Define your community persona

Member personas describe your ideal community member's identity. Who are you building the community for? Try to be as specific as possible in your answer e.g. I'm building a community for Indie hackers and solopreneurs who are building profitable businesses.

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"A person becomes a member of a community when four things happen: The community aligns with their identity, They trust that the community will bring them value, They know how to participate, there is a reward (intrinsic or extrinsic) for their participation” - CMX

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"To build community: find your people, study your people, take notes, talk to your people, take notes, repeat quite a few times. The how then becomes much easier to answer." -Rosie Sherry

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Here are 4 steps to help you define your community persona (see an example written out below):

Step 1:

Have a short bio in mind - what is the professional background of your community members? Can it be summarized in one line?

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Step 2:

Add specific details around the persona's characteristics - anything that adds more detail and helps you narrow down who your community members are. Location, professional role, industry expertise, etc.

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Step 3:

Member's expectations - from your 1:1s with potential members, articulate what the member wants to gain from the community and what would he/she be willing to share with the community. This will help you streamline the engagement rituals for your members, basis their personal choices.

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Step 4:

But that's not enough, you need to go one step further to understand what are the core needs and routines of your people. What actions do they perform?, Which ones are the most important?, and how frequently do they do it? (e.g. get to first 100 customers, make an earning on the internet etc)

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Example:

If you're planning to start a community around Marketing, for example, here's how you might want to approach the above:

• Persona: Content marketing professionals who use copy and design tools (Canva, Figma, Copy.ai) to create content that delights end-users.
• Specifics: Copywriters, Graphic Designers, Content Marketing professionals and freelancers based out of India
• Expectations: want to showcase work and get feedback, get commissioned work, up-skill
• Routines: uses Figma, Canva for design on a daily basis, is building an audience on Twitter etc

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