Three tastes of community
There are three main ways in which I think community can be used. Three tastes of community and some examples below for your delectation.
1.Community is the purpose
Community IS the purpose, without the community, there is no product. This differs from community marketing in that it is core rather than additive. Businesses whose outcomes are human-centred like learning, networking or coaching benefit well from this model.
Some examples of types of communities in this model
A community of practice brings professionals together to share best practise, domain knowledge and build their personal networks.
Learning community is a community all focussed on learning at the same time. This could be in person such as schools, universities and classes or online learning with a social element such as Future Learn.
An interest community is a community of people who come together around a certain interest. These are often niche and self-organised. My husband belongs to a very active one where they all own (and are constantly trying to fix!) VW Corrados. They go on tours, offer each other parts to fix their Corrados and I know he’s made great friends in that group beyond car ownership too.
2. Community Marketing
Community marketing is the creation or growth of a community of people for the purpose of increased business value. This could be in the form of product success, increased market share, deal value increase, product feedback, customer success, customer loyalty, advocacy and brand awareness.
Customer success community a good example of this is HubSpot which has a thriving community for marketers and sales teams. Their tagline is: “Connect with peers, maximize your HubSpot knowledge, and learn how to grow better with HubSpot.”.
Customer support community: Giff Gaff is widely cited as a beacon for this type of community where community members give product support to other members.
3. Community Activism
Community activism is the collaborative and collective actions by a community of people for the purpose of improving the lives of individuals or groups. They may be subjected to oppressive social, economic, political, cultural, or environmental conditions, as well as other forms of discrimination.
Direct action organisation Whatever you might think of their actions, Extinction Rebellion is a good (but fairly extreme) example of an activism community. They describe themselves as a ‘do-it-together movement’. It has chapters all over the country, is decentralised and is highly organised in taking action.
Mass participation The Flex Appeal and Pregnant then Screwed both use their large followings and social media to lobby and pressure lawmakers to make changes to laws and government policy as well as support their members in times of need.