Audience vs. Community: What's the Difference for Your Brand?

Easier said than done, community members are often confused with followers, users, subscribers, and customers. While the latter are passive and transient, the former are passionately engaged in a give-and-take with the brand and other members of the community.

Community is more than just a feeling of belonging. In the context of business, it’s a structure for creating value. A simple way to understand it is to compare “community” to an “audience.”

All of that skepticism towards community is further strengthened by the fact that the term “community” is becoming en vogue and is being used in pretty much every marketing and sales campaign these days, not to describe actual communities, but as a fancy way to say customer or audience. People who have never experienced community see the term being... See more