Questions to ask yourself before you start building
Not all communities need to exist.
Use the following questions to test whether or not this is something the market is missing.
Are my peers struggling with the same issue that I am solving for?
- Leverage LinkedIn, Twitter, and your existing network to find your target audience.
- Hop on the phone with them and ask them detailed questions about their role. This can be done through email, but you usually get better feedback when done in an actual meeting.
- After they finish listing out some of their struggles, walk them through your product and community. If they don’t ask for an invite, go back to the drawing board and figure out better ways to serve the pain points they laid out.
- Saying they are interested is not the same as them asking for access of your product, so don’t confuse “That sounds cool” with “I would absolutely use this”.
Are there existing options available?
- What other communities exist?
- Why do these communities exist? How do members use the communities?
- Are they used to self promote, or do people ask and answer questions regularly?
- Are communities paid or free?
- Is there a community that is clearly best-in-class?
- Can you improve on it?