Your engagement is valuable. #500wordsaday

Ref:Pixabay


Building a community isn’t easy and doesn’t happen overnight. A community is built on a group of people sharing the same space or the same vision and working together to protect and grow it. A community can’t be formed overnight but instead is built step by step on top of thousands of little actions.

Think of any community that you have been part of on real life. Think of all the connections between those members from friends, family, groups, activities, shared interests and everything that will link a group of people together.

Every interaction and conversation between those members adds another thread to that community. Threads keep intertwining and adding to the others over time building a tapestry and linking all of the threads into the one piece.

This piece is the community and is formed of all different threads and colors to complete the picture. It takes a variety of threads to sew a tapestry. The more threads that get added mean a bigger picture. A more complete picture that will show a lot more of the history and vision behind it.

That is what we are doing every day on here. Building connections and sharing knowledge and experience. Building a community of members who work towards the same vision and goals. Working to add new layers and threads to that story over time. A community is formed with every little step that we take forwards and even the ones that we take backwards. All of this is part of our story.

That is why your interaction with others is so important. It’s something that I have done well at times and done badly at times. With everything that has happened over the past few months I think it is the time to strengthen those connections and bind people closer together. It’s easy to shout into the void but it’s a lot harder to listen to others and engage them. To work together and to form common goals and vision.

Every comment that you leave on somebody’s work binds them closer to the community. Every interaction has an impact either good or bad. Everything that you do within the group has its own impact and if we want to grow we will need to leave more comments and add more threads.

While I do love getting votes and shares. Over my entire writing and blogging career I can honestly say that it is the comments and people following me that have given me the most enjoyment and reason to continue. Every time that a person shows they have read and enjoyed the content it has given me a sense of satisfaction the money never does. A sense of achievement when people actively follow what you have to say and want to talk about it.

In my opinion that is a far stronger foundation for community than one based on rewards and gain. What happens when the rewards stop? Where is the motivation to keep going. However if you have a community working together and looking out for each other that is reason enough to try again and keep building.