What is Community Everywhere?

CommunityCommunity GlossaryCommunity StrategyCommunity Theory

14 Dec

People are interested in and engage with many topics on the internet.

There is rarely one single group, network or community where topics for discussion, such as sustainability, health tech, bias in AI & technology, luxury fashion, raising healthy kids, urban planning (and the list goes on) are active.

Today, marketing and comms strategists need to identify ‘community ecosystems’ and embrace the many clusters of communities, networks and groups around any brand, business, organisation, topic or movement.

And increasingly, these communities may be hidden, private, global, hyperlocal and hop across a myriad of apps, social media and digital platforms.

What do we call this ecosystem of people clustering in communities, networks and groups around topics, brands or organisations?

“Community Everywhere” is a term that I believe we should credit to Richard Millington and in this article, he explains what it is.

I prefer the term ‘Community Ecosystems’.

In Public Relations and Comms, the identification of individuals, groups, networks and communities that are important to an organisation - whether these groups are owned and managed by you or not - is called ‘stakeholder mapping’.

This is the process of identifying the channels, partners, creators/influencers, communities, groups or networks where your industry, organisation, brand or product is being discussed - and then creating a listening and engagement strategy around these ecosystems.

The customer journey and community journey today is fragmented and messy

Most brands and businesses offer and manage a few official, or owned community spaces. But the customer journey, or community journey today is fragmented and messy and difficult to map.

As a business or brand owner, you may not necessarily own the community discussing your business and the things that you stand for. In fact, very few brands and businesses do own the very best topic or theme based communities.

Look at the spending spree from tech and SaaS brands to snap up communities well established in areas that those brands wished to own - Pendo and Mind the Product (product management), Bevy and CMX (community strategy), HubSpot and The Hustle (business news and trends) are some obvious examples.

People will engage and join or create communities and discussions wherever they feel most comfortable, whether that’s in WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Facebook Groups, Twitch, LinkedIn, Reddit, User Communities, niche professional communities on Guild, Substack chats, Slack groups and the list goes on.

Why is it important to adapt to community everywhere / community ecosystems?

As a brand or business your fans, customers, prospects, members or detractors will choose many digital and physical spaces to cluster and engage as groups and talk about you, your competitors, themes, topics and many other things that you ideally would wish to ‘own’ or drive.

If you have a content, comms and thought leadership strategy, then it’s likely that you’ll have a social media strategy to support it.

But with social media becoming less social and with many people retreating to smaller, niche, topical, private communities to avoid culture wars, algorithms and noise, it’s important to have a community strategy that looks at social media AND other spaces where your audiences, publics, stakeholders, customers, prospects etc cluster.

And then figure out whether you need to partner, participate, or see if there is an opportunity to take the place of those spaces.

There may even be a gap for a new community.

But, there are SO many apps and platforms these days, won’t ‘community everywhere’ take ages to do?

It depends on a number of factors - your industry, the topic, the potential size of your addressable audiences, how many geographies you want to look at etc.

And sadly, social media listening tools won’t help to highlight the millions of private, hidden networks and communities out there.

But it’s an essential part of your content, comms, community and marketing strategy and if you can’t resource it, I can help you - see my Community Audit service and Community Strategy service and Community-as-a-Service CaaS service.

Let me know how you get on mapping your community ecosystems and what gems you find. Good luck!

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Want help with your 'community everywhere/community ecosystem' strategy? I’m ready and waiting to hear from you. Book an introductory call to speak to me about your challenges, projects or questions you might have.

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Photo by Charlota Blunarova on Unsplash