Community Sharpens Community

One of the things I love about community – using the definition from my previous post:

What is a community? In simple terms, it’s a group of people bound together by a shared interest or purpose

– is that a community in which you find yourself can subdivide into smaller off-shoot communities related to the initial, broader community, but be an entirely new community in and of itself. (Read more from David Spinks regarding intentional vs. unintentional communities and humanity's giant river of connective energy.)

This is how cultures and subcultures form. This is how we navigate life socially – how we “find our people.” 

It happens all the time. Just look at people’s favorite pro sport to watch. Many might say they love to watch baseball, and then have a sub-community of like-minded fans who like to root for the same team.

Or maybe you like Quentin Tarantino movies, but you are of a subset of Tarantino movie-lovers who are die hard fans of just one of his movie titles.

It’s not surprising, but when you think about it, it’s the ultimate discovery engine for you and I to get information and stay engaged vs. isolated in life.

It’s why word-of-mouth marketing is the most powerful form of influence and discovery ever. It’s why businesses create communities with their customers around the shared connection of those customers using that product. 

When you have a bond with another person – even a stranger – over something in common between you, respect and trust around that commonality begins to bud and becomes the foundation for listening to one another and allowing each other to be influenced and shaped by what is shared.

Here’s what made me ponder this topic in the first place:

Last Friday night I performed music for a local concert series where I live. There was a cancellation in the scheduled musical line up and at the last minute I was asked to cover and fill the slot. I was happy to do so, but the crowd that might show up was not expecting me based on the advertisements they had seen.

The gist of this music series is to have live music that is available for local residents to come together and have something fun and free to do outdoors in the summer. Of course by design, there are businesses nearby that participate and benefit from the patronage of those who attend the event. However, the idea is that there is free entertainment and a place to gather if those in the local community are looking for something fun, free and family-friendly to do.

People may show up because they like to get out every Friday to gather and socialize with their neighbors in a casual environment. Others have kids driving them nuts with too much free time in the summer and they need to get out of the house so the kids can run around and play with other kids while mom and dad relax, have a beverage, and chat with their parental counterparts.

In this situation, as I was the live music performer, I’m the content. My performance is, from a high-level, fodder – something for them to consume while they’re gathering…perhaps a reason they came out to the event (though in this case I wasn’t the act they thought they would encounter) or maybe a reason, once there, that they stay (which was my hope, and many did, thankfully).

The point is, while I, as a music performer, may not have been the specific reason they came out, my performance may have resonated enough to encourage them to join my own community. My community of those who come together around the music I make and share.

That’s what’s interesting to me, that so many sub-communities of other communities pop up in all sorts of places (online and off) as a result of joining a community or showing up at a gathering of others generally interested in the initial common reason they’re gathering, and finding other subsets of people with whom to commune. For example, enjoying music from (to them) an unknown performer that they’re collectively enjoying and experiencing in that particular moment. 

This is how building a fanbase as a creator works. As a creator we’re using our art as a vehicle to bring people together through their shared interest in and experience with our creative work. 

Often, when starting to build that fanbase, we’re inserting ourselves and our craft into a broader, related community, so those in that broader community who express interest can dive deeper into a subset community around a more specific aspect of the broader community.

Not unlike going to a local event as something to do, discovering some art they like, and further discovering others in attendance who are also having a shared experience enjoying the same art. Now those people are connecting within this subset of the broader community that got them there, and the artist is gaining fans in his/her own community.

As iron sharpens iron, community sharpens community.

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