When cultivating a community specifically, you need to have clarity on your WHO and WHY before you start investing in programs or tactics.
If you don't have a clear understanding of your people and their motivations, you won't be able to design compelling offerings for your community.
So, get clear on:
1) WHO are my most passionate people? 2) WHY will they want to connect to one another?
In the early days of building a community, a group of passionate people is crucial. If no one cares, no one will show up for this new tool/space you're building.
So if I were you, I'd spend time pinpointing WHO cares the most first. This is not insignificant work. Pinpointing the passionate WHO takes time. (Look to all the research that went into Courtland Allen (@csallen)'s early 150 emails that started Indie Hackers for inspiration: https://research.people-and.com/courtland-allen-wrote-150-pe...)
Once you have a cohort, then I'd do whatever I can to get their time so you can ask questions that will enlighten their WHY. (IMO: Data can inform WHAT, but not WHY?)
When we do these WHY interview sessions with cohorts of passionate users, we always do them in groups because observing how they connect to one another is enlightening for our community design process. We listen for: what they are most excited to talk about with each other about. And we interview them, asking where do they talk about these things now? What activities would they like to do with one another?
Keep in mind, our recommendations are for building a community, which we define as a group of people who keep coming together over what they care about. Take my advice for designing for a community-driven product specifically.