My audience and community is just a community made up of individuals who match my ideal audience persona. Each part of my community will be part of a larger community or several communities and fields. They become part of my community by the sole reason that they have shown some amount of interest into the work that I do. I am the node that ties them together. They don’t have to be a subscriber to my newsletter. As long as they have heard and resonated with my work intimately, they are part of my community.
This implies that I do not have to plug myself into an existing field (my criteria for choosing a field). I could create my own small field of knowledge that binds the different fields or communities of practice existing into a single thread that is my work.
My audience and community are made up of:
- Mentors
- Peers
- Fans
For information about mentors and peers, see my ideal mentors and peers. For information on fans, see my ideal audience persona.
This community grows and continues to exist by:
- Me continuing to do the work, which is the thread that binds these people together.
- Me facilitating opportunities for my audience to interact with each other.
- Me reaching out to potential new members of my audience, i.e., possible mentors, peers, and fans.
- Me nurturing existing relationships with members of my audience.