Face to Face and Online Communities
Using face-to-face interaction with those around is vital to creating and fostering healthy relationships. Healthy relationships are what form well-functioning face-to-face communities. The benefits of face-to-face communities include building trust and encouraging engagement, and participation. The point of communities is to bring people together and make them feel they are in a comfortable space where they could speak freely and be themselves. Humans value the feeling of being accepted. These communities can be either social or work. Communities can also be found virtually, especially following the pandemic. Virtual communities can have the same benefits a face-to-face community has if executed correctly.
A well-functioning face-to-face community should have a good leader who implements ways to get the audience engaged, feel accepted, and keeps the conversation going. This could include meeting at least once a week, incorporating activities, or making sure everyone feels included and welcome to speak in the group. All of these initiatives can trickle over to online communities. Online communities are most often groups that are formed for people with topics they enjoy or are passionate about.
Online communities can range from book lovers to sharing recipes or even more serious topics such as mental health. The point of these online groups is to bring people together who are looking for people who have the same interests as them or simply just need someone to talk to who may be going through something similar to them. People want to feel welcomed and accepted. Implementing similar initiatives as face-to-face communities is what will keep these groups alive and running. To create similar groups online certain factors should be implemented.
Posting every day with open-ended questions, commenting on one another posts instead of simply liking them, or even hosting video meetings would contribute to a functioning online community. Requiring all members to participate would also make the group function, especially since this is virtual. An advantage of online communities are the feautures they offer suc as polls, surveys, or even being able to post photos. Communities can benefit all who join, new information can be shared or wonderful ideas and realizations can come from it. Relationships and friendships can also come from a well-functioning group. All of this will build a strong community amongst similar groups of people. Time, effort, and dedication will be required for this to work, but in the end, it will all be worth it.
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