Audience vs Community

Companies often think in terms of audiences, but it’s actually unhelpful and the wrong way to think. In this Vlog, Grant explains the difference between audience and community and, therefore, how your messages can become more relevant and sticky.

Imagine big TV audiences…

The people that watched Man’s First Steps on the moon.

The death of Elvis Presley or King Charles’s Coronation.

People just wanted to be part of an historic event, but this audience was disparate and from all around the world.

Companies often think in terms of audiences, but it’s actually unhelpful and the wrong way to think.

Of course, at a very granular level, what companies have is customers, people that actually pay them for their products or services.

But in the middle, what we have is communities.

Communities are not audiences, because what makes a community a community is that they have something in common.

As a business, you’re not trying to build an audience, you’re trying to build a community.

And it’s really important to think about; what does your community have in common?

It can be a value set.

It can be an interest.

It can be a particular cultural group.

A typical geographical location could be a number of those things.

But what is the glue that holds your people together?

And when you think in terms of community, it leads to the stories that you tell, the messages you put across, the examples you give to be much more relevant and sticky for that audience.

So when you are doing your marketing and promotions, think less about Man’s First Steps on the moon and think more about the Liverpool crowd at Anfield, where there are people there with a common interest.

There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order to facilitate the readability of the written English