Home | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Bonus

Day 1: Micro Foundations

• Day 1: Micro Foundations
• Lesson: An Introduction
• What’s your real reason for wanting to grow a highly-engaged community?
• Why your why matters
• Why most communities fail
• Exercise
• Action
• Notes

Lesson: An Introduction

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, micro-content plays a crucial role in engaging audiences and conveying information effectively. With attention spans growing shorter, it's important to create content that is concise and impactful. Micro-content, such as short social media posts (think 240 character tweets or 30 second YouTube Shorts), can help you connect with your audience quickly and efficiently. By mastering micro-content, you can maximize your reach and engagement in the digital world — and this is the key to building a highly-engaged micro-community.

But first, we need to get clear on some things.

What’s your real reason for wanting to grow a highly-engaged community?

Most people think about this in very basic ways like, “I need to grow” or “we need more engagement.” Without knowing where it’s leading to. Why do you need to grow? What’s your motivation? What are you truly looking to get out of your “engaged” community?

By spending just a few minutes on this, you’ll put yourself ahead of most other people looking to build their own communities.

Why your why matters

Without a strong why, you may not have what’s needed to keep your community sustained for the long run. There’s a saying, “people come for the content, but stay for the community.” Strong ideas, personalities, products, and even shared interests, are typically what attract and keep communities together. Those leading communities often build thriving ones when their own personal why’s are strong.

Why most communities fail

Just like startups, 90% of most communities fail within the first year. We’ve seen it time and time again — even in crypto, Web3, and more recently, NFTs. The reason is because most people don’t realize how much effort is involved in building and maintaining a thriving community. They also don’t realize that strong communities can’t be bound together by money alone, because they breed shallow, transactional relationships. For smaller businesses, even some well-known online personalities (like Justin Wlesh) have given up after attempting communities themselves:

So if you don’t want to be another statistic, be strong on your why (or don’t be afraid to “fail”)!

Exercise

Alright, so an effective test we’ve found to understand your why is — believe it or not — the Ikigai Test. Ikigai became popularized through a simple venn diagram that was meant to help people get closer to understanding their “reason for being.” However, it has become one of Japan’s most misunderstood and culturally appropriated concept. Ikigai is a concept more relatable to eudaemonia and existential positive psychology. It’s more about helping you find a way to live with motivation and resilience in times of hardship — skills all entrepreneurs and community-builders need to learn when it comes to building something for the long-term.

So, despite most life coaches, business coaches, and HR managers getting Ikigai wrong, the venn diagram (right) that has been popularized can still be used to get started. Just note that it is much more than a simple venn diagram. Capiche?

So now, take a few minutes to copy the below table, and fill out each column. Just brain-dump whatever first comes to mind. You can do this with someone else if it helps (they ask you the questions, you answer, they write down for you).

But after you’re done, find a common thread that exists across all four columns. This will get you closer to your why, provide you with the core of your future community’s “home,” and help you with the next action for today.

Action

For today’s task, choose a single platform (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) that you want to start building your community on. This will be your home-base. Then set up/update your profile to better speak to your target audience (so they’re more likely to follow you).

Notes

• If you’re familiar with ChatGPT, use it to help you get started with your bio
• If you don’t yet know your target audience yet, just start writing about your own experiences for the next 7 days. Your target will emerge naturally, based on engagement.

Stay tuned for Day 2 (coming soon)