[ultimda horaf]

Have you heard of the term 'MVP' (Minimum Viable Product). It is allows you to test the 'assumptions' that you have about a product or service.

In setting up a business everything we do is treated as assumptions unless proven factual then it becomes a truth. If find a research piece or see a business selling a product then one can make the intial assumption that there is potential for a new competitor in the market. However whether they will buy from you is an 'assumption' that has to be tested regardless if there is research or business selling in the marketplace since, yours is assumption unless proven otherwise.

You have three options here 1) conduct own market research or 2) release a MVP 3) or combine the two.

In Hyde we recently had a Quran conference inviting nasheed artists and Quraa to recite. The primary question that arised were treated as assumptions.

1) Will the committee allow us to hold a bigger conference. Do we have history data that can answer that question for us now.
2) Can we get the artists or Quraa
3) Can we afford it
4) Will the audience attend

Now you can argue that these need not be assumptions and we should just run with them. But to think of all of these as assumptions immediate allows you to challenge and set forth to ensure all aspects are in your favour before pursuing. This can save on a lot of resource, time and money.

Do not get me wrong, you take the example of the Prophets who 'just did it'; they did not have assumptions. But assumptions are not to be looked as obstacles but to be looked at 'work arounds'. You want to achieve a goal but want to achieve in the best possible solution at the time.

One of our overall goals is that we want to allow women in the masjid for events and prayers. We tested the waters and at this stage it is a complete no-go. But all these events and activities are building towards the mind change of the people and inshAllah towards one of our goals.

Some of these assumptions can be answered immediately as soon as you put pen to paper. You just make a note so you can eliminate them.

For the first question '1) Will the committee allow us to hold a bigger conference. Do we have history data that can answer that question for us now' the assumption was yes they will and to get a truth from this we needed to ask. It however seemed that the intial reaction was that they would not so 'our assumption' was wrong thus avoiding hours of preperation for something that may not happen. After a re-strategy the committee agreed and our assumption was validate as a truth and we could continue to prove other assumptions as yes or no.

to be continued................

[ultimda horaf]

continued......

So the event went ahead and we validated our assumptions as truths i.e. yes or no.

One assumption I have was that people would be willing to sign up to a newsletter to be notified about future events in Hyde. However after printing off 500 slips ready we only got 10 registered names. Now this is not to say that the assumption was incorrect, we just went ahead collecting the list and realised that the method in collecting the list was fallible so we would re-look at how we did this.

Another assumptions was that a lot of young people from Hyde are on Facebook and Kamal Uddin (nasheed artist) has 5000+ fans and 5000+ friends on Facebook. If we create a group on Facebook then we will be able to add all of his friends from Hyde and any other onto the list. So far in approx 2 days we have 500 on the list. It did not validate our assumption since it automatically adds friends to the list but it allows us to ask many questions to the group which we have and able to get positive and negative responses to any of our testing.

Onto the point of creating a new service that of an activist group online.

Many people start dawah based services online but fail with continuity (I am included in this). Often the problem is that there is no strategy in place towards targeting + growth.

So instead of spending so much resource on creating a website, content and marketing; one should create an MVP that allows to test assumptions.

The MVP of choice should be either a survey or a landing page that asks people to sign up to a list.

Some of the assumptions that you should have are:

1) Should I create a broad Islamic site.
2) Should I create a niche Islamic site i.e hadith, Quran, politics, etc.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages and beyond the scope of this post to explain sufficiently of which option to go for. However since we are talking about an activist site and I have done some research I am requesting you to look going for #2.

You can create a landing page using free services like wordpress.com and a mailing list using mailchimp (allows 2000 subscribers for free). Which mailchimp you can add a suscriber box and people can sign up to the list.

Once you have this landing page you want to start sending emails out to the list. The most important aspect of an 'activist group' is to get people acquiring knowledge and taking action. Dawah for the sake of Dawah has been so overly used it is ridiculous.

Once a person subscribes you want he/she to be and advocate and recruit another to the cause. So a share feature has to be integrated and a pivoting role it should play in allowing others to recruit by sharing the landing page.

in the email(s) you sent out you ask people to a) read about an important issue in society (it has to be a well researched piece) on a web page and not in the email b) Take action by sharing the post in twitter, facebook and via email. Primarily the important function is to grow the list alongside getting the message out.

One caveat is avoiding the noise created on the net. If your content is not unique and does not add value then it will just be noise. Do you know that dawah is getting filtered out by Muslims? The reason it gets filtered is that there is simply to much noise; just rehashing of content.

We have an assumption that since it is a hadith, quran ayah, etc then people should read it and not disrespect it even if it they have seen it 10,000 times but the reality is much different from this. 'Dawah blindness' is developing and you have to be a cut above the rest if you want you message to make a stand. This is why modern, educated scholars who are articulate and can connect to the audience are making headway; think Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, Sheikh Hasan Ali, etc.

They are very articulated scholars who do not rehash content but provide solid material based on an understanding of classical material. Likewise the content that is created for the email must be worthy of the read and re-sharing. Just because there is loads of content on Syria, simply finding any content and sharing over and over again will not add value. But solid content well researched will be welcomed by the audience.

anyone interested in actioning this can by all means give me a shout and I would be happy to assist in this.

to be continued...