SKILL.md
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Community Strategy Principles
Build around a shared identity, not just a product
The strongest communities are built around who members are or aspire to be — not around your product. Members join because of the product but stay because of the people and identity.
Examples:
- Indie hackers (identity: bootstrapped founders)
- r/homelab (identity: tinkerers who self-host)
- Figma community (identity: designers who care about craft)
Always define: What identity does this community reinforce for its members?
Value must flow to members first
Every community touchpoint should answer: What does the member get from this?
- Exclusive knowledge or early access
- Peer connections they can't get elsewhere
- Recognition and status within a group they respect
- Direct influence on the product roadmap
- Career opportunities, visibility, or credibility
The Community Flywheel
Healthy communities compound over time:
Members join → get value → engage → create content/help others
↑ ↓
←←←←← new members discover the community ←←Design for the flywheel from day one. Every decision should ask: Does this accelerate the loop or slow it down?
Playbooks by Goal
Launching a Community from Zero
- Recruit 20–50 founding members manually — DM your most engaged users, beta testers, or fans. Don't open publicly until there is baseline activity.
- Set the culture explicitly — Write community guidelines that describe the vibe, not just the rules. What does great participation look like here?
- Seed conversations before launch — Pre-populate channels with 5–10 posts that model the behavior you want. Questions, wins, resources.
- Do things that don't scale at first — Reply to every post. Welcome every new member by name. Host a weekly call. You are buying social proof.
- Define your core loop — What action do you want members to take weekly? Make it easy and reward it publicly.
Growing an Existing Community
- Audit where members drop off — Are people joining but not posting? Posting once and disappearing? Identify the leaky stage.
- Create a new member journey — A pinned welcome post, a #introduce-yourself channel, a DM or email from a community manager, a clear "start here" path.
- Surface member wins publicly — Showcase user projects, testimonials, milestones. This reinforces identity and signals that participation has rewards.
- Run recurring community rituals — Weekly threads (e.g., "What are you working on?"), monthly AMAs, seasonal challenges. Rituals create habit.
- Identify and invest in power users — 1% of members generate 90% of value. Give them recognition, early access, moderator roles, or direct product input.
Building a Brand Ambassador / Advocate Program
- Identify candidates — Look for people who already recommend you unprompted. Check reviews, social mentions, community posts.
- Make the ask personal — Don't send a generic form. Reach out 1:1 and explain why you chose them specifically.
- Offer meaningful benefits — Exclusive access, swag, revenue share, or public recognition — not just "early access to features."
- Give them tools and content — Referral links, shareable assets, key talking points, a private Slack channel.
- Measure and iterate — Track referral traffic, signups, and engagement driven by advocates. Double down on what works.
Community-Led Support (Deflection + Retention)
- Create a searchable knowledge base from top community questions
- Recognize members who help others — "Community Expert" badges, leaderboards, shoutouts
- Close the loop with product — When community feedback drives a change, announce it publicly and credit the members who raised it
- Monitor sentiment weekly — Look for patterns in complaints or confusion before they become churn signals
Platform Selection Guide
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 limits history; feels like work
Circle
Creator or course-based communities; clean UX
Less organic discovery; requires driving traffic
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 (Discourse)
Long-form technical communities; SEO-rich
Slower velocity; higher effort to post
Community Health Metrics
Track these signals weekly:
- DAU/MAU ratio — Stickiness. Above 20% is healthy for most communities.
- New member post rate — % of new members who post within 7 days of joining
- Thread reply rate — % of posts that receive at least one reply
- Churn / lurker ratio — Members who joined but haven't posted in 30+ days
- Content created by non-staff — % of posts not written by the company team
Warning signs:
- Most posts are from the company team, not members
- Questions go unanswered for >24 hours
- The same 5 people account for 80%+ of engagement
- New members stop posting after their intro message
Output Formats
Depending on what the user needs, produce one of:
- Community Strategy Doc — Platform choice, identity definition, core loop, 90-day launch plan
- Channel Architecture — Recommended channels/categories with purpose and posting guidelines for each
- New Member Journey — Welcome sequence: pinned post, DM template, first-week prompts
- Community Ritual Calendar — Weekly/monthly recurring events and threads
- Ambassador Program Brief — Criteria, benefits, outreach template, tracking plan
- Health Audit Report — Current metrics, diagnosis, top 3 priorities to fix
Always be specific. Generic advice ("be consistent," "provide value") is not useful. Give the user something they can act on today.
Task-Specific Questions
- What platform are you building on (or considering)?
- What stage is the community at? (Pre-launch, early, growing, established)
- What's the primary business goal? (Retention, activation, word-of-mouth, support deflection)
- Who is the ideal community member and what motivates them?
- Do you have existing users or customers to seed from?
- How much time can you dedicate to community management weekly?
Related Skills
- referrals: For structured referral and ambassador incentive programs
- churn-prevention: For retention strategies that complement community engagement
- social: For content creation across social platforms
- customer-research: For understanding your community members' needs and language