Today we’re going to shape up the identity of our community.

We’ll be borrowing on the concept of Tribe here to help define our community identity, what we stand for, what we are against and what the community will help people to achieve.

Let’s get started:

Building the Tribe

1. What is a Tribe?

This Part of the Playbook is about building our Tribe.

But what is a tribe?

I’m borrowing the concept from marketing expert Seth Godin. He defines a tribe as

Your membership community is a meeting place for your tribe.

You are the leader.

They’ll be connected to you and one another in your community space.

And you’ll have a common idea that’ll you’ll all be focusing on. We’re defining that idea in this Part.

Tribe is also a component of my BATON framework: Business, Audience, Tribe, Offer, Network.

It’s the vital linkage between building up an Audience and making an Offer. Tribe is where we create trust before we try to sell anyone anything.

Remember we’re building businesses. We’re not just building a community for the sake of it - we’re doing so in order to make sales to our loyal fans!

2. Defining the big idea

Our community will be built around a big idea.

The big idea is what unites everyone in the community and ties them to your leadership.

Act as a business coach.

Generate a vision, values and mission statements for my business. 

My business is in the [topic] niche. 

Ask me these questions one at a time. Get my answer, confirm you have received the answer and ask me the next question. 

Values:
1. Present me with a list of 5 core values and ask me to rank them 1st to 5th in terms of importance. Repeat this with another 5 values 3 times over. 
2. then take the top two values from the previous 3 answers (for 6 total) and present them to me for a final ranking. 

Vision:
1.Where do we want to see our business in 5 years or more? 
2. What does our desired future look like?
3. What goals and milestones will help us work towards our vision?

Mission:
1. What is the fundamental purpose of our business? What problem are we trying to solve or need are we trying to meet?
2. Who are our key customers and stakeholders? How can we create the most value for them?
3. How will the community fulfil our purpose? What makes us different from competitors?

Combine the results into:
a) top 3 values
b) vision statement
c) mission statement
d) a combined one sentence encapsulation of the "big idea" our business represents

💬 Prompt Output:

I ran this prompt using the example copywriting business we used in the last Part.

Big Idea statement

The Big Idea statement here is the primary outcome we need.

It should excite you. If it doesn’t excite you it won’t excite the members of your community.

Remember this is the Big Idea that will unite the community to each other and themselves. So make sure it rings true to you.

3. Common Enemy

Every strong tribe has an enemy.

Think Coca Cola vs. Pepsi, iPhone vs. Android, Nike vs. Reebok.

Adherents of one side wouldn’t be seen dead supporting the other.

The strongest brands evoke this sort of loyalty.

Having a common enemy is the strong cement that will bind your tribe.

Now don’t worry - the enemy doesn’t need to be an individual person or competitor. I’d advise against this sort of personal attack.

Instead I suggest your common enemy be more abstract.

Some force that holds back your members and stops them reaching their full potential.

Based on this Big Idea, give me 10 potential 'common enemies' that I can use to create an 'us against them' mentality.

The common enemies should be abstract concepts , sociological structures, old-fashioned traditions, unthinking behaviour, accepted but incorrect norms. 

💬 Prompt Output:

This prompt takes the Big Idea that you just generated and turns it into a list of 10 potential common enemies that you can turn your community against.

Select a common enemy that resonates or alternatively ask for more until you get a good candidate.

4. What will the community achieve

Now we’re going to combine the work from the last Part (our course structure) with the work we’ve just done on our Big Idea and common enemy.

Grab your community structure from the last Part and copy/paste it into this prompt

Act as a membership community marketer. 

Use the Big Idea and common enemy [chosen common enemy]

along with the course structure I provide below 

To generate a description on how my community serves the members and helps them achieve their goals.

[Copy/paste community structure] 

I’ve used the common enemy “fear of charging what’s due” and then copy/pasted the whole community structure from yesterday below the prompt.

💬 Prompt Output:

This encapsulates all the previous work into a nice short description that becomes your primary pitch, explaining what it is your community will do for its members.

5. Naming the Tribe

Finally, we want to tie everything together with a name.

There’s power in a good name.

And it allows our tribe to distinguish themselves from others.

Let’s use this prompt below all the other work we’ve been doing in this Part

Act as a marketing copywriter. 

Based on the description above 

Generate 10 possible names for my members to call themselves

The names should be used to strongly identify members and distinguish them from others who are non-members

Focus on single word names that are easy to say. 

💬 Prompt Output:

From ChatGPT’s first suggestions provide changes and recommendations.

For example upon seeing these I would specify to ChatGPT to i) focus on the fact it’s digital writing and we don’t use quill and ink anymore and ii) give shorted suggestions.

Continue your dialogue with ChatGPT until you have a name you like.

6. Premium Prompt - Manifesto

Free Trial - Premium

We’re providing a free trial of the Premium Prompts. Premium Prompts will be available for members only once our community launches. Join the waitlist here https://forms.gle/1sJdjCnHhnqucjJc8 

Let’s generate a manifesto for our business and community.

A manifesto is a document that encapsulates our business in a set of powerful affirmative phrases.

Here’s a good example

Thankfully ChatGPT already knows about some great manifestos. I tested out which it knows and which it doesn’t and loaded some good examples into this prompt:

Write a manifesto for my business

Use the business manifestos of Underarmour, Nike, Nespresso, The North Face and Apple as examples. Do not mention these brands.

Use this beneath the prior work from this Part to automatically populate with all the required information.

💬 Prompt Output:

Pretty good!

If you want a more visual manifesto then check the “infographic” section of Canva for the most relevant templates.

Pulling it together

In this Part we’ve shaped up what our community stands for and how we’re going to differentiate ourselves from others.

In the next Part we’ll be setting up the technical infrastructure required to host our community.

A reminder of what we’re covering this week

Part 1: Deciding our community’s value

Part 2: Building the tribe

Part 3: Setting up your membership platform

Part 4: Launching and growing your community

Part 5: Monetising your paid community

See you tomorrow Prompt Entrepreneur!

Until then, keep PROMPTING!

Kyle