Everyone is talking about how AI is going to replace humans.
It’s going to take our jobs…
It’s going to do all of the stupid, mundane tasks none of us want to do…
It’s going to change the future of humanity (in some cases for better, usually for worse).
But what it can’t do is create community.
The Wonderfully Weird Trait That Sets Us Apart
Humans have this innate ability to come together and bond with each other that AI will never be able to replicate. It may be able to facilitate this in some ways. But AI can’t recreate what humans naturally build together.
Think about it.
When a disaster occurs, whether human-made or natural, the first thing you hear about are people helping their neighbors and total strangers, because everyone was affected by the same problem. Everyone “gets it” and wants to help others, and thereby themselves, out of a horrible situation.
When a community member, or a group of community members, like a local sports team or civic organization, succeeds after working tirelessly to achieve a goal, the entire community celebrates with them and supports the work they’re doing.
Teachers and leaders are recognized by their communities for the amazing work they’ve done on local, state, and national levels. Achievements large and small are celebrated by everyone in a neighborhood, town, city, or state.
Total strangers donate organs to save the life of someone else. People stop to pull injured people from car wrecks. People help save other people’s pets, or even wildlife from dangerous situations, and we all rally around these heroes because we appreciate what they’ve done.
This is innate human behavior and it’s one of the best things about us, as far as I’m concerned.
And AI will never, ever be able to do this for us. No matter how hard it tries or how many examples it sees of us doing it.
Here’s the wonderful thing about this behavior. The communities we create include our businesses.
How Your Business Creates Its Own Community
When you started your business, who did you turn to as your first customers?
If you’re anything like me, you told your friends and family that you were starting a business, what it did, and who that business served.
Your friends and family may not be your ideal customers, but they potentially know your ideal customers, and they wanted to help you succeed. They may have been the source of your first sales, directly or indirectly.
We, as human beings, support each other as a survival tactic. We’ve done it for eons. Originally, we formed tribes to protect each other. We worked together to help everyone within our family or our social group get through the winter if food was scarce or shelter was hard to find.
Now we form business associations, shop local, and root for our favorite sports teams. It may look different, but the instinct is exactly the same. Our community works to help everyone survive and thrive, together.
AI can’t do that. It doesn’t know how.
AI will never have the emotional experience of need, fear, or failure. It will never understand what it’s like to succeed, to be grateful, or to feel the support of those around you who helped you reach your goals.
These are all very human traits. And they’re things we will never be able to put a true “value” on. But they are one of the most valuable parts of being human.
One good aspect of AI, once it actually starts doing what the tech companies promise it can do, is that it can take over some of the minutiae that takes up all of our time, so we, as humans, can spend more time building community with each other, to reinforce the bonds that make and keep us human.
Staying In Regular Touch with Your Supportive Community
This is one of the many reasons I strongly recommend that business owners write one email a week to their subscribers. So they can build the community that supports their business. This is true regardless of the size, type, industry, and mission of the business.
When you, as the business owner, the CEO, the person in charge, or whatever you want to call yourself, takes the time to talk directly to your current and potential customers, you are creating your community.
That community grows over time and supports your business by buying your products and services. It also spreads the word about what you do and how much your community members appreciate the ways you’ve served them, as well as how you’ve helped them reach their goals.
How Nurturing Your Community Helps Your Business Grow
Talking to your community every week helps you too.
As the business owner and leader, you have your finger on the pulse of your business. You know exactly what you’re promoting every week and what messages you’re sending out overall.
When you use your weekly nurture email as the basis for all of your other weekly communications, including sales emails and social media posts, you can get immediate feedback on how well you’re growing this community, based on new subscribers, sales, and replies.
Weekly emails are also a good way to test out ideas, brainstorm, and collaborate with your customers to find out what they want. You’ll quickly discover how they feel about what you’re doing and how you’re serving them as a company.
You can also test potential changes to your product or service, or introduce new products and services, to get a feel for whether something will be well received. You can even create a pre-sale list for those new products and services.
AI might be able to handle some of the data crunching in your business, but this direct feedback from your community is invaluable. And you can only get it from other humans.
Create Your Community–Write Those Weekly Emails!
The only way to get those weekly nurture emails out into the world and creating your community is to write them.
I will always recommend writing them yourself, so your email subscribers are hearing directly from you. I know this takes time and energy, but I think you will find that it is one of the more enjoyable tasks you’ll check off every week. (Yes, I realize I’m biased.)
Can you use AI to write these emails? Yes, you can. I have several members of my Email Writing Accountability Group who use AI to write their weekly emails. But we always review the text and make sure that the emails:
- Are accurate
- Make sense
- Sound like they’re from the person writing them
Again, AI is a great tool, but ultimately, it cannot replace your voice, just like it can’t build your community for you. If you want to use it to write a messy first draft, go ahead. But edit and review everything thoroughly before you hit “Send.” Keep your emails human, so they resonate with the humans receiving and reading them.
If you need support to do this every week, that’s why I created the Email Writing Accountability Group.
You get time on your calendar to write every week, a professional review of your email, and the chance to polish what you’ve written, so you can send it to your email list with confidence.
Click on the button below to find out more and join the Email Writing Accountability Group now.
I know once you start writing a weekly nurture email to your subscribers and create your own community for your business, you’ll see exactly how valuable these emails can be.
Finally, all the images in this week’s Email Marketing Ecosystem newsletter are from my trip to Glow Wild at Wakehurst Place here in the UK. They all seem appropriate, given the theme of community and growth. Wakehurst Place is supported by the local community and people come from all over the region for this event. This year’s Glow Wild theme was Seeds. Again, appropriate because Wakehurst is the home of the Millenial Seed Bank.
