The Power of Community

Community is defined as a group of people linked by a common thread, vision or cause. Attributes such as shared interests, traditions and mutual advantages are often assigned to community. When you think about it, aren't these the attributes you would like your most valuable members to think about when they describe their relationship with your organization?

How wonderful it would be to hear them compliment your organization for listening to their needs and caring about what they care about. Sound good? If you’re nodding your head, then read on to see how a solid community-building strategy can create this type of relationship and who the best community builders are.

An Outside Perspective
Community building is NOT rooted in the marketing of your organization or services. It is based on relationships and conversations between people—where they are, not necessarily where you are. Community building therefore requires a very different perspective, looking through a social lens and connecting the relationship dots, one person at a time. These efforts are much more tactical, much more hands-on and not an immediate "fix," but well worth the long-term, sustaining benefit that they produce.

Women Vs. Men
We’re sure it comes as no surprise that women's sense of community is quite different from men's. In general, men define community as a place where they live or work. Short, sweet and to the point. Women, on the other hand, describe a rich tapestry of interwoven relationships, often providing examples that span their lifetime. As a generalization, it seems women are emotionally bonded to their communities at a level that men are not.

Who Are Community Builders?
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point, he states that there are three distinct groups of people who accelerate and control word-of-mouth. Two of these groups, the Connectors and Mavens, have more females than males, and in the third group, Salesmen, the members are gender balanced.

Gladwell's Connector group represents people who know a LOT of people; they collect and thrive on relationships. Mavens gather information voraciously and share it freely with others. Anyone who understands the collaborative, sharing, and helping preferences in women knows that females dominate and cast a wide net when it comes to building relationships, which makes the effort to build community with women well worth your marketing dollars and effort.

Finding and Nurturing Your Community
Your next challenge is to identify how your organization can help these community fire-starters and the communities they belong to. This takes a keen eye, attention to detail and a willingness to reach outside the walls of your organization, your events, your annual conferences, your current membership base and even your tried-and-true marketing efforts. To do this you need the outside perspective we mentioned earlier.

Perhaps you decide that the women in your community need a place to hold their monthly book club meetings. You have exhibit space that is unused certain evenings each month; you might benefit by opening your doors as a resource to these groups.

Are the women at the book club meetings necessarily going to visit your exhibits? No. Are they members of your organization? Again, not necessarily. So why do it? Because by fulfilling the needs of groups like these, your organization begins to build a community brand and image, and build relationships with potential new members. This increases awareness of your organization and possibly increases requests for space from other local groups.

No Pain, No Gain
You may find yourself saying, "This is great, but I can't do this, it doesn't fit my type of product or service." Our response is very simple. Women will continue to build communities, with or without you.

Think about the thousands of women's businesses, social associations and organizations that have been created over the last decade—even though there were gender-neutral organizations serving that industry need already in place (e.g., AWC – The Association for Women in Communications or AMWA – American Medical Women’s Association). Something was obviously missing; otherwise women would not have created these mirror organizations. Think of all the buying power that these female organizations represent and the lost opportunity for the organizations that failed to build community from women's point of view.

The choice and opportunity are yours. Your community-building work will be part research, part socializing and a lot of finessing. You and your staff will need to learn how to see connections and recognize patterns, but the end result will yield loyal female communities and the power of each member’s extended network.


Share Your “Community Building” Strategies With Us!
How is your organization building its community brand? Share with us the insights you’ve discovered and how they’ve changed your views about community outreach. Connect with Élan’s online community by posting a comment to this blog or chatting with us over e-mail, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.