It’s worth remembering this beneath the hustle and bustle of your community work. Members essential gain one of these four benefits from your community.
- Sense of belonging. Members get to feel they are somewhere where they belong. The real irony of communities is they don’t change members. They’re simply places where members can finally be themselves – more individualistic. They have security and the feeling of being included as a member of a group.
- Mutual support. They can receive support from others with the power to give such support. They help people handle major life problems or open up new opportunities such as jobs and provide resources that members otherwise wouldn’t have access to.
- Greater influence. Knowing they are participating in a group that has a bigger influence than they alone could have. High levels of self-efficacy and self-worth. Communities also allow members to have more influencer over other people.
- Exploration. They allow members to explore things with each other they previously wouldn’t have been able to. New ideas, resources, experiences are shared and discussed leading to crowd accelerated innovation.
Is your community providing one of these? Is it providing all four? What can you do to change that?
Thank you Forsyth.
