“Building communities” is the corner square of social media buzzword bingo. But despite the over usage of the phrase, there’s plenty of good reasons to make building a community a central tactic in your social media strategy.

The thing that most people get wrong about building a community, is it they think that it is a short term tactic, and that it may be easy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Building an active and thriving community takes consistent nurturing and work. All of us have enough distractions in our lives that getting someone to choose to put their attention in your group as a post to somewhere else is a full-time job.

If you want to create a successful group where people give you their attention, you have to make it worth it. That means you need to do your homework, you need to plan, and you need to put in the work day in and day out.