Community > Audience

Why communities are the new place to build authentic connections

The last 15 years in digital culture have been strictly about audience building. It’s been largely about gaining followers and performing against a set of vanity metrics. If I only had a dollar for the number of times I heard someone at a company say “we are not doing social media right” because we don’t have a lot of followers. In 2010 I launched a social media agency right before the tsunami of “follower fantasy.” An entire industry was born on the backs of individuals with more followers than substance. We accepted that these people were experts and best in class voices in certain verticals because of their follower counts. I remember it distinctly, and I can say it was a sigh of relief to have my agency acquired in 2014. I was exhausted by brands valuing “influencers” over “quality content” and the notion that the influencer was going to dramatically boost sales / awareness / buzz, etc. It should be noted that several Web 2 influencers have gone on to build solid businesses with…