We had an amazing conversation with Allison Aldridge-Saur of Chickasaw Nation on Friday and I would encourage you to listen to it. Allison has been working on a fascinating project as part of the Digital Vision grant, writing a series on Native American Lessons for Community Building.

In part two of her series, Allison discusses Audiences versus Communities. This struck me as one of the most important elements of the entire series. I’m not sure that too many marketers recognize that there is such a distinct difference between an audience and a community. Even here on the Marketing Technology blog, we do a fantastic job of building a great audience… but we haven’t truly developed a strategy to develop a community.

Allison discusses the differences between building your audience – listening, engagement, relevant content, loyalty points, gamification, gifting economy, give-aways and messaging consistency. Some may argue that these are the strategies behind...