Email marketing, social media, forums, chat, messaging, events, conferences, IRL conversations, and AI are tools to build community.

Thanks to Andy Claremont who raised the discussion and debate on whether social media = community, where people chimed in with all sorts of opinions.

Honestly, I have good fun chiming in on these things, once a year is probably my limit, though. Life is short and all that. And honestly, sometimes I despair.

It's good to raise these things, for new perspectives, or simply the education of one another. It's got me thinking about it with a fresher perspective.

Andy first raised it on LinkedIn:

Social Media is Community Management for Consumer Brands | Andy Claremont posted on the topic | LinkedIn

“Social Media Management isn’t Community Management.” I disagree. At least, I’m starting to. For consumer brands, social media *is* the most prevalent community space, and their monitoring/engaging isn’t far off from what we do in B2B customer communities. One of the key differences being that the consumer brand wants to be present within existing communities of interest, like runners or readers. E.g. Brooks or Penguin Random House are gonna pay very close attention to what’s happening on TikTok or Insta, because that’s where their customers are spending their time and talking about their products. End of the day, community management needs you to be actively present with your people. Sometimes we create the space for it, other times we show up where they already are. + This feels obvious in hindsight, but our perspectives are shaped by our experiences. If you usually focus on customer communities and support forums, your context is gonna be different. 🤷 | 53 comments on LinkedIn

LinkedInAndy Claremont

And then he did a write-up:

Yes, we can use Social Media for Community Management

Plus: The community vibes of a Caribbean vacation

Community StacksAndy Claremont

(Also, sidenote, yay for new community writers, we need more of that. Processing our thoughts through words helps us understand the world better.)

My TLDR and general opinion is that social media is a tool. And then on top of that, I generally believe that we live in an amazing world where we have access to all the things and that it would be daft not to use said things to help us build community.

Infact, I would go to the extent of saying that community is getting left behind because we aren't experimenting or willing to use enough tools that we don't deem community tools.

Why do I say this? Constant frustrations from what I see and have experienced around me, which might look something like:

• that's social media, that's not part of my job
• that's email marketing, that's not in my job spec
• that's conference organising, that's not in my job spec
• that job is squeezing many jobs into one, that's so unreal
• that job spec is trying to cover too much, it's not a real community job

The reality is that we have to do more as part of our jobs, because the world evolves like that. The modern tools of our day allow us to achieve more, so we should naturally look to be as efficient as we can.

From my perspective, of building community from the ground up, grafting, working for every single penny, having huge setbacks and stresses (and yes, I get that many people may not be able to have the flexibility in doing things as I have been able to do so), but I've also done it out of necessity of survival. I do the work and I've never been afraid to get stuck in.

The fact that I'm surviving building community, doing things the way I do, means that it is a valid way to build community (not the only way, but still valid). This is not humble brag, it's been so hard. I've wanted to walk away so many times. I've seen so much come and go over the years. We're still standing and I choose to be proud of that.

When many communities, especially enteprise and forum style communities are struggling, and the work I'm doing is thriving, I would like to think that we're doing at least some things right in the crazy world we currently live in. And even if it doesn't work out in years to come, I've come to accept that whatever happens, I feel proud of everything we've done in pushing the boundaries of community.

The thing is, when boundaries are pushed (that's us in the MoTaverse), I find it impossible to get excited about what's been left behind. I feel like I can only be real about this. (Again, life is too short, and I'm leaning into being more direct. 😅)

So here's the thing. I can tell you that I've never built community without social media, or email, or messaging apps, or Slack, or conferences, or forums, or conversations, or care, or creativity, or without fun and joyful branding...

I love a good (literal) fireside chat too, yet I've never done that one in actual community. It just doesn't work in today's world. Possible? Yes. Does it still happen? I'm sure it does. I'm not sure literal fireside chats would pass health and safety these days. 🫢

But our modern-day fireside chats exist. People gathering around at a meetup, conference, podcast, talks or even a YouTube/social stream. Going out for a drink or a meal counts too. And guess what, to get those things happening, sometimes you need email, chat apps, or god forbid, social media. Forums are often really bad at making some of these things actually happen.

It's daft that there is some kind of perceived notion that some of those things aren't (partly) community.

It's daft that we try to draw a line in the fact that doing any of those things is outside of our remit.

It's daft that we say this when some of the biggest global movements have happened as a result of social media and messaging apps.

It's daft that we don't see that creating these silos holds everyone back.

Imagine what could be achieved if we embraced all the things, all the tools. All the possibilities. I am seeing this it and I keep saying how beautiful it all is. Community is so friggin' beautiful.

It doesn't help to try to box our community work into such black and white strategies. All of our team, to some extent needs to shape shift to our roles. It doesn't mean we all do all the things. It doesn't mean overworking and stress. It means we adapt as we feel is necessary. Our event person is part ops person, part community, part sales, part superhero tbh. As is our community lead, who is also supporting product more. As is our education lead. They all do many things that were never in the job description.

They all, seem to love their job too. I do my best to play to their strengths.

We have to do those things. Not all of them. Some of them, sometimes, as the world changes. We can choose to align ourselves with the direction we personally get excited about.

The more I do this, the more I get excited about community. The more my mind and world opens up to the possibilities. The more I find bravery in not letting the social networks have all the fun. The more we as a team start to connect the dots and find new and better ways to build community.

My frustration is time being spent on the wrong things, when we could be exploring new boundaries. I want you to see what I can see.

Anything* in life can be community, it's how we approach it.

(* ok, not quite anything)

At one point in time we would've used fires, spoken word, written word, pigeons, telegrams, phone calls, faxes and Skype to help us build community.

To build good community, requires good communication. What is considered good communication changes as trends change. Innovation is essential.

And on that point, looking ahead, I will end with saying, yes, AI can be a tool used to build community too. Not the Moltbook way of course, but the longer we don't build community with AI in mind, the faster we will become irrelevant.

PS. I think we should all do more 'blogging' and 'riffing' on other people's work. It feels good and a bit old skool, but in a very nice way.

🐌