the most? You can also reach out to us on our social media handle @platformforartists for more information on our community projects, live events, and workshops.