Heya,I recently shared part 1 of my process of finding valuable business ideas. As promised, here's part 2 on Understanding Community Culture. Understanding the culture of the communities you're building for will a) give you an understanding of a community as a whole and b) make it easier for you to market your products / services to them. Let's dive right in!Part 2: Understanding Community CultureAs mentioned before, neither problems nor the people having them exist in isolation. The context of the people and their problems matters. Understanding context helps me better understand my customers' needs and respond accordingly. Let's take a look at the simple method I use for better understanding context, i.e. community culture.During my problem discovery, I usually learn quite a bit about the ambitions of the community members. Their discussions usually hold, implicitly or explicitly, rich information on the values and goals of the community and its members. Let's refer to all of the important elements of these stories as themes.A) Write down ThemesBroadly speaking, themes are content categories found in the discussions within a community. I write down each relevant theme that I came across during my research. Here are some examples from my recent newsletter edition on composers (note that such lists are never fully complete):Meaningfulness of creating/composing musicSeeking self-fulfillmentEquipmentComposing knowledge/skill: technical composing skills, creativity/inspiration, wealth of experienceLegal knowledgeSpending money/financial resourcesEarning money/making a living off composingNetworkingAffirmation/feedback...These lists can get quite long and hold tons of themes. It might look like a lot of work to find all these themes. But it's actually not that bad if you begin to write them down during your problem discovery.B) Make Things TangibleOk, so what to do with this list? While the list itself gives you a better understanding of the community already, there is one more step to make things really tangible. Simply fill out this framework:(1) Who (2) aspires ..... (3) through the help of ..... and (4) against the drawback of ..... ? Optional: What value does the online community provide in all of this?Let's assign our themes to each of these four points:(1) WhoComposers(2) aspireexperiencing meaningfulness of creating & composing music,self-fulfillment,making a living off composing(3) through the help ofcomposing knowledge/skill (technical composing skills, creativity/inspiration, wealth of experience),equipment,networking(4) against the drawback of(lack of) financial resources,(lack of) legal knowledge,Optional: What value does the online community provide in all of this?Helping each other,affirmation/giving feedback,networking,learning/informationAs you might have noticed, whether a theme belongs to (3) or (4) is often just a matter of positive or negative framing. Ultimately, it's up to you how you want to assign these themes. The distinction between (3) and (4) is definitely something that you shouldn't overthink.C) Marketing edgesFinally, we want this understanding to benefit building our product and business. Here's how I think that understanding community culture helps (co-)create, launch, market, and sell my products and services:Norms & rules: It's SO important to understand the norms and oftentimes unspoken rules of a given community. Otherwise, you run the risk of hurting your and your business' image badly. E.g. blatantly launching or self-promoting a product in a community where this isn't well perceived can be detrimental to the early success of your business.Jargon & shared knowledge: Knowing the jargon people use (the words and phrases) and knowing about community-specific knowledge (e.g. best-practices, influencers, trending topics & content) is the best way to showcase that you're part of the community. This gives you credibility and makes it easier to build relationships.Value proposition: You will better understand the value your business provides to the members of a community. This is because you deeply understand their problems, how they go about their life, and how your product solves their problems, and how it is nested within their lives.Goals & values: Having a deep understanding of the community culture provides you with insights into their goals & values. What do they want to achieve in life? How do they want to get there? What's important to them? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you speak to your people in a way that speaks to them.Here you go friends, this was my complete method of discovering problems, coming up with potential solutions, and getting a grasp on the community. I really hope this will be helpful to some of you 🙂If you enjoyed reading this, consider subscribing to my newsletter where I share community-based business opportunities. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback on this. I'm always curious to hear about your opinions! see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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