The early stages of building a community is the perfect time to set and establish your community culture. Not only will you have to think about who to invite to your community, you will also have to think about the entire onboarding and orientation process.
Have you downloaded your Community Readiness Canvas yet?
Member traits
Where do you and your members live? How old are they? What are their professions? These are just some of the questions to think about when creating community member personas. Besides the basic demographic questions, it's also essential to think about their needs and goals, including their pain points and reasons for seeking a community. To find out more about building community member personas, check out this helpful article by CMX Hub.
Nomad List is a community of travellers, remote workers and digital nomads around the world where you can find a crowdsourced database of cities, featuring guides, essential city data, and reviews. While the members differ in age, location, and professions, their needs and goals are the same: find the best place to live, work, and visit.
What do your members have in common?
To answer this question, first think about the demographics of your members. For example:
- Startup founders in Brazil
- Women developers at tech companies
- Young emerging artists in London
And then about their needs and goals:
- Looking for a place to learn from peers
- Wanting to share experience and inspire others
- Hoping to increase awareness and interest in their projects
Connecting members
As a community, you should facilitate meaningful relationships between your members, and think about what happens after your members connect with each other.
The Watercooler is an online community for executives, managers, and founders who want to talk about leadership, company culture, and more. In the community, members can talk honestly about the challenges of being a leader and support one another. The results of these connections? Helping members become better leaders to build great workplaces.
What is the result of new connections between your members?
- New companies are started
- Creative ideas are born
- Stronger network of freelancers
Member characteristics
This is the most important question to answer when creating your member personas and defining your community culture. Knowing how your members think and act will help you to keep your members engaged in the long-term, and make sure that you're consistently providing value to them.
Moneyou Create is an online community created by digital banking app, Moneyou, to collect product feedback and ideas from their early adopters. Their target audience of tech-savvy millennials are defined by their entrepreneurial spirit, value transparency and like to share their experiences. That's why Moneyou has created an open environment in their community where members can share new ideas for product updates and leave feedback.
What are the characteristics of your members?
- Open-minded and creative
- Stubborn and risk-averse
- Eager to learn and curious
Now that you have a painted a picture of your members and your ideal community culture, it's time to think about your content strategy. , and be able to answer the question below:
What behavior, ideas, and people will shape your community's culture?
_________
