Here is, without order or structure, a list of topics that I want to talk about in the book. It includes topics I myself find interesting, topics that other founders talk about, and suggestions from within my community.
Do you have any ideas and themes I should talk about? Let me know!
If you find something you find PARTICULARLY interesting among the following items, please tell me about that, too!
Here is what I plan to have in the book:
- The difference between personal audiences and product audiences (and how to build either) — Thanks for the suggestion, Andrea.
- How can you build a micro-community around the problem your solution solves? What are the benefits of such a community? — Thanks for the suggestion, Stephen.
- A ‘roadmap‘ for building audience-first(Audience extraction -> Community Building -> List building -> Building product, etc) — Thanks, Alex.
- How important is it to be Customer Zero for your own product? Do you have to? Might it work without that? — Thanks for the suggestion, Raj.
- The difference between Audience-First and Product-First, with benefits and drawbacks.
- Why “audience-first” is not just “building an audience”.
- The many kinds of audiences you’ll encounter when building a business (and how to approach them).
- Defining the term “audience” for bootstrappers.
- What’s the difference between Market, Audience, Consumer, Customer, User, Following, Fans?
- Why is there so much confusion about the term?
- How funding and your choice of audience are related.
- How to analyze an audience.
- Following demand, validating demonstrated demand (and what looks like demand, but isn’t).
- Observing a market and it’s constituents without prejudice.
- Where to find domain experts.
- Preventing analysis paralysis.
- The best audience is a niche audience.
- What makes niches special?
- Is there a risk in niching down too much? Or too little?
- Should you stay in the niche forever? Or move beyond it? When?
- The best niche audience is a tribe.
- How to establish yourself as part of a tribe?
- How to communicate to tribes. (And how NOT to)
- A Guide: Pragmatic steps to find your audience
- Awareness: Finding potential audiences that you can relate to
- Affinity: Examining which potential audiences you deeply care about
- Opportunity: Scouting for interesting problems in your potential audiences
- Appreciation: See which potential audiences are willing and able to buy solutions to their problems
- Budget and willingness to pay: how can those be measured? How to we detect purchasing agency? — Thanks for the suggestion, Brendan.
- Size: Figure out if the potential audience is big (and small) enough for a business
- Building an audience from within a community
- Why should I want to become a domain expert?
- How can I build reputation within my community?
- How to listen to an audience, and what to listen for. How to discern insights? — Thanks for the suggestion, Justin.
- The tools and strategies of audience-building.
- Landing pages, customer exploration, content marketing, community projects: what works, what doesn’t, and why.
- Why you can’t avoid becoming a subject matter expert.
- How do people build a following for themselves, their business, and their services?
- Why “getting out of the house” matters. — Thanks for the suggestion, Vance.
- What to do when you went product-first and want to turn your business into an audience-first biz?
- Salvaging a product that no one wants to pay for.
- Salvaging an audience that doesn’t respond to your offer.
- What happens when audiences change over time?
- How do you react?
- How do you detect that?
- How and when to break up with an audience? — Thanks for suggestion, Justin.
- Finding critical problems within an audience, both at a glance and in depth. Thanks S.Shravan for the suggestion.
- What to give away and what to charge for? — Thanks for the suggestion, Justin.
- Micro-SaaS audiences and what makes them different from other audiences. + Case Studies (thanks, Alex)
- Lots of case studies. (Who should I talk to here? Who has done audience-first really well? Who did it fail for? Let me know if you know someone with an amazing story. )
- How to find and learn the voice of your audience.
- How to do multiple audience analyses, which criteria to select one from — Thanks for the suggestion, Alex.
- How to automate audience acquisition, and when should you not do it. Tips and examples for well-known marketing channels reddit, twitter, etc., with growth recommendations from influencers and examples: how they have done it (people with audience) — Thanks for the suggestion, Inanc!
- The different ways in which conversations can develop an idea: supporting, challenging, side-tracking, alternate viewpoints, checking, refining, etc — Thanks, Gregory
- How to interview people to get to the struggle that they have, which is the essence of the problem that business is about to solve? — Thanks, Bane
- How to lead with courage and deal with overwhelm when building an audience, especially as an outsider? How can I come from the space of vulnerability, authenticity, to connect with my audience? — Thanks, Deepanker
- How to reach out to audiences who don’t have a watering hole or other established places to hang out online. — Thanks, Paolo
Comments? Ideas? Complaints? Examples? Put them here: