What's the Difference Between an Audience and a Community?

Which way are your chairs facing?

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Today I wanted to talk about the concepts of an audience and a community. I see some people on Substack using the terms interchangeably, when they are anything but.

Audience: A group of people who are receiving content from a single source. In an offline setting, it would be the audience in a theater watching a movie. In an online setting, it would be your subscriber list that receives your email newsletter.

The main thing to remember about an audience is that it is exposed to a one-way communication. It receives content from one source.

Community: A group of people who are communicating with each other. The members of the group are engaging with other members of the group. In an offline setting, it would be a group of people who have a shared interest who meet. Like a tweetup or a hobbyist group who meets locally. In an online setting, it would be a group of people who connect with each other around a particular shared interest. It could fans of a TV series or a movie, or even your favorite Substack. There will be some tie of shared interest that binds the group together.

The main thing to remember about a community is that its members engage with each other.

This tweet gives you a nice graphic to illustrate the difference between an audience and community:

Here’s the Big Misconception…

If you read your feed, you will see no shortage of chatter about the value of community among Substack users. But many users don’t understand exactly what a community is, or how it is grown. There seems to be a prevailing assumption that a community is a group of people who are just waiting to promote your substack and grow it for you. All you have to do is ‘grow’ this community and turn them loose!

Umm…no. A community isn’t something that will work for you to grow your substack. It would be closer to say that a community is something YOU have to work to grow.

Let’s look at two Alabama football fans to describe the difference between an audience and a community.

Meet Tim and Jason

Tim and Jason are both fans of Alabama football. In terms of our discussion here, Tim will be your audience, Jason will be your community. Let’s look at how they differ:

Tim – Tim has been a fan of Alabama football since 2010, right after Alabama won its first National Championship under former coach Nick Saban. He has an Alabama cap and a couple of shirts, which he likes to wear on gameday. He tries to watch as many Alabama football games on TV as he can, although he does miss a few due to work and other activities. Since Coach Saban retired last year, his interest in the program has waned a bit.

Tim is what you would call the ‘audience’ for your content. He will stick around as long as you are giving him useful content, and he’s just here for the content. Notice he’s already less enthusiastic about Alabama football since Coach Saban retired. The point here to note is your audience has less loyalty toward your content.

Jason – Jason is what you would call a ‘die hard’ Alabama fan. So are his parents and all his friends. Jason attended his first Alabama football game when he was 12 years old. He grew up watching Alabama football lose under Mike Dubose and later Mike Shula, which makes him appreciate even more how successful Alabama football is now. Jason is a season ticket-holder, and prior to last year, he attended every home game. He loves being on campus and each trip to Tuscaloosa is a day-long event. He typically arrives on campus around 6 am, and tailgates for several hours prior to the start of the game. He enjoys meeting other Alabama football fans, and knows all the fans that tailgate around him for each game. As he’s gotten older, he spends more and more time on campus, he loves seeing all the sights and meeting other Alabama football fans and sharing stories about past seasons.

Jason is what you would call the ‘community’ around your content. He loves your content, but he also loves communicating and engaging with other people who also love your content.

As you read these personas for Tim and Jason, note the main difference: Jason is far more invested in your content, because he’s part of a community that loves your content, and he loves connecting with other members of that community.

The connections with other people who have a similar interest is what differentiates Jason (the community) from Tim (the audience).

Now we get to the part that some substack users misunderstand: If you want to have a community (a group of people like Jason), then you are going to have to invest time in creating and managing connections within that community.

You are going to to have to become a Community Manager.

This is community management. Neela is actively engaging her followers and asking them to in effect, promote themselves. Tell me who your favorite people are, the ones you miss when they don’t sign in for a few days. Neela is sparking engagement among her community.

Notice she’s not asking them to discuss ways they can all promote HER. She’s asking them to connect with each other. Because that helps build the bonds of a strong community.

A community is like a garden, it takes constant care. You have to spend time with it every day. You have to connect with people about THEIR interests and THEIR content as much as you do over your own. If not more.

Members of your community are actively engaged and invested in the community that they are a part of. They will devote more resources, whether its time or money (or both) to you and your community and seeing both grow.

So consider this when deciding if you want an audience for your content, or a community. And some people only want an audience, and there’s nothing wrong with that. They just want to create great content, and have people appreciate it, and that’s it.

But some people want to have a true community around their content. They want to create content that is found to be valuable with an audience, but they then want that audience to be connected with each other and become a community. They are willing to put in the extra time and energy to get to know the people that enjoy their content, and help those people connect with each other.

A community is more invested in seeing that community, and the things, ideas and people they support, succeed.

I hope that helps you understand the difference between an audience and a community. On Thursday, I’ll talk more about my engagement strategy here on Substack.

Till then, have a great week!

Mack