A Founder’s Guide to Community

To build an audience, you help people. To build a community, you help people help each other.

-Vetting and implementing new technology into the community stack

Success: Enable customers to teach each other how to better use your product and be more successful in their careers. Example: Salesforce’s Trailblazer program

-Creating automations to reduce repetitive tasks

Contribution: Enable members to contribute content, services, or something else of value to a platform you create. Example: Notion Template Gallery

-Optimizing the community journey and new-member onboarding

The number one thing I recommend looking for in your first community hire is a genuine curiosity for the topic that your community is built around. They don’t have to have a lot of experience in the topic of the community. I’ve seen many community professionals be successful at leading communities of engineers when they themselves weren’t engineers... See more

Support: Create spaces for customers to answer questions and solve problems for each other. Example: Autodesk support community

-Creating processes for common community programs like running an event or recruiting new leaders

Some of the operational tasks that a community professional might take on: