As the pandemic continues to affect businesses, organizations, and any place people tend to gather, more connection is moving online and onto social media.

Growing a community amongst so much noise can be challenging, but cutting through the noise is just the first step.

What sets a community apart and makes it truly successful is engagement, and not typical comments and likes and shares, those too, but in a community, members are also creating content.

What? How does that happen?

A community doesn’t just happen on a page or account, it also takes place followers’ pages and accounts or in a group where followers create more posts than the group creator does.

Facilitating a community is what hashtags were made for, they are a simple way to connect all the posts centered around one topic or community.

But how can you get your audience to engage AND participate in a community? You have to inspire them, and on social media, inspiration is born from authenticity.

This is why I believe so many journalists make great public relations specialists now, they know how to nail authenticity for a person or brand.

Good public relations don’t craft your message, it simply refines it and packages it in the best way possible for the intended audience. However the message much comes from deep within, it must come from your passion or your why.

So if you’re organization is looking to foster an online community in lieu of some more traditional ways of doing business, spend more time being true and authentic and less time worrying about everything being perfectly polished.