Chapter 5: From Vision to Validation:
Creating a Strong Community Foundation
Chapter 5: From Vision to Validation: Creating a Strong Community Foundation
In this episode, you’ll hear an excerpt from chapter five of Creator to Community Builder: Find Calm While Building Your Online Community. Author Deb Schell will read the expert of this chapter, which discusses how to evaluate and assemble an online community launch strategy.
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Chapter 5: From Vision to Validation: Creating a Strong
Community Foundation
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Chapter 5: From Vision to Validation: Creating a Strong Community Foundation
From Vision to Validation: Creating
a Strong Community Foundation
Chapter 5: From Vision to Validation: Creating a Strong Community Foundation
In the summer of 2021, I took a hiking trip to Acadia National Park in Maine. It was a lovely day, and I headed up the trail, not considering the weather. After an hour, I ran into two people hiking down who informed me about a quickly approaching storm.
My goal was to reach the top to capture a wide shot of the region, but I wasn’t as fit as I’d been a few years prior. I continued anyway, now actively aware of my pace.
Moving faster, I reached the top and got my shot, but I didn’t waste time—I hustled on my way back down.
I lucked out and only felt raindrops once I reached a lower section of the trail. My fellow hikers gave me better information, and I could adapt my actions. I still achieved my goal but approached the experience differently than when I began. Those hikers made all the difference; I was so grateful to them!
In the previous episode, I introduced the IDEA™ framework: Identity, Discovery, Evaluation, and Assembly. So far, we’ve discussed Identity and Discovery. This chapter will dive deep into evaluating your discovery findings and preparing to assemble your community based on your members’ validation.
IDEA™ framework: Evaluate
In Chapter 4, we discussed how the Identify step helps us define who our community is for and how the Discovery process allows you to learn about your future members and add value to the community for you and them.
Now, let’s move on to the next part of the IDEA framework. We’ll jump into data, metrics, and spreadsheets. Instead, we’ll look at a simple way to review your community discovery based on the three options in the previous chapter.
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.
Ideal Member Conversations
Once you’ve conversed with the 10-20 people who best fit your ideal member, it’s time to review what you’ve learned.
Member Experience
When speaking with your ideal member, you’ll learn if they have experienced an online community and, if so, how they are currently participating. Talking to your ideal member will show you how to provide your members with a unique and memorable experience.
Personal Challenges
Depending on how open and willing they are to share their challenges, you may learn how your ideal members have overcome past roadblocks and moved 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.
Transformation & Readiness
During chats with ideal members, you’ll identify critical aspects of the community structure that can inspire 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 when they delay action. Please pay attention to how long it took them to address that delay. Seek out examples of them putting effort into overcoming procrastination.
Ideal Member Survey
You’ve sent the survey; now it’s time to look at the results. Depending on the size of your audience, you may have hundreds or a dozen responses to review. Whatever the amount, set aside adequate time to review the responses.
Create a spreadsheet or notes document using your available digital tools to help you organize the results. For example, Google Forms can automatically add responses to a spreadsheet, separating each prompt into individual columns.
Key Themes to Examine
Review individual responses 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.
The Problem
As you reflect on the responses, please pay attention to the problems they share with you. Ask yourself: Does the same issue come up repeatedly? Note each instance and look for commonalities. When patterns emerge, you’re onto something.
The Solution
If you’ve found that people resonate with the problem, then the next critical factor is understanding 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 need more motivation, determination, or discipline to keep themselves accountable. In that case, a community could be a good fit for them.
The community is a beautiful fit if they also express interest in helping others navigate this challenge. 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.
Member Experience
The members of your online community want an excellent experience, and you want them to, so make sure you leave them wanting more at each step in their journey. Learn what they enjoy doing together and allow them to contribute ideas for new experiences.
Find different ways to connect with them. For example, if your community is focused on business networking, sharing what your members do for fun when they aren’t trying to get customers or clients would be nice. Search out fun experiences you can bring to the community, like 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!
Option 3: Hire an interviewer.
If you’ve decided to hire someone to conduct interviews, ensure you’ve taken the steps to align your goals and expectations of the outcome with the interviewer. Tell them the key themes you’re seeking information about.
Hiring an interviewer is a great way to save time and money by letting yourself be on the sidelines. Once the interviewer has completed the interviews and provided you with the responses, ask any questions you have about their process and findings. Do they have notes or additional feedback? Have your expectations been met?
By the end of this project, you should have gathered usable testimonials, critical feedback on your community concept, and content to start building your offer. It would help if you had what you need to develop a sales copy and move to pre-launch, which I’ll cover in the next chapter. (The IDEA framework also continues in Chapter 6 with Assemble, which is the first step of your pre-launch.)
Send questions or comments to Deb@FindCalmHere.com.
What if you could work with your favorite clients and get paid well?
Do you dream of launching a new business but need help figuring out where to start?
The best way to start is to get to know yourself to identify your ideal life!
This guidebook contains three pillars for exploring you.
In each section, we will dive into methods, strategies, and ideas to help you gain clarity on who you are, what you are great at, and how we can leverage this knowledge to build a business.
Email: Deb@FindCalmHere.com
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Chapter 5: From Vision to Validation: Creating a Strong Community Foundation
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