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

The internet stage is more crowded. Attention is more expensive. Making one's voice heard has gotten harder. The good days of cheap Facebook ads are behind us. Turning users into contributors and advocates is a hard-to-crack but high-rewards marketing strategy. Community is the new Moat.

The goal is to make people feel like they’re a part of something — and like you’re part of their identity. And the payoff — if all goes well — is in the form of fierce loyalty, word-of-mouth promotion, organic curiosity and attention, higher lifetime customer value and share of spend, lower acquisition costs, etc.

An audience is not the same as a community, but they are related. Communities are focal points of audiences and a big part of the day-to-day work of the Embedded Entrepreneur. However, audiences extend way beyond individual communities. They span a multitude of communities, from virtual places to the real world. Communities are great resources and

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