A value proposition canvas is a powerful tool for formulating a clear and compelling value proposition for your online community. It helps you map out the benefits, features, and experiences that your community offers against the needs, wants, and fears of your target members. 

Here's how the canvas works and how you can use it to create your own community's value proposition.

1. Start with your community members 

  • Identify and describe your target audience or community members. Be as specific as possible in defining their common characteristics, demographics, interests and needs.

    The better you know your audience, the better you can tailor your online community to meet their specific preferences, foster engagement, and ensure the community's long-term relevance and success. For example, demographic information can help you design a user-friendly interface and choose the right communication channels that suit the preferences of your audience.

  • List their needs, wants, and fears. These are the key drivers of their decision to join your community and engage within it. 

Imagine you are creating a community to support education professionals. Their needs, wants, and fears could be the following:

community-value-proposition-1

 

  • List their pains—these are the challenges, frustrations, or obstacles members face that your community can help alleviate. After, list their gains, these are the positive outcomes, benefits, and desires members hope to achieve through your community

    For our community of education professionals, the pains and gains could look like this:
community-gains-1

 

2. Map your value proposition


Next, outline the unique value that your community provides to its members.

  • List the benefits and experiences that your community offers to members 
  • List which Hivebrite features will be used to offer these benefits and experiences
  • Explain how your community’s features and benefits alleviate your members’  pains or challenges and how they create positive outcomes for your community.

Does it fit?

Assess how well your community's value proposition aligns with the needs, wants, and fears of your target members—identify any gaps or opportunities where your community can be better aligned.

Using this canvas helps you visualize and refine your community's value proposition by ensuring that it directly addresses the needs and desires of your target members. The below Value Proposition Canvas was completed for a networking community and provides a visual representation of how to map out this process.

value-proposition-canvas

 

Written by Liz McKnight
How to Create a Content Strategy for Your Community

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