Are you building a community or an empire?

When is a community not a community?

When it’s an empire.

Wait… what?

As Naomi started talking about the concept of community and how we build them, one of the things that drove us crazy was how the online marketing world had misappropriated the word community. Suddenly, everyone was being told to “build their tribe” or “grow their community” to make more sales. It felt like a corruption of community and really did not resonate with us at all. What we saw happening was not community building, it was captive audience creation. Bringing people together with the primary intention of being able to sell what you do to them.

Which is not to say that some weren’t very well intentioned. Which is not to say that some didn’t also have a purpose alongside their income generation. Which is not to say that they weren’t being considerate or using the right tools to bring people together.

They just weren’t building communities, as was claimed. They were building empires.

As we’ve already established, the definition of community is evolving and it is no longer reliant on people being in the same physical location. Our communities have spread and online connectivity has changed how we approach them.