Welcome to Everything Digital + Community!

Hi friends! ??

I decided to take some time every week to talk about all things digital and community, because guess what? That's what I do every single day.

Whether I'm at work diving into COhatch projects or on the road with my three dogs, I'm always finding new ways to stay connected with the people and communities that matter to me. Which more often than not means I'm connected digitally!

But before we dive into the weekly updates of everything digital and community, I wanted to introduce myself so you know who's talking to you every week.

My name is Erin Maxson and I'm the Head of Marketing + Technology at COhatch. I'm based in the Southwest living in a van with my three dogs, Rory, Asta (also known as Pasta), and Moe. I travel and work to find new ways to build community indoors and outdoors in the areas of marketing, tech, hiking, dogs, writing, and beyond. ?? ??

So what's the goal of all this? The goal is to share what I'm working on, what I'm learning, and offer up a space for us to talk about all things digital and community. Some weeks I'll have questions for you, other weeks I'll be sharing my insights into what we've learned as we continue to develop physical and digital communities with COhatch , and other weeks you'll get a glimpse into what it's like to find community close to home and far apart through my adventures. Whatever you're here for, I hope you'll stick around and see where it takes us!

Now let's get to the good stuff.

Why is digital so important to community building?

Digital channels continue to increase engagement and development in communities. Whether that's setting up a group on Facebook to get the word out about your community garden or spreading awareness about your virtual book club on Instagram, you're expanding your reach using digital channels further than ever before.

Digital platforms provide a way for us to reach hundreds, if not thousands, of more people in an area we're passionate about. TikTok is a great example. Sparta Candle Co.'s "Cuttin' Up with Duane" (yes, I follow these people!) found an ever-expanding community of soap fanatics by posting videos of Duane's process and his story on TikTok. Now their famous soap (Little River Soap) is sold out on a regular basis. Not only did they find "their people," they also found a way to use their community to build their brand and business as a small mountain town business.

But we all know the power of going digital.

The question then becomes...how do you go digital and actually build your community?

That my friends...is a question for next week! :)

But before you wander, add a this question to ponder on to your list:

• What makes you follow the people you follow here on LinkedIn or on other social platforms?

Hold onto your answer and we'll dive into it in the next newsletter. Or better yet, send me your answer in an email at [email protected] to be featured in next week's newsletter!

What are we working on this week?

Community Engagement + Interactivity Updates

This week, my team and I are working on new ways to create better community engagement on our new platform. We're focusing on creating notifications that bring people back into the platform to interact with each other when they create a comment, reaction, or post something in their groups. We're also updating threads to make it more interactive when someone responds to your comment or post. Pretty simple stuff that we all take advantage of without even knowing it every single day, but they make a HUGE impact on how we communicate and network with each other in the digital universe.

Updating Our Feature Timeline to Meet the Needs of Our Members

Since we started developing our digital community, we've gotten a good bit of feedback to help us create not only a one year timeline, but two and three year timeline for our platform. Understanding how people want to use our physical spaces helps us reinforce member engagement through the digital space and vice versa. We're focusing on building a feature timeline that provides as much value as possible to our members and also anyone else who comes across COhatch.

Food for Thought:

Digital + Community = Endless Opportunities vs. Digital + Cool Tech = Lackluster Engagement

Coming from years of account management and social media content creation, I've seen just how far digital communities can take you. Recently, I've taken on the task of building our digital community for thousands of members within our physical ecosystem, COhatch+ , with my amazing team of developers. So far I've learned that using digital community platforms and building one is a whole different ball game.

There are endless opportunities to provide value when creating a digital community when you're member base is in the thousands, but also endless opportunities to learn about what makes sense from a service or product development point of view. More often than not, we build something because WE see a need for it in the world we live in, but we don't always build something that OTHERS see a need for in their communities. We've already started down a train of features to develop, but my quest now is to find what people want versus what we want to build.

Community-focused building and development will get you much further than building the next Google or Facebook in this age where everything is digital and our time spent on platforms is based on what value they can provide (whether it be educational or for entertainment), not based on what the latest and greatest thing is.

You can be Facebook and decide to transform into meta, but no one wants to jump ship from OG platforms like Instagram to take the leap extensively until the value is there. Even the big boys in this era have to work to bring their following into the next phases.

That might make you feel slightly discouraged, but it just goes to show that technology is anyone's game. As long as you're building something with serving great people in mind, you're already a leg up on most other tech companies who are building something to generate revenue over impact.

And, in my book, that's pretty neat.

You're still here?! ??

Well, I'm glad you've made it to the end. Before you go I want to share a bit about what you can expect next week's newsletter! Next week, you'll receive another newsletter from me about...

• What does community mean to people like you and me?
• How important is community, digital and physical, in our lives?
• What is community and how do we start to create our community from scratch?

And some other fun nuggets about our adventures in marketing, technology, and remote/hybrid work. Have questions about the digital realm, marketing, or just about anything else? Send me a note here on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected] to have your question featured in future newsletters.