community-management

When this skill is activated, always start your first response with the 🧢 emoji.

Community Management

Community management is the discipline of building, nurturing, and sustaining groups of people united around a shared interest, product, or goal. Done well, a community becomes a durable competitive moat - members recruit each other, generate content, surface problems, and amplify launches. Done poorly, it becomes a moderation burden and a reputation liability.

This skill covers the full lifecycle: strategy and positioning, day-to-day moderation, member advocacy programs, engagement design, feedback loops, and the metrics that tell you whether any of it is working.

When to use this skill

Trigger this skill when the user:

• Designs a community strategy or chooses a platform
• Writes or audits community guidelines and moderation policies
• Creates an ambassador, champion, or advocate program
• Plans engagement programs (events, challenges, office hours)
• Builds feedback loops from community back to product or leadership
• Defines community health metrics or builds a reporting dashboard
• Scales community operations (hiring, tooling, automation)

Do NOT trigger this skill for:

• Pure social media marketing or paid ad campaigns (use a marketing skill instead)
• Internal company culture programs (those are people-ops, not community management)

Key principles

1. Community is a garden, not a broadcast channel - You tend it; you do not

control it. Members talk to each other, not just to you. Your job is to create conditions where good things grow, then get out of the way.

1. The 1-9-90 participation rule - In any community, roughly 1% create original

content, 9% contribute (reply, react, upvote), and 90% lurk. Do not design only for the 1%. Lurkers get value, generate SEO, and often become contributors later. Measure reach, not just posts.

1. Moderation sets culture - What you allow is what you become. If you tolerate

low-effort negativity, your community fills with it. Enforce rules consistently and early. The first 100 members set the tone for the next 100,000.

1. Value before extraction - Ask nothing of your community until you have given

generously. Answer questions, write guides, make introductions, celebrate member wins. An ask for a survey, testimonial, or referral lands differently when you have a deposit history.

1. Measure engagement depth, not vanity - Monthly active members and reply rate

tell you more than follower count. A community of 500 people who help each other daily is more valuable than 50,000 who never interact.

Core concepts

Community types

| Type | Primary value | Examples | |---|---|---| | Product community | Support deflection + feedback | Figma, Linear, Notion communities | | Developer community | Ecosystem growth + advocacy | GitHub, Stripe, Twilio DevRel | | Interest/hobby community | Connection + identity | Subreddits, Discord servers | | Customer success community | Retention + expansion | Enterprise user groups | | Professional/learning | Career growth + networking | Dev.to, Hashnode, alumni networks |

Knowing the type determines success metrics, content strategy, and moderation bar.

Engagement ladder

Members move through stages. Design experiences for each transition:

Aware -> Lurker -> Reactor -> Contributor -> Champion -> Leader
  |         |          |            |             |           |
discovery  reads     likes/     posts/         creates      co-runs
 content   only     reacts     replies         content    programs

Most programs focus on converting Lurkers to Reactors (low friction - add emoji reactions, polls, "introduce yourself" threads) and Contributors to Champions (recognition, early access, direct feedback access).

Moderation approaches

| Approach | When to use | Trade-off | |---|---|---| | Reactive | Small/early community | Low overhead, slow to catch issues | | Proactive | Scaled community | Prevents problems, requires mod team | | AI-assisted | High-volume channels | Fast + consistent, misses context | | Community self-moderation | Mature, trusted community | Scalable, requires strong culture | | Graduated enforcement | Default for most communities | Fair, builds trust, reduces appeals |

Community metrics

Health metrics (weekly review):

• Daily/monthly active members (DAU/MAU ratio - above 10% is healthy)
• Question response rate and time-to-first-response
• New member 7-day retention (did they come back after joining?)
• Member-to-member reply ratio (community helping itself vs staff only)

Growth metrics (monthly review):

• New member growth rate
• Top-of-funnel sources (organic search, product in-app, referral)
• Activation rate (lurker -> first post within 30 days)

Business impact metrics (quarterly):

• Support ticket deflection rate
• NPS delta (community members vs non-members)
• Feature adoption driven by community education
• Qualified leads or expansions attributed to community

Common tasks

Design a community strategy

Use this framework to scope a community before building it:

1. Define the community job-to-be-done - What will members get that they

cannot get elsewhere? Be specific. "Connect with peers" is not specific enough. "Get unblocked on [product] integrations within 2 hours" is.

1. Choose the right platform - Match the platform to member behavior:

| Member behavior | Platform | |---|---| | Async Q&A, SEO-friendly | Discourse, GitHub Discussions | | Real-time chat | Discord, Slack | | Long-form content | Circle, Beehiiv | | Professional network | LinkedIn Group | | Developer-native | GitHub Discussions, Dev.to |

1. Define the success metric for month 1, 6, and 12 - Month 1 is activation

(10+ active members, first unanswered question answered by a peer). Month 6 is habit (DAU/MAU above 8%). Month 12 is impact (support deflection, NPS lift).

1. Write the founding documents - Community purpose statement, code of conduct,

and welcome message. These set culture before scale forces you to enforce it.

Build moderation guidelines

A moderation policy template:

## [Community Name] Community Guidelines

### What this community is for
[One paragraph on the community's purpose and who it's for]

### What we expect from members
- Be helpful: answer questions you know, ask questions clearly
- Be respectful: disagree with ideas, not people
- Be on-topic: [specific scope e.g. "questions about the API, not general JS"]
- Be real: no impersonation, spam, or promotional posts without disclosure

### What will get you removed
- Harassment, hate speech, or personal attacks
- Spam, affiliate links, or undisclosed promotion
- Sharing private information without consent
- Deliberately spreading misinformation

### Enforcement ladder
1. Post removed (no warning needed for clear violations)
2. Public or private warning
3. 7-day suspension
4. Permanent ban

### Appeals
Email [address] with your username and a description of what happened.
We review appeals within 3 business days.

See references/moderation-playbook.md for escalation procedures and edge cases.

Create an advocacy / champions program

A structured advocate program creates a high-trust inner circle that amplifies content, provides product feedback, and helps new members.

Program tiers (3-tier model works well for most communities):

| Tier | Name | Requirements | Benefits | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | Contributor | 90 days active, 10+ helpful posts | Badge, early blog features | | 2 | Champion | 6 months, referred 5+ members | Private Slack, beta access, swag | | 3 | Ambassador | 12+ months, created community content | Co-marketing, advisory council seat |

Program launch checklist:

• [ ] Define nomination criteria (quantitative + qualitative)
• [ ] Build a private channel o