My elevator pitch for The Village – a digital community of around 80 000 highly engaged parents of teens, tweens and young adults – is really simple: ‘It’s a kind, useful, non-judgemental Google for South African families.’
Feeling lost? Fed up? Got a question? A problem? Stuck? On your last nerve? Or just a long-suffering parent of a tween, teen or young adult? You’re not alone. On joining The Village, you will be instantly welcomed to a community of 47 000 parents on Facebook and a further 30 000 subscribers, united in our shared wish to make the world better for ALL our families.
Being the parent of a tween, teen and young adult is one of the grimmest gigs there is. Honestly.
All those books, podcasts and blogs about how hideous it is to raise babies and toddlers? Hold my beer. Excuse me while I laugh. It’ll be a dark laugh – but hey, in tough times? tough times humour helps.
The Village offers a digital space where parents gather. To laugh in the face of a shambles, cry, share, learn, connect and help each other, without fear of the judgement and cruelty so prevalent on social media. People become ‘Villagers’ to experience what humans are supposed to do to ensure safety and confidence: gather in large groups around a shared dream and value system.
And they love their Village. 80% of Villagers applying to join are referred by existing ones. Countless messages to me as admin, start with ‘Thank you! I don’t feel alone, anymore’; ‘I thought it was just me, but I’m so grateful to find we are all in the same boat; ‘I couldn’t be without The Village; ‘How did we survive before we had The Village?’
We generally have a surge of applications after Saturday evening dinner parties and Sunday braais, as people discuss what they have read on the group around the fire and table. I load over 1 500 posts, 175 000+ reactions and 50 000 comments every 28 days. At any time, out of 45 000 Villagers on the Facebook group alone, 36 000 are online and active.
These engagements are almost universally … polite, kind, useful.bBullying, name-calling, trolling, hate speech are rare. Adherence to the rules is high. (As admin, I have probably thrown less than 50 people off the group for contravention of the rules, in the six years it has existed.)
The Village is a safe, happy, harmonious space.
When applied to publishing, this very unconventional platform offers some very powerful and compelling business advantages. Especially to someone, like myself, whose 30-year career prior was steeped in traditional lifestyle publishing: meeting many people’s needs leads to high engagement, trust and deep network effect – the essential glue that ignites brands.
High degrees of confidence and trust, nurtured through robust but kind administration – Villagers call me ‘The Niceness Ninja’ – ensure that nastiness is kept to a microscopic minimum. Firm rules governing conduct (no religion, no arguments, no evangelism, no judgement, no arguments allowed) mean members of the community are not afraid to join in and speak. In doing so, together, we create positive, lively, authentic and honest User-Generated (UG) content.
As a publishing model it is something special. A positive review of a brand, service or business is always a powerful tool for conversion. A positive review from someone trusted, in a transparent environment, known for integrity, is even more powerful still. A review of a product, service or brand, leading to conversation, discussion, shared enthusiasm and in-jokes, brings a brand to life and amplifies its relevance in ways that make the old, traditional form of advertising, (watch/read/listen/tune out/skip channels) seem passive and almost somnolent in comparison.
In the last week The Village has cleaned out a local manufacturer of handbags (at R1 349 each); enthusiastically sold each other collagen (‘I was a sceptic, until I read that it works on The Village’); clamoured and formed a disorderly queue for a new Air Fryer (R4 999 per unit) and descended on Clicks in their numbers to buy a “TikTok and Village sensation hair volumiser”.
What’s more, we’ve also helped get laptops to deserving students, supported untold people in their darkest hours, answered questions ranging from depression to issues with Home Affairs, visas, and passports. A Villager described being caught ‘on the job’ by a curious tween on Sunday morning. We’ve comforted parents facing kids with learning difficulties and eating issues, offered holiday ideas, shared ideas for good secondhand cars and flattering clothing for moms. And, of course, we’ve weighed in, over and over, on the unholy triumvirate of sex, drugs and any other bad behaviour our children feel like tossing our way.
All of this do-goodery is all very well, as I was repeatedly told by the doubtful (of which there were many) when I launched: “You know, I never thought it could stay harmonious, as it grew! Why don’t you register it as an NGO? You’ll never monetise it…”
Frankly, I have too many expensive children myself, to slip gracefully into the shadows of unpaid good works. As a professional, l was always determined that I would have to be paid for any time, experience and skill I poured into it. So how do we monetise the community? We sell ads, promos, endorsements, surveys, sponsorships, informative Q&As, judicious seeding of threads. There really are few more valuable customers in a shitty economy than a parent who has no choice but to spend. (A nest of chicks with their beaks gaping open, squawking that: “Everyone else has it!” is almost impossible to ignore, it seems.)
And moms, who make up 93% of The Village? They buy for themselves, their partner, their boy child, girl child and the family as a whole. You get five consumers, if you talk to her! Bulls-eye. We publish a bi-annual guide to universities abroad (University Speaking), contract digizines (Instant Feast and Instantly Festive) plus publish FOMO, our monthly ‘Best Of’ digizine, created with UG content, to our nearly 30 000 subscriber base; a 12-page, 10-minute read with an open rate of 28%. I am proud and happy to say that The Village, as a business, is doing very well.
As a community, at 70 000+ members, it’s still as supportive and kind as it was when we were just 200. I
It’s rather lovely, even ‘nice,’ to prove naysayers wrong.
The Village is run by media consultant, journalist and author Vanessa Raphaely. (Plus One, published by Pan MacMillan SA and The Princess Pincushion children’s book series, published by Art Publishers.) Raphaely was also former content director of Associated Media (Cosmopolitan, House and Leisure, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping among others).