Bruno claims you don’t create a community, you provide the platform for that audience to gather and connect.
Forgive the semantics here, but we do create the community.
We build the relationships between members. We embed the elements that develop a strong sense of community. It's important to understand this.
We don't build platforms, we build communities. We take groups of people with a shared interest and develop a strong sense of community amongst them.
But there is one thing we don't do.
We don't create that strong common interest.
That interest must already exist. That interest must be strong. That interest must be common (shared by a number of people). People should be keen to discuss that interest in their spare time.
It sounds obvious, but too many organizations still get into trouble here. They try to make people interested in a topic and build a community at that same time.
But why would people not interested in the topic join and participate in the first place?
You see this happening in many ways. For example, when a brand tries to get an audience to talk about them, instead of the topic. The manufacturer of skis, might build a community about skis instead of skiing. It sounds like a minor difference, it's not. It's huge.
If you're always fighting an uphill battle to get the community off the ground, it's because you haven't nailed that strong common interest.
Look harder. What are people really interested in here? Build a community around that.