Social Media Audience and Community: Key Similarities and Differences

In the mid 2000s, when I began community building, life was simpler. Social media meant “Orkut or Facebook” and communities referred to online forums.

But the times evolved and the lines between community and social media blurred. Most people began calling their social media following as their ‘community’.

tl;dr

Building audience on social media is different from building a community.

Social media focuses on one→many communication to build reach and visibility. Your followers on social media engage mainly with you.

Community focuses on many→many communication to build relationships, shared identity and deeper engagement among members.

Both social media and community require valuable content, trust and consistent interaction; but the goals, engagement and depth are different.

As a community builder, you need social media to boost reach but a community to build relationships and trust.

Let’s dive deeper.

What is Audience Building on Social Media?

Audience building means attracting a group of followers, fans or subscribers who pay attention to your content. Think of audience as the people watching a movie. They all are focused on the movie playing on the big screen (that’s your brand!). It’s one→many communication where people are mostly the ‘receivers’.

But there’s no interaction among the audience!

On the social media, content is created to build reach and tap into new audience. The focus is on improving visibility. If you have 100,000 Instagram followers who see your posts, you’ve built an audience.

Most of the social media marketing tactics, like gaining followers, increasing views and gaining likes and shares - all fall into ‘audience building’.

It’s about popularity and awareness, making sure lots of people hear about you and your product or business.

On Social Media, Engagement Lacks Depth

You audience may engage at a basic level - liking a post, adding a quick comment or resharing your post. But the relationship is primarily with you or your brand. There’s hardly any communication with each other.

Veteran community builder David Spinks explains this beautifully in his article “Difference Between Audience and Community” - An audience centers on a single point - all eyes on the brand or creator - and it “lives and dies with that central focus”.

Your audience don’t necessarily feel a bond with other audience members and there’s no strong, shared identity among your followers. It’s just that they happen to follow you.

For example, you may have a big following on X that tunes in for your updates. But the followers aren’t connecting with each other - except in a few comments. They are ‘consumers’ of your content and not co-creators of content for your brand, business or niche.

A key trait of audience on social media is that it’s - broad, potentially large and often spread across multiple social channels - X, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp etc. The communication is one way and engagement is passive.

What is Community Building?

Community building is about creating a group where members connect with each other, not just you.

If an audience is like a bunch of people watching movie together, a community is like a group of friends hanging out and jamming together. The best example I have is that of a book club. You’ll find people talking to each other, sharing information about books, tips and building relationships and bond beyond books.

In a community, people aren’t just passive listeners. They participate, converse and contribute. The relationships are one→many. Members talk with each other (not just you, the leader) and there’s a shared purpose or interest holding the group together. The members feel a strong sense of shared identity and belonging to the group.

Community Engagement is About Depth

I’ve never seen a community that doesn’t have in-depth discussions. These discussions aren’t always initiated by the community leaders; but the members.

You’ll find people adding their own perspective, sharing their real-world experiences, wins and failures.

On social media - a community might take the form of a Facebook Group. On Reddit, it could be in the form of a Subreddit (Read - How to Build and Grow Reddit Community).

At Jatra, we are building a community of community builders. We are bringing together people from all over the world who share the passion for community building and driving discussion among people.

You may have noted that this community has people who are asking questions and helping others. It builds a collective community knowledge - something that can’t be done through other channels.

The key trait of community is that it’s active, many→many engagement with depth. The communication is mostly in the form of a dialogue rather than a broadcast.

As communities evolve, they build a shared culture, slang and even have insider stories and jokes. People feel “this is my tribe, where people get me”.

A community also delivers a sense of ownership and loyalty. People identify as a part of a group and become advocates of the brand.

I’ve never seen any channel drive the loyalty and engagement the way a community can.

In Community Building, Quality Beats Quantity

You can literally have an active community with just about 5 - 10 members. You may have fewer members than your “audience” on social media; but the members are more engaged.

I’ve often said - 10 active members are 100x more valuable than 1000 passive followers. These members can help you build an active community and attracts tens of thousands of other members like them.

How do I know? I built CrazyEngineers community with just 5 members. We had fun on a hosted forums - and that attracted thousands of fellow engineers from 180 countries; making us Asia’s largest online community of engineers.

Similarities Between Audience Building and Community Building

There’s definitely an overlap between audience and community. Ultimately - it’s about getting people together around content or a cause. Whether you are amassing followers on social media or nurturing a tight-knit group; you’ve to understand and attract people who care about you, your niche or your brand. Following are some of the similarities -

1. Value Creation: In both cases, you must create value for people through content or experiences. Consistency and quality - both matter whether you are building a community or audience.

2. Engagement Matters: While engagement runs deeper in communities, audience needs some level of interaction. Both strategies benefit when you engage with your people. You must respond to people, acknowledge fans, take suggestions and feedback from them. Your top fans - the ones who religiously reply on your posts might be the first ones to join your community.

3. Authenticity and Trust: Both audience building and community building require trust as the common element. People follow you or join your community because they trust your brand or find you genuine and relatable. Savvy audience builders know how to be authentic with their audience.

4. Overlap: Keep in mind that a community is a subset of your audience. Without an audience, you cannot have a community. You’ll find that your most loyal community members are a part of your larger audience first.

In summary, both audience building and community building require you to know your audience, create value and communicate effectively. Both are about humans at the end of the day.

Differences Between Community Building and Audience Building

While an audience and community might overlap, the experience and outcomes can be different. Let’s now look at the key differences between your audience and community.

1. Relationship Structure: Let me summarise this -

   • Audience = One-to-Many

   • Community = Many-to-Many

     With an audience, the relationship is like spokes on a wheel - all connecting to the center aka the brand or the creator. With a community, it’s like a web - members connect with each other in addition to the central host. In practical terms, you talk to your audience, but you talk with your community.

2. Communication Style: As I explained earlier, social media is a broadcast while a community is about conversation. Audience building requires broadcast-style communication that must appeal to many at the same time. However, a community requires personalized QnA, discussions - generated by members. On social media - you do most of the talking, while in a community, it’s your members.

3. Engagement Depth: Engagement on social media is mostly passive, while a community thrives because of active participation from members. An audience member might be a passive consumer of your content. They read, watch or lurk without interacting. In contrast, community members are active participants - they comment, share ideas, help others and engage deeply.

4. Connection and Identity: In an audience, people may share common interest in your content; but they are mostly the individual fans without a shared identity. In a community, members develop a shared identity or tribe mentality. They recognize fellow members and often have a camaraderie. There’s a social bond - like being a part of a club. This bond makes communities feel more personal and tight-knit. It’s why community members might rally to support each other (or you), whereas an audience’s support is generally limited to clapping from the sidelines.

5. Purpose and Goals: Audience building is aimed at maximising the reach, impressions and awareness. It often is tied to goals like gaining new leads, driving traffic or making immediate sales by broadcasting messages across social channels. Community building, on the other hand, focuses on deeper goals like loyalty, retention, support and advocacy. A community is nurtured to create superfans who stick around, help improve the product, or spread word-of-mouth because they genuinely care. For example, a company might build an audience with a viral ad campaign (goal: reach millions of people), but build a community with a user forum or local meetups (goal: cultivate devoted customers who keep buying and referring friends).

6. Leader’s Role: When you are building an audience, you have to assume the role of a content creator or performer. You need to keep the audience attention with fresh content and the spotlight is mostly on you. However, as a community builder, your role shifts more to a facilitator or a host. Successful community manager often say that their job is to create a space for connections to happen. You might still produce content; but with a goal to encourage others to share and add their perspective.

7. Metrics of Success: Because the goals differ, the KPIs you watch can differ as well. For an audience, you might track numbers like follower count, reach, impressions, view counts, or click-through rates. It’s largely a quantity game – how many people did we reach? For a community, success is measured in quality of engagement: active members, posts per day, response rate among members, member retention/churn, etc. You might care more about NPS (Net Promoter Score) or how many members become advocates. One telling metric: if a question is asked in your community, how quickly do other members (not just staff) answer it? High engagement indicates a healthy community. These are more nuanced metrics than the straightforward counts used for audiences. If you only focus on raw numbers, you might miss community value – for instance, a community of 200 highly active members can be far more valuable than 20,000 passive followers. Read: KPIs for Community.

8. Platform Control: This one is interesting and often overlooked. When building an audience on social media - you are at the mercy of platforms and algorithms. You may have 10K followers, but your posts may be shown only to 500 followers. Platforms have full control over what content is shown to whom and at what time. These platforms change their rules and policies and I’ve seen even accounts with tens of thousands of followers have lost their audience overnight. In a community setup - you are protected from algorithmic and policy changes. For example, if you are hosting your community with Jatra Community Platform - you are 100% in charge of your data. There’s no selection of audience to show your posts; apart from the ones you decide. For example, you can create a private channel and restrict some of your content to select few members.

To summarise, I’ll say - audience building is about visibility and breadth; while community building is about connection and depth. Neither is “better” in an absolute sense.

Final Thoughts

In the grand scheme of things - you need to work on both audience building and community building. It’s not an either/or choice. They go hand in hand.

If you are building a community, you will need an audience to tap into and find your first community members. You will have to engage with these members and build a community ‘with’ them. These members will bring you your next 1000 and 10,000 members.

If you are just starting out and wondering what you should be doing - it’s simple. Start by knowing your goals. Community building starts with audience building.

If you have no audience - social media is your friend. Start broadcasting your messages and initiate a dialogue with your followers. Find out who cares the most - and invite them to be a part of your community.

Build content on your community that your early members find useful. Build relationships with your fellow members. Make them a part of your community building process.

Yes, the process takes time - but it’s the best investment you’ll ever do.

In an AI dominated world where people chase vanity numbers - communities are a breath of fresh air. It’s like having a superpower that no one can steal from you.