Happy one-year anniversary to our book Building Brand Communities! It officially published 365 days ago.

What has the last year shown us about community building? A 🧵 written off the cuff: 1. Writing this book highlighted a massive divide between the work of what I will call "community opportunists" and what many of us hope to create in the world: genuine value and connection.

The COVID pandemic has unleashed uncertainty. Uncertainty brings up fear. The natural human response to fear is to tighten, isolate, and lash out.

Our society expends enormous energy to get uncertainty under control, measure it, and "fix" it. But we have another option. I've spent most of my life building online communities and know what is possible if we come together, even virtually.

In fact, research suggests that online relationships can deepen more than offline ones - & if you've watched Love Is Blind, you've seen that process occur 😝