Whether we're aware of it or not throughout our lives we all join or start a community of like minded people, its what makes us the social animals we are.

What do I mean by communities?

I'm not going to get to philosophical about it but from the day we are born, right through to the final days of our passing we align ourselves to families, friends, and work colleagues, sometime consciously, sometimes unwittingly. For the latter we very quickly 'cull' those communities as our mutual 'alignment' gets out of step - Its called growing as people.

At school we mix with the people who are funny, entertaining, and personally speaking, better at stuff than us, but above all its the personalities of those people during this stage that we subconsciously involve ourselves with, this could include things like 'school' based communities, such as math's club, IT club, sports, arts/design, drama and many others, we subconsciously join them because we simply 'feel connected'. 

The same criteria applies as we move on to senior school, sure we change our tribe but our core interest tend to remain the same - we are after all on a journey of discovering just who we are. And the same thing happens as we move into the workplace, and start to have a family - our circle of community is ever in a state of flux.

Some of us build out our own tribe of friends with whom we go to see the game, shopping, or nights out - we are all in a constant state of discovering who we are, yet the constant is we are drawn to is personalities we can  relate to, some quirky, some funny, some glamorous, some just downright crazy.

Some of the people if we are lucky will stay with us for most of our lives, others are just with us as part of our journey, and also theirs - they all help to enrich who we are.

So, why is it that brands and companies who think they are on 'social' use it to simply carry over the 'advertise and promote' thinking that's turning us off on every other aspect of our lives.

Social is just that, its about being social, and not everyone is going to 'get you'.

When you think about joining in communities, engaging with those communities, or creating your own instead of interrupting me with your intrusive ads, guess what?

Like minded people will be drawn to you, you will learn more about yourself, hopefully grow, and build out a loyal tribe of supportive advocates.

I never understand why it is we arrive at the place of work and forget that everything, and I mean everything we do is underpinned by our ability to be social. 

Change your thinking, become socially aware first, not selling aware first.

Its a 'Superpower' use it wisely.