I've been a teacher most of my career. Specifically, I was a college English teacher for ten years. Recently, I've been reflecting on how my experience teaching and writing and telling stories has influenced my understanding of community. One of the biggest discussions-or sometimes arguments-I hear is whether someone wants and audience or a community. I wanted to explain the difference using a story framework.
As humans, we're built to connect to other people. In some way, we crave connection and a sense of belonging. With the rise of community over the last couple of years, many companies think that building a community is the answer. But not everyone who claims to want a community actually wants one. In fact, what many people are looking for is an audience.
An audience is a group of people who are aware of what you're doing, but they don't necessarily engage or interact with each other. It's like a group of spectators watching a game from the sidelines. A community is made up of individuals who engage and interact with each other. They're active participants who shape the story and contribute to the group's sense of identity and purpose.
To better understand this, let's use the analogy of a story. An audience reads the story and observes the characters, while a community is the story. Members of a community create the story together, and their collective experiences shape its trajectory. Power users might guide the main ideas, while minor characters come and go, still impacting the story in meaningful ways.
It's important to remember that a community is probably much smaller than an audience. But don't underestimate its power; some of the most impactful communities are small but mighty. By building a strong community that's engaged and invested in your world, you'll be able to create a sense of belonging and connection that will attract others to your mission.
If you want to see the video that inspired this blog post, you can check it out at https://www.youtube.com/@bekahhw.
Top comments (8)
Thank you for this post!
A top of what you said, community is also not time-bound. Unlike audience that blows up in the beginning and inevitably declines with time, communities grow stronger and transform with every new member and as time passes.
Love that differentiation!
I think every class I teach is an audience initially, but usually rapidly becomes a community within a day or two of intense lectures and homework assignments. Some folks resist this out of a desire to just get knowledge without getting or offering support to others, but most eventually engage in a community to some degree or another.
I also feel that people from your audience don't exactly care if you fail or succeed. In case you disappear, they have plenty more objects of interests to jump to.
Community however, will care about you and what you're doing. Very often they will try to help you reach whatever you're trying to achieve. It goes both ways though, you do need to cherish them and nurture those relationship.
I think there are a lot of audiences that do care. Let's go back to the story analogy. If a popular book series just ended without a final book, the audience would likely be upset. They might even write fan fiction to fill the need for that storyline. And if we think about it in terms of community, there are plenty of "lurkers"-me included-out there who watch a lot of what's happening, but if that community closed down, we'd be sad. We might even form our own community of ex-community members. Sure lots of audience members may not care, and may move on, but I think it depends on the level of investment. There's a space between audience and community where I think this happens. I think I have an idea for another blog post!
This is so important to know the difference!
great article
Thanks, Pachi!
You can have both a community and audience with a little overlap between the two. Think of community as your small inner or core circle as only so many people will resonate with your cause or subject matter who you'll also reciprocate in kind. Audience can be a slightly larger outer circle of influence and when you're interacting in that capacity (as story teller for eg), the community is also part of that audience for the time being.
Over time, it might happen that members of outer circle can move to the inner (or vice versa) depending on situations and circumstances.