Why Community Is The Biggest Moat?

Hariprasad Shetty Oct 19, 2022

Over the last decade, we have witnessed how communities have been reimagined. They are no longer just confined to the purpose of inflicting a feeling of belonging. In the context of business or brand building today, it has evolved into how one can add value to the members of a community and also leverage its strength for a bigger purpose.

According to a 2022 Community Industry Report by cmx, almost all respondents (94 per cent) report their community members are contributing to their business goals, most commonly by sharing feedback, contributing to content, or making referrals. A simple way to understand the importance of a community is to compare it with an audience.

There is a significant difference between an audience and a community as stated by Chris Brogan. He attributes it to the direction in which the chairs are pointing. If they’re pointing toward each other, it's a community. If they’re all pointing towards an individual subject, it's an audience.

The point of a community is to fortify brand strength by bringing people with common interests together. They can connect, network, share ideas, and even partner up. An audience, on the other hand, is folks who are gathered to hear what you or your brand have to say. It is something you gain when you build awareness and want your message absorbed.

Shift In Mindset

Entrepreneurship brings with it, its own set of challenges in the form of risk and uncertainty. But the satisfaction that one experiences after overcoming these challenges, is beyond rewarding.

If there is any takeaway from the time we spent in isolation, it is that humans need community and interaction to thrive. A community-driven approach to business may seem like a subtle shift in mindset, but the impact it has is massive. A traditional business strives toward creating maximum value for its consumer. A community-driven business will work towards building a safe space for its consumers to create value for each other.

Let’s Look At Two scenarios:

Scenario A- ABC Company uses its resources to manufacture a top-of-the-line product and uses traditional media for advertising it. This could go one of two ways. You either see these advertisements two-three times and are almost convinced to buy the product because you were already looking for something similar to purchase or, you get irritated by these targeted advertisements and you shut them down.

Scenario B- ABC Company uses traditional media to advertise the product, social media platforms to interact with their consumers and community members, a newsletter to share the ins and outs of the industry, and influencer marketing to get your favourite influencers to tell you about the pros, cons, use-case and their experience with the product. The founder even discusses his journey behind building the brand and future plans on podcasts.

In scenario B, we learn that communities don't sell products. Communities empower their users to interact with like-minded individuals and help make informed decisions. As community engagement grows, they get smarter, quicker to respond, easily accessible globally, and generate more value.

Look At What They Did

Living in a world that gives you all the amenities, be it your medicines, groceries, or dinner within 10 minutes, creating real human connections may not be as quick as an algorithm. Having said that, building communities is a crucial process that fosters connections among people and creates infrastructures for these connections to evolve.

The tangible value created such as content, events, online advocacy and marketing, customer support, and education is obvious. It's the intangible value that is derived from the experience that makes these environments truly “sticky”.

Intellectual growth for one another is the motive behind a business built around a community. The growth that is attained is not necessarily free or cheap. A lot of the most trusted and expensive brands are outcomes of a strong community story- Apple: Creator Community, Harley Davidson: Biker community, Nike: Fitness community, Y Combinator: Investment community.

One of the best brands to learn from is Amul. It was founded by a group of farmers whose mission was to end exploitation by middlemen. It eventually became one of the biggest brands in the nation. This brand changed the lives of countless poor farmers and took the country by storm. Eliciting an emotion and taking a human-centric approach is what takes your audience and makes it your community. Even today, Amul evokes a sense of nostalgia and satisfaction with its witty socio-political ads, catchy taglines, and infamous mascot.

Final Thoughts

Community building is the way forward for anyone who requires distribution - brands, content creators, small businesses, celebrities and the like. Your personal brand can also be made stronger when you build in the open and grow with your community.

This opens up room for opportunities and ongoing exchange. By getting multiple perspectives, opinions and expertise, not only will the people get the chance to advance their knowledge and benefit from it for their own journey but so will you.