Community is a big word on the social media now. Everyone wants to build a community. But how would you separate people who are building a community from people who just have a large audience? Is there a line between self-promotion and building a community?

Wikipedia define true community as “the process of deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this community. Indeed, a community is built to respect each others views as well as a place to listen to the needs of others.

Now, take that definition and think about the celebrities and the top people in their industry with large following. Ask yourself, are they really building a community around their work or are they just talented self-promoters who knows how to build a ‘fan club’?

I believe the difference comes down to the bonds one have created to and within the community – does it pull together and support each other, or does it always look to the figurehead?

You can easily identify a community builder from the way he response to a post. For example, there are times I responded to industry leaders about their status updates or tweets only to get no answer from them (yes, I expect response especially if they are using social media to market themselves). Now that suggests to me that those people haven’t really built a community – there’s no true listening and there’s no deep respect. Instead of building a community, they’ve used social media tools in a traditional marketing-based fashion to build numbers, but have little connection to those people.

From my perspective, a following can get you short-term benefits but a community is more likely to be successful in the long run. My conclusion then is this: having many retweets or creating many status updates with response doesn’t equate building a community.

How about you? How would you separate people who have built a community from people who just have a large audience, and which approach do you think makes sense for businesses?

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