Community Building for the 22nd Century, Part 1

The Best Success Signal Is Community Assisting Your Job

Most marketing is built to win a quarter. A community is built to outlast any single product or campaign. This series asks one plain question: if you had to build an audience that could still be around in 2100, what would you do differently today? The answer has less to do with channels than with people. Audiences are tired of being talked at. They trust the person next to them more than the brand above them. And a group that cares about the same thing will do work for you that no budget can buy. We start with community building because it is the part of marketing that compounds. Ads stop working when you stop paying. A community keeps talking. Each article pairs one idea with the facts behind it, and says so when the facts run out.

It is 11:40 on a Tuesday night. A stranger is answering a question about your product in a comment thread. You did not ask them to. You have never met. They have no discount code, no logo on their profile photo, and no reason to do it except that they know the answer and someone else needed it.

When someone outside your company can explain your product correctly and point a stranger your way, your communication worked. Likes can’t tell you that. Reach can’t tell you that. A stranger doing your job can.

I spent a chunk of my career in corporate marketing at an insurance company, and for a while I believed a good logo could do the talking. It can’t. Politely, I was wrong.

What people say, and what they do

Start with the trust numbers. Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising research found that 92% of people trusted recommendations from people they know in 2012. In 2021 the figure was 88%. Paid channels trailed it in the same surveys. Nielsen’s Cathy Heeley put the reason in one line: “Human to human trust is fundamental to daily life.”

Here is the part that keeps me honest. Trust is what people say. Influence is what they do. Nielsen’s 2022 buyer-journey research reported that 45% of new brand triers found advertising useful or influential. Recommendations came in at 30%, reviews at 18%. (I pulled that from a secondary summary and will check it against Nielsen before this goes out.) So ads still get you noticed. My read is that advocates are who people believe once they have noticed you.

The machines agree

There is a newer reason to care. People now ask AI tools what to buy. Omniscient Digital studied 23,387 citations across five major AI engines and found that 57% of branded citations came from reviews and social proof. About 4.5% came from the brand’s own About, FAQ and Home pages. Your website is a small voice in a loud room. Think of it as the guy at the party who keeps telling everyone how great he is.

Peec AI’s analysis of 30 million sources found Reddit was the most-cited domain across the major engines. Real people talking to real people ended up as the reference. Some of these figures come from AI-visibility vendors, so read them as direction, not gospel.

What you can track

You can measure this. Not perfectly, but better than likes.

• Unprompted mentions. Posts that name you without tagging you.
• Referral source. Ask new customers how they heard about you, then count how many name a person or a thread.
• Community answers. The share of support questions answered by someone outside your company, and how many of those answers are correct.
• Accuracy. If strangers explain you wrong, that is a messaging problem. Fix it at your end.

Honest limit: a lot of this happens in group chats you will never see. Treat every number as a floor.

The product has to be good. Nobody recommends something that embarrasses them. Case studies and testimonials only work once the product does its job and there is an easy way to tell someone else about it. If the product wobbles, none of the tactics below will save it.

How to give people something to say

Put a person behind the account. Save the polished voice for announcements. In comments, use a name. Sign replies with a first name or initials: “Thanks for sharing this. Sam, customer support.” Think Jake from State Farm, a personality tied to a brand. [Add a Canadian example here.] People do not want to talk to a bot, or to something that feels like one.

The B2B version is quieter. When a key contact at a key client likes a post, shares it or leaves a comment, the person who owns that relationship replies, by name. Tell your VPs and account managers that this is part of the job. People are always looking for a point of connection, online and in person.

Show real people in real places. Try the stock-photo test. Would you put this photo in your own presentation? If the honest answer is no, you need a harder conversation with your team about what you want people to see. Audiences are pushing back on actors and generic voice-over. Real does not mean unedited. A marketer still decides which story to tell. The difference is that the people in it are invited along.

Use the people in the back. Front-line teams are the obvious voice for a company. A rough split I use is about 75% of your support going to them. Do not drop the other 25%: the analysts, the technical staff, the researchers. People are surprised by who wants to talk about their work. Every role matters to the person doing it. The marketing job is to translate that into something interesting for someone else.

Get specific. Kim’s Convenience is about one Korean-Canadian family in Toronto, with references only some viewers will catch. It worked far outside Toronto. I have family in England who found it on their own and love it. I think the more specific you get, the wider you appeal, because people recognize an archetype even when the details are not theirs. I do not have data for that. It is a pattern I have seen and believe, and if you know a study, I would like to read it.

Give a small taste. First one’s free works. A sample teaches people what to say. Give away a slice of your product. I have heard 1% as a rule of thumb. Treat it as a number to test, not a law. The product has to be good, or the sample just advertises the problem.

Let strangers help each other. Old message boards and Reddit are the model, good and bad. Customer support can double as a community resource. You still do your half: share the right resources and keep the content good. When someone outside your system can point people to you and repeat your work, you are working smarter, not harder.

One thing to try this week

Reply to the next three comments on your company page with a first name. Watch what comes back.

Field notes

• The tee. I own a lot of graphic tees. When the movie comes out, I wear the shirt to the theatre. Nobody asked. Nobody paid me. It is an unpaid ad with excellent placement.
• Thirty years. Pokémon turned 30 this year. One Piece is past 1,000 episodes. Nobody sends those fans a loyalty email. They stay because they are along for the ride.
• The guilty pleasure. I will be the first to raise my hand: there are a couple of reality shows I watch that nobody calls gold-standard television. I bought into the characters anyway. That is the whole point.