Community Marketing

---
name: Community Marketing
description: Use when a user wants to build, launch, or grow an online community (Discord, Slack, forum) for retention, advocacy, or word-of-mouth.
category: Growth & Retention
version: 2.0.0
tools: []
---

# Community Marketing

Design, launch, and grow a community that creates genuine value for members while driving measurable business outcomes.

## Before starting
Search the knowledge base for existing product-marketing context first; use it and only ask about what's missing.

Understand: what the product/brand is and what problem it solves; which platform(s) are in play (Discord, Slack, Circle, Reddit, Facebook Groups, forum); what stage the community is at (pre-launch, 0-100 members, 100-1k, scaling, established); the primary goal (retention, activation, word-of-mouth, support deflection, product feedback, revenue); who the ideal member is and what they hope to get from joining. Make reasonable assumptions where details are missing and flag them.

## Strategy principles

**Build around a shared identity, not just the product.** The strongest communities form around who members are or aspire to be — members join because of the product but stay because of the people and identity (e.g., indie hackers as bootstrapped founders, r/homelab as tinkerers who self-host, the Figma community as designers who care about craft). Always define what identity the community reinforces.

**Value flows to members first.** Every touchpoint should answer "what does the member get from this?" — exclusive knowledge or early access, peer connections unavailable elsewhere, recognition within a group they respect, direct influence on the roadmap, career visibility or credibility.

**The community flywheel.** Members join → get value → engage → create content or help others → new members discover the community through that content → repeat. Every design decision should ask whether it accelerates or slows this loop.

## Playbooks by goal

**Launching from zero.** Recruit 20-50 founding members manually (DM engaged users, beta testers, fans) — don't open publicly before there's baseline activity. Write guidelines that describe the vibe, not just the rules. Seed 5-10 posts pre-launch that model the behavior you want. Do things that don't scale early: reply to every post, welcome every member by name, host a weekly call — you're buying social proof. Define one core weekly action and reward it publicly.

**Growing an existing community.** Audit where members drop off — joining but not posting, or posting once and vanishing. Build a new-member journey: a pinned welcome post, an introductions channel, a personal DM or email, a clear "start here" path. Surface member wins publicly to reinforce identity. Run recurring rituals — a weekly "what are you working on?" thread, monthly AMAs, seasonal challenges — rituals build habit. Identify and invest in power users: roughly 1% of members generate 90% of the value: give them recognition, early access, moderator roles, or direct product input.

**Ambassador/advocate programs.** Identify people already recommending the product unprompted (reviews, social mentions, community posts). Make the ask personal, not a generic form. Offer meaningful benefits — exclusive access, swag, revenue share, public recognition — not just early feature access. Give them tools: referral links, shareable assets, talking points, a private channel. Track referral traffic, signups, and engagement they drive, and double down on what works.

**Community-led support.** Build a searchable knowledge base from top community questions. Recognize members who help others with badges, leaderboards, shoutouts. Close the loop with product — when feedback drives a change, announce it and credit the members who raised it. Monitor sentiment weekly for churn signals before they compound.

## Platform selection

| Platform | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Discord | Developer, gaming, creator communities; real-time chat | High noise, hard to search, onboarding friction |
| Slack | B2B/professional communities familiar to SaaS buyers | Free-tier history limits; can feel like work |
| Circle | Creator or course-based communities; clean UX | Needs driven traffic; less organic discovery |
| Reddit | High-volume public communities; SEO benefit | You don't own it; moderation is hard |
| Facebook Groups | Consumer brands, older demographics | Declining organic reach, algorithm-dependent |
| Forum (e.g., Discourse) | Long-form technical communities, SEO-rich | Slower velocity, higher posting effort |

## Health metrics
Track weekly: DAU/MAU ratio (stickiness — above 20% is healthy for most communities); new-member post rate (% posting within 7 days of joining); thread reply rate (% of posts getting at least one reply); churn/lurker ratio (members silent for 30+ days); % of content created by non-staff members. Warning signs: most posts come from the company team; questions go unanswered over 24 hours; the same five people generate 80%+ of engagement; new members go silent after their intro post.

## Output formats
Depending on the ask, produce: a community strategy doc (platform choice, identity definition, core loop, 90-day launch plan); a channel architecture with purpose and posting guidelines per channel; a new-member journey (welcome post, DM template, first-week prompts); a ritual calendar of recurring events/threads; an ambassador program brief (criteria, benefits, outreach template, tracking plan); or a health audit (current metrics, diagnosis, top 3 priorities). Be specific — generic advice like "be consistent" isn't actionable.

## Task-specific questions
What platform are you building on or considering? What stage is the community at? What's the primary business goal? Who is the ideal member and what motivates them? Do you have existing users to seed from? How much time can you dedicate to community management weekly?

## Related skills
**referrals** for structured referral and ambassador incentives. **churn-prevention** for retention strategies that complement engagement. **social** for cross-platform content. **customer-research** for understanding members' needs and language.