Community Blog 01: What is an Enthusiast Community?
Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing my thoughts and experiences on enthusiast programs and why they’re important for various types of companies and brands. I feel that in the current economic climate, where companies are continuing to ‘trim the fat’, and pull back on any sort of program that doesn’t show clear ROI (such as sales and services), these companies should not overlook the value that enthusiast groups bring to their brand, whether by advocating on behalf of the company, generating sales via word of mouth, or by reducing support costs via their own online communities.
First, I’d like to set some expectations…
The purpose of this blog is to share my perspective of the value of community with regards to large organizations. My experience in this regard comes from decades of belonging to smaller enthusiast communities, either in person or online, being a part of organizations with large enthusiast communities, and even from the last several years of managing a community program for an S&P 500 company.
This blog is not an explainer as to what companies can do to attract these sorts of communities to their brand but is instead it intends to share what sort of communities brands should be aware of as they are seeking to further develop a community programs. It’s nearly essential for a company to have a compelling product BEFORE attracting those persons who have the desire to celebrate said product.
Additionally, the success of a community may not be entirely within the control of said community alone, but may be instead subject to larger forces at play, namely the sort of direct investment the parent organization/company/brand is willing to provide. Over the coming months, I’ll cover some of these value-adds so as to best equip the team with talking points and broad perspectives as to how the efforts of enthusiasts support the parent organization, and their organizational or business goals.
-William Masterson
What is a Enthusiast Community?
What is an enthusiast community? It’s pretty self explanatory: any sort of community made up by people who are enthusiastic about a thing, a topic, an idea, whatever.
For the sake of our conversation and for potential Countable clients, I just wanted to use these topics as examples: Sports, Culture, Music, Art, Technology, and automotive.
For my personal experience in this field: I grew up in a home where we loved baseball (go A’s!), and I had all of the baseball cards and memorabilia throughout my room. Today, I’m not a huge sports fan, but when I do wear a ball cap, it’s more than likely for my favorite team from when I was a kid.
As a teenager, I got way into our local music scene, and spent way too much time pursuing dreams of rock and roll. To this day, I still know all the words to the songs that were my favorites, and still own a few shirts from bands I saw on tour. I still interact with people I met at those shows, or through those groups, and we still celebrate those shared experiences.
In college, I had my first true taste of the sort of enthusiast communities that we are talking about today. I managed Visual Merchandising for the San Francisco Apple Store flagship in Union Square, and when we would announce new products, lines of customers would wrap around the block, all wanting to get their hands on the latest gadget, and celebrate what it meant to believe that Apple really did make the best products for our ever emerging digital world.
Finally, from 2017 through September 2021, I managed the Tesla Owners Club Program. During these years, I finally saw the far reaching value of what community programs can accomplish when they’re properly organized and supported by the organization they celebrate.
Now, these are all low hanging fruit: sports, music, technology, automotive...
An Enthusiast Community is essentially anything that has any sort of ‘fan club’ culture. People who paint their face for the big game, wear the shirt of their favorite band, or line up for the next big product release… these are all enthusiasts. And they gather either in person or online to discuss their favorite topics, both the good and the bad, and generally seek to celebrate whatever it is that they’re most passionate about.
Now, I know the language I’m using to describe all of this is very general, but that’s because there can be enthusiast communities for just about anything. Just log onto Facebook and search for random topics, and I’m certain more often than not, you’ll find a small fan page or community. And it’s not just Facebook, you can find enthusiast groups for all sorts of things in every corner of our connected, digital world: Reddit, Discord, Mastodon, Instagram, etc.