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.

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.

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.

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”)!

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.

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).