BUILDING COMMUNITY AND TRUST VIA TEXT

Got this question recently, about community building. I’m a big believer that audio and visuals help build trust, which helps build community, as it’s you on display, in real life, unlike words on a page which can look very similar to other words on a screen.

What if my writing is the regular gathering? Maybe I don’t want to do a ton of video content—that’s okay. What if I treat my writing and sharing my work, and inviting others to comment/reply/engage, as the gathering I’m hosting every week? It’s been an interesting shift of perspective!

When I started a music blog back in 2001, we wrote it real by-the-books at first, just the facts, and nobody said a word — no comments, nothing. It wasn’t until we opened up and showed our actual personality that people started sticking around.

I still talk to people from that site 25 years later.

I’m not saying you need to publish six times a day like we did. I’m not saying post daily. I’m not saying start a podcast. But building community is about showing up in front of people, regularly, and inviting them to comment, reply, engage. If you want those things, you need to model that. You can’t just hope it happens.

So lean into email, because the inbox is intimate in a way social media ain’t. Bring people into your newsletter — “hey, I was talking to so-and-so about this.”

If you want to use names, ask for permission. Otherwise, it’s okay to generalize (like this post).

So much of building community is proving there’s community, beyond a like or a comment. Bring other people’s conversations into the forefront. My rectangle on a Zoom call doesn’t have all the answers, but all our rectangles together, we get closer, and you can say that in writing just as much as on a Zoom call.

Now, is all of this slower going without video? Sure. Video gives people the cues, the body language, the vibe, all that trust-building happens faster when they can witness you. But you can still do it with words, you just gotta be more intentional about it since it won’t come up easily. Be vulnerable, bring other people forward, make it a safe space, and know it’s not gonna happen overnight.

I’ve been doing my calls since 2023, writing online since 2001, none of this is quick. Challenge accepted though. Give it a shot.