Understanding your audience

While reading the Entrepreneurship section (Flipboard magazine), which by the way I highly recommend, I came across a couple of really interesting articles related to building your network & understanding your community.

Are you forgeting someone? - http://www.inc.com/matthew-shampine/community-building-for-your-company.html
Forget Networking. How to Be a Connector - http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222707

While most people will constantly tell you that you cannot design a product without fully understanding your audience, it is something that does not come naturally to most of us, unless, we are ready to spend a few days living the lives of the people we hope to impact - like the 2 MIT graduates that spent a month living on the minimum wage set by the Indian government. But the biggest reason many good ideas never take off is because they do not entirely understand the community they are working to make better. The XO laptop is a great example. Yes, technology is wonderful, but these people lack the basic needs of food, water, shelter, etc, and unless children with laptops can somehow solve these problems, there is not much benefit to the community as a whole.

So how can one fix this issue? The two articles provide excellent solutions: 1) immerse yourself in the community that you think has some say in your product - make everyone feel that the product is something they can all benefit from and be open to a lot of constructive critisism. Several non-profit organizations have blogs/FB profile pages, where you can provide your suggestions to a problem they are trying to solve. Show people that you are genuinely interested in making a difference, and in turn, when you need some advice, it will be readily availble. And, 2) build your connections anywhere you go, because even if you have little idea about the cultures, social norms, trends, etc in a particular region, someone else might. And you never know what interaction, no matter how feeting, might spark a connection that would open up your mind of a completely new world of possibilities.

Most people speculate that even if you are not particularly keen on social media, it is here to stay. And I agree. Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc. provide an excellent platform to build a community of like-minded individuals who can support your vision and also help promote it. Additionally, companies like Klout are using and evaluating your everday connections as a tool to create your SM worth in the market, much like your actual financial worth, and rewarding individuals with higher clout.

So, what do you think about the SM bandwagon? Are you already immersed within the communities you wish to impact? And do you any other ideas on making these valuable connections that we could all benefit from?

~ Ketaki Desai