‘Like us on Facebook and you stand a chance to win a Ferrari, a spa day, a plane ticket to Alaska, …’ Okay so I don’t like Facebook and I’ve never heard of this damn company, but a Ferrari, like, like, like, like, like, like, LIKE …that 911 is mine baby.

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Today is all about community and community has very little, oh why screw around, nothing to do with ‘likes’. It’s all about LOVE.

If you have 1 million likes you may not have a community. Yip, it’s a bit of a shocker right, but here are the LOVE rules of engagement to build a community.

1.    Use Design Thinking to understand your community

2.    Be collaborative in your intent

3.    Be empathetic, and iterate until you build something that just a few people LOVE.

4.    Keep listening  

When people LOVE what you have, they will tell friends, and their friends will tell their friends and now you’re building a community.

‘Like’ does not equal engagement. ‘Likes’ do not always return, especially when there’s not a Ferrari on the table. Of course, ‘like’ can be a true ‘like’. For example, I have ‘liked’ the animal rescue centre and I have ‘liked’ anti-xenophobia groups. God forbid you to think I don’t ‘like’ good stuff, but seriously, I am not a part of a community as a result of my ‘likes’.

Janice Scheckter is the co-founder and incubator of five digital communities in vertical impact spaces and MD of Indigo New Media.