This weekend I will avoid going into the centre of my local town, Reading. That’s because it is “Reading Festival” weekend, when over 100,000 visitors descend upon the place. At an average of £300 a ticket, they must really love being with one another in a muddy field.
People who go to the festival want to experience live music with other loyal fans. They form a community of music lovers who will share festival experiences for years to come. Indeed, I still recall being with friends listening to Mungo Jerry play In the Summer Time, when they headlined the first-ever “Surrey Free Fest”. The reason for my recall of this occasion is revealed in new research from Australia. It has demonstrated that our memory of specific personal events, known as episodic memory, is better when we are in a social situation.
No matter how many individuals spend their days with their heads bent over their phones in some isolated world, humans still crave being in groups together. That was highlighted this week in the latest episode of the BBC TV series Dragons’ Den. Towards the end of the programme, Louise Truman pitched her business, Plotpackers. It is a travel business that lets solo travellers join a group of like-minded people.
The idea for a community of travellers was borne out of a need for safety for people travelling alone, following Louise’s experience of being assaulted while she was on holiday by herself. During the questioning by the “dragons”, Steven Bartlett said that he had been looking for something that could help create community during what he called “a loneliness epidemic”. Along with Deborah Meaden, they snapped up 10% of the travel firm for £120,000. Clearly, multimillionaire businesspeople see significant value in community.
I emphasised this in a session this week with students doing a work placement project. I asked how their placements were going and what they had learned about doing business. One student was working with a local gym. She told me the business owners continually emphasised that their members were part of a community of people who preferred that gym to larger establishments where they felt isolated. Another student said the cake-making company they worked with depended almost entirely on a local community doing word-of-mouth marketing. A further student pointed out that the beauty firm she worked with focused on building a community of like-minded customers.
I asked the students what one thing they learned from their companies they could carry forward into their own business careers. Everyone in the class said the same thing – create and use a real-world community of customers. The students had realised that being with others, “IRL” (in real life) and sharing common experiences is a powerful force in helping businesses thrive.
Many business people I speak with, though, believe they can create their “community” using social media. But that’s not real. When we scroll through Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram, we are spectators, not participants. We watch other people’s experiences from the outside instead of living one together. A shared experience creates a memory you both hold. A post you scroll past creates nothing you keep.
Indeed, this is reflected in the latest data on social media usage from Statista’s recent analysis. It shows that the main reason people use “social” media is pure entertainment. Social interaction and meeting people rank near the bottom of the list.
So, rather than trying to improve your “number of likes”, your “impression number” or your “engagement score”, perhaps it is time to reconsider “IRL”. Indeed, a recent YouGov study has shown the significance of real-world advertising, such as posters on billboards. It found that real-world advertising experiences were a powerful trigger for talking about the company or product with family and friends. In other words, those real-world advertisements were a talking point within a physical community, not an online one.
We all need a community of friends for a laugh or support, and we can all recall past events we shared with a community of others. That’s why, as my students discovered this week, a real-world community of customers can be the foundation for a thriving business. So this week, do one thing to build yours. Host a customer evening, run a workshop, sponsor a local event, or simply get your best customers in the same room. Start with one gathering. Unless, of course, you are at the Reading Festival and are too busy sharing the musical experience.
