Community building is easy when you know your ideal member; not sure how to find them? Start with the IDEA.

When I joined the Location Indie Community, I transformed from someone who worked at a corporate job and wanted to travel more to someone who is location independent and can travel anytime. This didn’t happen overnight; it happened over 2 and a half years when I built relationships with the community members and learned from them. The best part of being a member of an online community is to find people who “get you” from the beginning. That transformation was the same one that my friends in the community were also going through at the same time. They, too, wanted to become location-independent and travel, and we transformed together.

Over the same period, while I was building my business, my friends in the community were doing the same, working on marketing and promoting their services or products out to the masses and trying to make a living as a creator or a virtual assistants. However, some did have full-time remote worker jobs; the majority of the members in Location Indie were people who wanted to quit their 9–5 job to start an online business.

If I had known the term then, I would have realized that I was Location Indie’s ideal member or ideal client, a person who fits the profile of the community creator’s target audience. They have a problem that the creator can help them overcome or resolve with their assistance, support, knowledge, network, or resources.

The friends I met in Location Indie remain among my best friends. I see them on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and I support them anytime they do something unique. And I knew that if I needed it, they would pick up the phone and talk with me.

You never know the magic you can make when bringing people together. The more you know about your members, the better you’ll be able to engage them. Even if your community never has in-person gatherings, you’ll find a way to connect with your members.

The IDEA™ Framework:
Identify, Discover, Evaluate, Assemble

One of the most challenging aspects of community building is finding your ideal members and reaching them with your message. You’ll need to give them good reasons why your community deserves their time, energy, money, and attention.

To gain members committed to your community’s purpose and interested in showing up to learn, connect, collaborate, and contribute, you’ll need to have a few strategic elements in place. When you launch a community, you want to make sure that you invite the right people into the room.

The people who will participate, show up at your events or share resources in the community, and support other members. Community building is all about building relationships with and connecting the members.

To help you get your community concept all the way to the finish line, I developed the IDEA™ framework: Identify, Discover, Evaluate, and Assemble. The following section will outline a blueprint for you to follow, take action, and streamline your community-building journey.

Identify

The first step in building an online community is to know who you are bringing together. This can be the most challenging part of any community builder’s experience because your community concept may serve many different people. The key to creating a sense of belonging in an online community is clearly defining who it’s for and isn’t. When others hear about your community, they should know quickly if they belong.

Community is about exclusion, which can be confusing since you will define who essentially “doesn’t belong.” Still, allow the core values and purpose to guide you in clearly defining who the community is for. The clearer this is to you and others, the more successful a community launch will be. In The Art of Gathering: How We Meet, and Why It Matters, Priya Parker writes, “In a world of infinite choices, choosing one thing is the revolutionary act. Imposing that restriction is liberating.”

Looking back at my community experience, the purpose of Location Indie was to gather those interested in working remotely and traveling the world. In a pre-pandemic world, this concept wasn’t widely accepted. At least, I didn’t know anyone interested in or pursuing this lifestyle. As a result, I needed to find people online living the way I wanted to live; it wasn’t being modeled in my current network.

Their tagline calls directly to their audience: A community of people helping each other kick ass in business & travel. The wording inspires working professionals who want connection and encouragement. Going deeper, the landing page of Location Indie lists member benefits. It solidifies the problems this community solves and for whom.

The more specific you can be about who your community is for, what members do together, and what the membership does to help them achieve their goals, the more your message will resonate with your ideal members.

Discover

When working with clients, I am asked about the meaning of “discovery” when launching an online community. It is a process in which you become curious about who will make up your online community. It means getting to know actual humans and requires a few skills that can be learned, developed, or resourced.

This is NOT an avatar. Avatars are based on assumptions — discovery is based on validation with actual humans you want to work with, who may become your community members in the future. Once you’ve conversed with the 10–20 people who best fit your ideal member, it’s time to review what you’ve learned.

Many leaders make the mistake of assuming that they know the best way to solve a problem. They don’t conduct interviews, research, or talk to actual human beings and lean heavily on customer avatars. The reason for this depends from one creator to the next, but most community builders who are new don’t dare to speak to their ideal members and instead talk to the masses on social media, which ends up speaking to lots of people but not one specific person.

Discovery interviews or conversations can help you answer these questions before you launch a community.

I recommend speaking on a phone call or a Zoom call with at least 10 of your ideal members. These people you know are interested in what you are offering because they’ve told you so by answering your social media posts or responding to an ad, or filling out an application to be a part of your upcoming program.

Consider:

• What’s the common thread that connects the individuals who come to mind when you envision the community?
• Can you picture activities they’d be passionate about participating in?
• How might they share the community with friends, family, or colleagues?

Evaluate

The responses you collected in the discovery process will give you what you need to determine the next step in your community-building process. Because community building takes work and time, reviewing your results will prevent wasting resources.

When speaking with your ideal member, you’ll learn how they have experienced an online community and how they are currently participating or showing up in online communities. This will help you identify how to provide your members with a unique and memorable experience.

Depending on how open and willing they are to share their challenges that relate directly to your community concept. (refer back to community concept for more) You may learn how your ideal members have overcome roadblocks and managed to move through difficult times. You can ask them who they leaned on most in these times and discover if a community would help them solve a problem they have right now.

During chats with ideal members, you’ll identify critical aspects of the community structure that will lend themselves to inspiring transformation. When reviewing the notes from your conversation with the ideal member, think about their journey. Look for evidence that they want to solve the problem your community addresses.

For example, if your community will help people who struggle with procrastination, note when interviewees mention this issue, such as a time when they delayed taking action. Pay attention to how long it took them to address that delay. Seek out examples of them putting effort into overcoming that procrastination. If they haven’t said they have this exact problem, they may not be ready to take action.

You’ve sent out the survey; now it’s time to look at the results. Depending on the size of your audience, you may have hundreds of responses to review, or maybe you have a dozen. Whatever the amount, set aside adequate time to review the responses.

Using your available digital tools, create a spreadsheet or notes document to help you organize the results. For example, Google Forms can automatically add the responses to a spreadsheet, separating each answer into columns.

Start reviewing responses for each individual to see how they chose to respond or if they left things blank. As you move from one person to the next, you will see repetitive themes emerge.

As you reflect on the responses, pay attention to the problems they share with you. Ask yourself: Does the same problem come up repeatedly? Note each instance, and look for common problem threads. When patterns emerge, you’re onto something.

If you’ve found that people resonate with the problem, then the next critical factor is ensuring you understand how they want to solve it. Some people deeply desire to spend time on personal development by reading alone, journaling, and connecting with nature. Suppose your respondents say they’ve attempted to solve this problem independently but don’t have the motivation, determination, or discipline to keep themselves accountable. In that case, a community could be a good fit for them. If they also express interest in helping others navigate this challenge, the community may be a beautiful fit. If you see people say they aren’t ready or don’t want to help others, they may have more success solving the problem independently.

The members of your online community want to have a good experience, and you want them to as well, so make sure you are providing them with an experience that leaves them wanting more at each step in their journey. Learn from them what they enjoy doing together and how they can contribute ideas for new experiences. Find different ways to connect with them. For example, if your community is focused on business networking, it would be nice to share what your members do for fun when they aren’t trying to get customers or clients. Search out fun experiences you can bring to the community, including game nights, watch parties, and scavenger hunts. I’ve been part of an online community that conducted a murder mystery night! Your members want to have fun, and so do you!

Assemble

To this point, we’ve discussed the IDEA framework, including Identity, Discovery, and Evaluation. Now it’s time to talk about how to assemble your launch plan. Planning when, how, and where to launch an online community usually takes about 3–6 months if you consider these phases:

Month 1 — Identify your ideal member through research, surveys, and assessments to align their problem with your ability to solve it in a community setting.

Month 2 — Discover your community concept to ideal member fit alignment when talking with potential community members that could later turn into founding members.

Month 3 — Evaluate your community strategy by reviewing the responses from the interviews, surveys, and other research and data you’ve collected to validate your community concept, including essential details like the length of your program, the pricing structure you will offer, and the benefits and features for your community.

Month 4 -6 — Assemble your community design and launch plan to include pre-launch, launch, and post-launch, with time built to offer a founding member a soft launch to have them test out the platform you’ve selected after it’s designed.

It can be done faster or take longer, depending on your resources, time, and commitment level. Whatever you do, do not skip this step. Honor it. If you want to rush through it, accept that an incomplete strategy leads to unwanted results.

Deciding when to launch depends on a few factors and will ultimately be determined by your existing business model. For example, if you do large launches at the beginning of the new year, launching a community simultaneously will drain too much from your team. The best advice is to think about what has worked for you before jumping into a big launch that might yield a different result.

Send an email to Deb@FindCalmHere.com for questions or comments.