Draft a Project Manifesto
Share Your Magic, Tell Your Story and Send Your Message
Tell Your Story
People don’t know you “yet”. Introduce yourself: Who are you? Where are you coming from? Why did you start this project? How are you planning to do it?
Connect dots of your journey to make it understandable and remarkable for your audience. Everything that is relevant, but only what is truly relevant from your experience, life trajectory, learning journey and without omitting some of your setbacks and previous failures.
Send Your Message
How can I help? What / When / Where You can help and Who you plan to help. Share your diagnostic and identify the problem you see. Send a positive and constructive message which clarifies the solution that you are planning to offer. Keep it simple and pragmatic. Who is your Audience? What is expected from your Audience?
Focus on what’s unique, specific and different about your idea. The first purpose of your message is simply to present your concept, communicate about it and get the attention of future consumers. Don’t be shy about your idea, tell a compelling story. Your project doesn’t exist until you start telling someone about it or making something with it. Draft an interesting story, share it. Eventually the right people will find you.
Explain the Why? Be transparent, share your development process and learning curve. Stay accessible to your audience and try to avoid specific terminology.
Address your Message to your Minimal Viable Audience
Don’t speak to anyone but your audience. Be specific to define your project, make sure you answer all questions! (what, who, when, where, how and why) and edit your core values, purpose, inspirations, objectives and solutions in order to craft and tell a compelling story to your audience. Add personal elements if they contribute to explain the why, where or how.
Your communication plan is targeting your niche, your tribe. Select the topics and the categories you will address, as well as what’s around your message like when you want to publish it, what’s going to be your format of publication in which media. Design editorial & graphic Style Guide: editorial tone, layout, logo/icons, formats, fonts, colors… Create a consistent Signature and Look & Feel for your Project.
Don’t wait to craft your Project Manifesto. It doesn’t need to be prefect, it is a work in progress, which will keep evolving. Don’t wait to share it, so people can find you as soon as its preliminary development phase.
Project Manifesto + Tactic Plan
Your project manifesto and your tactic plan or operating system are connected, so it can be useful to start them at the same time, in parallel. In the next article, I will define what is the Project Operating System and how positive constraints can drive your creativity.
