GTM Strategist Community Canvas

Community-Led Growth

Community management and building is one of the most undervalued areas in business. Many companies, especially technology companies, rely on community-led growth- some of my favorites being - Miro- Miroverse, Figma, Lemlist, Substack and GitHub. 

Communities are one of the most important growth levers, source of new ideas for the product team, knowledge exchanging platforms, support channels and much more - but building a great and engaged community is a difficult task - both art and science. 

• Which platform should you choose? 

• Who can become a member? 

• How to encourage engagement so there are not only crickets and promo posts in the community? 

• How to monetize it?

Having built eight 10K+ members communities in both B2B and B2C, I went on a journey to put together a Community canvas that will help you make the right calls on how to plan, build, manage and scale your community. 

Who is it for?

This template offers a logical framework for founders, community managers, social media managers and marketers to start planning and growing their communities on channels that are best fitted for their audience. Building a community is so much more than selecting a platform. The right question to ask is not weather it should be a Facebook group, a LinkedIn group or a Discord server - the right questions to ask are - what’s in it for them (members), what’s in it for us (company), what is the interception of this value transfer and how can we sustain it over a longer period of time. The framework also included actionable tips how to grow your community to first: 

• 1000 members in 30 days 

• 1000 members in 3 months, and 

• Beyond 1000 members in the next quarter or so 

All the suggested tactics have been extensively tested in practice.

You, knowing your Ideal Community Members the best, will select those that will resonate the best with your ideal community members. 

The framework can also help consultants, indie makers and other solo brands to unlock this powerful growth lever.

When is this template is most useful?

The Community Canvas has been proven to help teams and individuals that are planning their communities pre-launch and companies that want to develop communities in addition to already successful growth channels that they have established. There is actionable advice for new and existing communities - so you can either use it to establish or grow a community. 

Step-by-step instructions and tips for using this template 

1. Start with why

Define your purpose, goals, key success metrics and Ideal Community member. 

2. Define the rules of the game

Understand how value is created and transmitted to the community by understanding what do members hope to achieve and what would you like to achieve. You will find intercepts of value elements. Later on you select the platform on which you members will receive this value, define the community rules and plan your content pillars for the community.

3. Rules are the Glue of community

Decide how you will approve membership requests, what are the dogmas (shared values) of your community, where the data is being collected, stored and managed and how will you govern your community - what are the rules. 

4. Select a game plan that you would like to play

Are you building a new community and aspire to attract 100 members, are you managing a community up to 1000 members or are you growing a community with more than 1000 members? Tactics on how to achieve your goals will differ. There are suggestions for all the stages, but it is your call which one you want to use. 

And always reply to your community members' feedback.

While it is important to have a strategy and a plan for how you want to manage and grow your community, communities are democratic and live the life of its own. Include the members in decision making and content creation and you can build a thriving community too!

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This Canvas is a result of one year of research for GTM Strategist Book by Maja Voje. In the process I interviewed over 100 GTM experts, worked with 350+ companies and tested all the elements with the teams to come up with this simple plan that will help you win.