Last week, I started and finished the book Deepening Community by Paul Born. Born focuses mainly on offline communities and traditional community building (i.e. around neighborhoods or families), but his work extends beyond these traditional realms. We can certainly apply most of what he discusses in online-offline worlds.

When we build communities around products, we dream of creating something larger than a product or even larger than a brand name. We want to create deeper meaning in people’s lives. There are many ways to start building meaning around your product, but there is really no more effective way than empowering individual brand ambassadors to run with your vision and to better their own lives as a result. But if you’ve never done it before, how do you begin?