I want you to think of a target market

that you really want to develop. It could be a consumer market. It could be a

business market. It may even be some hobby or
something you're very passionate about. But I want you to think about a market
that you really want to develop. Because the goal of this MOOC and this
specialization is to help you get there, to help you become a part of
the community that you want to develop. We're going to do this by going through
three steps in this assignment. First I want you to identify a high value
market that's really important to you. Then I want you to develop a hypothesis
as to what you think they're talking about on social. And finally I want you to
identify where you think they're going to be getting together to
discuss these sorts of topics. And what we're gonna do is in MOOC 2, we're gonna
give you very advanced social
monitoring tools that will allow you to see if they really are talking about the
topics you think they're talking about or if there's other ones that
they're of it drifts to them. We'll also look at what you think is where
they're going to be congregating on social and we'll see if that's really
happening. So regardless of where you are on the
globe, I want you to think of the market you want to develop and then let's figure
out what they might be talking about and where they might be meeting on social and
then we'll see if that's true
when we go to the second MOOC. In terms of defining
your high value market, I don't want you to write a book on this. It's simply a
one- to
two-paragraph description of the high value market
that you want to develop. I want you to be as specific as you can. For example,
if you're going after a business market, say we're going after aerospace, going
into aerospace, identify the industry, but then take it to the next level. Who
exactly in the aerospace industry do
you want to develop a relationship with? Is it the CEO,
the Corporate Executive Officer, the CMO, the Corporate Marketing Officer? Maybe it
is a aerospace engineer or
a design engineer. Exactly who do you want to
build that relationship with? The more specific you can become,
the better. Is there a specific
geography you want to use? If you only want to develop
it in a specific country, when you get your social monitoring tools
in MOOC 2, you can actually bore them down into that specific country to learn
what's going on in social there. If you're going after a consumer market, tell me a
little bit about the demography,
are they male or female, rich or poor. Are they families or singles or couples,
or what exactly is it that you want? What is their lifestyle? What is their life
stage? What are their interests? In one or two paragraphs be as specific
as you can, so that one of your peers, when they read it, can say, all right, I
see the market that you want to go after, and that will help because
the more precise you could be, the better you can use the social
monitoring tools in MOOC 2. The second thing I want you to do
is write a paragraph on three or four topics you think that
target market is discussing. And are they doing it social or are they
going to conferences to discuss it? There's a lot of different places
where you can gather information. But what do you think
they're talking about? What are the experts talking about? Because, again, we're
gonna use our social
monitoring tools to see if that's true. But if you have a hypothesis,
it helps you to sort of getting going into what else should I be looking for when
you get those social monitoring tools. Finally, I want you to ask the question,
where do you think they
are engaging on in social. Are they doing,
using social networking sites? Are they engaging in virtual communities? You know,
do they watch videos? Do they listen to audio? You know, think a little bit about
where they might be engaging. If you have customers that are in
this target market, ask them. That might give you some insights
as to where they're gonna be. But I want you to do is to put down
your hypothesis, again in one paragraph, to say where do you think they are in
social and where are they connecting up. Is it a video thing, is it a text thing,
is it an audio thing, or all of those? And so what I want you to do
is answer all three questions. You're gonna post each one to Coursera,
and then your answers will be reviewed and
approved by your peer. This is a peer assignment. And then what I'd like
you to do is to do this. You already have a Twitter account and
a LinkedIn account, so identify some key experts that you
know are in that target market and then follow them on Twitter and
link up with them on LinkedIn. The key though is if you don't know
anybody, don't worry about this. We're going to pick that up in MOOC 2. But if you
do, if you could kind of get an
early lead in terms of beginning to follow people, to see what they're talking
about and to begin to confirm your hypothesis as to both where they're
linking up and what they're talking about. Then also I'd appreciate if you'll go
out and tweet the following message to let people know that you're gonna
begin growing your professional persona by using a number of tools
to build the relationship.