Planning: Plant the right seeds

The WHY

The most important factor in planning your community is having a clear WHY. A community without a purpose and without benefits for all its members will inevitably encounter potential points of failure.

While the community you're building is primarily focused on your users, it's important to remember that the business itself is also a member of the community. It's about more than just creating a space for the community. The active contribution from the business will keep the community engaged and growing. And just like any other community member, the business is only effective when the community provides value to it as well.

In a successful community implementation, activity in the community directly overlaps with the business goals to generate value.

By understanding the areas where community can overlap and drive an impact on your business, you can focus in on the key takeaways you want from your community. The SPACES Model shown below, created by David Spinks (Founder of CMX) provides a few key areas to consider where communities can benefit your business:

The SPACES Model

The WHO

Communities are the foundation of humanity, and humans are at the core of communities. Understanding WHO you’re empowering through your communities enables you to plan with their needs in mind, significantly enhancing the value created for them.

Narrow down your focus by evaluating the following:

• What are your primary user demographics? Demographics: age, occupation, location, segment, etc.
• Who are the users you want to bring together in your community?
• Who are the people you aren’t targeting?
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  • What level of technology are these users comfortable with?
  • What are the main day to day interactions they take part in on your platform?
  • What do they appreciate most about your platform?
  • How can the platform provide them with a better experience?

To answer the above, it’s necessary to have an in-depth understanding of your user base. TIP: Conducting user interviews can help in highlighting some key points to consider.

The WHAT

Once you’ve identified your target user base, it becomes easier to determine WHAT you should provide to your users. Understanding what will bring your community members together and what they need further shapes the core identity and values of your community.

It’s important to have a clear understanding of your target user base:

• What are their values?
• What are the problems they face?
• What are their goals or motivations?
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  • What problems does your community solve for members?
  • What opportunities does your community create for members?

The HOW

By carefully assessing the current user journeys on your platform, you can seamlessly incorporate community capabilities into their existing habits, making it easier to encourage adoption in the future. This evaluation also assists in understanding HOW your users will interact on your platform.

When evaluating your user journey it’s important to consider:

• Which parts of the platform currently get the most user interaction?
• Which touch points in these parts of the platform can be strengthened with community capabilities?

Creating a plan for HOW users will interact with each other requires thinking out:

• How can you enable more cross-user interactions in the parts of the platform where users already engage with the business?
• How will users interact with each other? What activities will you enable them to do?
• How are you going to give users a chance to contribute regularly to the community you are building?
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  • How can you build these interactions to be omnichannel, where possible?
  • How and where will you communicate your community purpose to your members?
  • How will you communicate the ground rules of your platform and moderate content accordingly?
  • How does your place of gathering make your members feel safe?
  • How does your place of gathering inspire members?

These questions are designed to help you brainstorm now to save you headaches in the future by eliminating problems before they happen and helping you define the right roadmap to success.

Defining your community mission

Everything we have done till now is to define your community mission statement.

Clear and well-defined answers for the WHO, WHAT, HOW, and WHY allow for the formation of a clear mission statement for one’s community. It should be easy to articulate the reason for your community’s being.

We are building a community for

with a common value of

allowing members to interact by

ultimately generating a value for us by

We are building a community for [who] with a common value of [what], allowing members to interact by [how], ultimately generating a value for us by [why].

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