Setting Community Goals
It’s that time of the year again. If you haven’t already, don’t let this week go by without setting goals for your community this year.
It can be tricky writing out goals for such a group of people. With these you have both the responsibility and the opportunity to be a moving force in their lives. While we all know that goals need to be SMART, it’s not always easy to apply.
💡 SMART Goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound
NFT Communities use road maps to lay out their goals for the community. This makes a good model to pattern after, because it makes it easy for the members to follow the direction that the project is heading towards. It creates space for transparency and alignment. As we’ve seen with the negative outlook that spread across the bear market, writing out road maps is not enough!
Here are the Top 5 observable mistakes that NFT communities are making with their Road Maps:
- Forgetting to Take Community Sentiment into Consideration
Communities that are trying to stay on what they have set on the road map without adjusting based on what their community member’s sentiments are, running the risk of having the interest of their members fall off, leaving them with an inactive community. - Not taking the Time to Build a Community, Not an “Audience”
People often mistake an audience to a community. An audience is a collective of people listening or conversing to a single person or entity, one engaging many. A community is a collective of people with a common interest engaging with one another, many engaging many. An audience is easier to build than a community, but the downside is, you’ll have to constantly create content that you will present yourself in order for your people to stay. Whereas in a community, you’ll have to create activities that will make them engage with each other. It will take time and a lot of adjustments, but it will payoff in the long run because the community will sustain itself. - No Business Profit Model
If you are trying to build a community that will stand the test of time, then thinking this through is non-negotiable. This is where you’ll have to make sure that you will not run out of resources to sustain your operations while also having the resources needed to further scale your community. - Unclear Vision, Mission and Thrust
What is Vision, Mission and Thrust? The Vision is what you want to achieve with your community. The Mission is how you plan to achieve that. And the Thrust is the “why” that will help you achieve that Vision no matter what adversity the community might come across. - Not having a Defined Value Proposition
A Value proposition is the “what’s in it for me” of your community. Other than believing in your Vision, Mission and Thrust, it is also what’s keeping your members on coming back to your community. It is the utility that your members can use in their daily lives and makes them a part in helping to achieve the Vision.
How Do You Write a Vision?
To write your vision, you must know what you want to achieve with your community. It is the change that you want to see in the world. Keep it simple, write it in such a way that all of your members will be able to relate to it. Let’s use the example of “To end world hunger.”
How Do You Write a Mission?
Your mission is the “How”. How do you plan on achieving your vision? This is the action that your community will try to carry out and undertake in-order to achieve the Vision that you defined, so it has to be a realistic. “By providing education and economic support to the less fortunate through the use of Web3.” is a Mission that would fit our earlier example.
How Do You Write a Thrust?
This is the motivation of your community. The “Why” of your community members. Why did they join the community in the first place? So in this case, why do we want to end world hunger? A possible Thrust(answer) to that would be, “To leave a better world for our children”.
How to Write Values?
Values create a culture inside your community. What ideals, behaviors, or beliefs would you like to champion inside your community? How do you want your members to act when they’re interacting on behalf of the community? To build up from our previous example, “Curiosity, Open-Mindedness and Inclusivity” could be the values that we can cultivate inside the community since ending world hunger is a big problem to solve and we will need everyones help for this. With these values, we will have a community that is always willing to listen and ask questions about solutions that could help us achieve the Vision and also prevent gatekeeping and elitisism from happening.
Why Do We Need to Define this for Our Communities?
Having these four important factors defined will help you in tailoring content that would help push your community towards achieving its goals and grow more by attracting people who agree to the same Vision, Mission, Thrust, and Values.
Since it has been clarified to your members, this would also help them in applying these into their day-to-day lives. This could result in them taking actions with these things in mind and make them more attached to your community.
The Impact on the Business
How does having a defined Vision, Mission, Thrust and Values impact the business side of things?
It makes choosing partners and/or sponsors for your community simpler. Do they align with your community based on these factors? If yes, then go for them. If not, then simply remove them from the list.
If your developing a new product or service for your members, then these could be your guidelines. You can be sure that your members will be interested in whatever you’re trying to create since it follows the same factors that made them join your community in the first place.
Conclusion:
Vision, Mission, Thurst and Values are some of the foundation that you need to define before when you start your community. With these, you’ll be able to attract the right people, making growth possible, create content that are consistent with their interests and will keep your community on top of their mind, and it’ll also help your community be sustainable by attracting the right partners and/or sponsors and help you create products and services that are consistent with what your community is trying to achieve.
We hope this helps you get a more focused direction for your community.
