I've been thinking about communities and how to build communities as a marketer recently. I'm still mulling, but it seems to me that the easiest way to build a community is to leverage already existing groups.

In this post, a group is a collection of people with common interests who are not connected to each other. A community is a more organized and aware group of people. They feel a connection that differentiates them in a significant way from the rest of the population.

(To take a frivolous example, I've recently been reading Shakespeare plays. I don't know anyone else who reads Shakespeare plays recreationally, but I'm willing to bet there are others out there. So I am part of a group that reads Shakespeare plays recreationally. In order for a community to form I'd have to find other people with this same interest and behavior pattern, and feel that we had a connection.)

It seems to me that the easiest way to set up a community as a marketer is to find a sentiment that is already in the population that can be tapped into. People think in terms of groups and other people that they can relate to. So a product that seems to relate naturally to the group can serve as a focal point for a community.

(To carry on the example above, a book publisher could produce special Shakespeare plays for the recreational reader, as well as provide ways to connect readers. A motivated publisher could host speakers to talk about Shakespeare and set up events where people could form connections with each other. The goal, of course, would be to grow the readership, generate loyalty and sell more books.)

Trying to force a community to form around a product is often going to be a losing proposition. But tapping into a group of people with common interests and pitching the product so it meshes well with that group has great potential.