Find community online: How to connect with like-minded people remotely

Online communities can be a great way to expand your social circle and connect to people from all over the world. It’s especially useful for those who travel a lot and struggle to keep up in a local community since they’re gone half the time. It’s also great for those with niche interests that no one around relates to. Here’s how to connect with an online community remotely.

Define what you’re looking for

Before the search begins, you need to know what the search is all about. Why are you looking for an online community, and how actively do you intend to participate? Is this about satisfying a particular need, such as discussing a hobby with someone who understands? Or do you want to feel part of something bigger and make a meaningful change?

Take some time to figure out just what it is you’re looking for. It will be well worth the time, and direct your search going forward.

Find a place to collaborate, contribute, or play together

Connecting with someone purely through online conversation can get tiring and make a relationship feel one-dimensional. In real life, you get more information from a person when you talk to them, and you interact in the physical realm. Online, you don’t—and that’s why adding another “dimension” is so important.

It can be anything that creates a spirit of playfulness and collaboration. Online gaming communities often become quite tight-knit since working together and having fun are already built in. Even if the interest you have in common isn’t something you can really collaborate on, you can play chess or UNO together online, have fun at a hugely popular top sweepstakes casino where you can find generous prizes, or take part in an online game of Cards Against Humanity.

Organizing events and projects is also an effective way of bonding with others. Keep in mind that working together will inevitably lead to conflict at times, but that’s part of what makes it so effective. You get to know people much better when you see them motivated, frustrated, thankful, and in different situations. Feeling like you’ve contributed is also an important part of creating a community feeling, even without saying a word.

Choose a small enough community—or create a subgroup

If you’re met with strangers every time you log on, you’re not going to start feeling very connected. While regular newcomers keep things fresh and can make a group feel less stagnant, it shouldn’t be only newcomers or so many people that you can’t find the ones you bonded with last time. The community must be small enough that there are some familiar faces every time. 

If that’s not the case for the online community you want to join, there’s no need to worry. It’s often possible to make the group smaller by creating a subgroup with narrower interests.

Instead of just a community that loves plants, find one specifically focused on growing vegetables indoors. Instead of just Minecraft gamers, choose a community for those recreating buildings from real life in-game. In some cases, you might need to create your own group to narrow things down, but often, there are already small communities out there if you just take the time to find them.

Attend regularly

While you should find a group that’s fun for you, you need to have some patience, too. If you join a community meeting, chat, or game once and find that it was a good time, attend again. The feeling of belonging doesn’t come right away; it grows. As people get to know you, and you them, it becomes a lot more fun.

The benefit of the internet is that it’s so easy to click away and find another option, but it can also become a disadvantage when it takes a certain level of investment to truly get involved. Make sure you stay long enough to give yourself and the community a fair chance.

Don’t limit yourself to a single community

Even after finding something you like, you can keep trying out new online communities to find more groups you enjoy hanging out with. 

This way, you get some variation and also get to meet different people. It will also feel a lot less devastating if the group should close down or die out, since you haven’t put all your eggs into one basket.

Stay anchored in the real world

It’s easy to end up spending too much time talking to those you’ve connected to online. But too much time in the digital world just isn’t healthy. We need to keep engaging with and doing things in the real world, too.

Real-world connections and interactions, even if temporary, are also important for our mental health. An online community needs to add to your life without robbing you of real-world experiences, adventures, and connections.