/suede-community-marketing

name: suede-community-marketing
description: "Suede AI community-growth discipline: member identity and purpose, platform choice (Discord, Slack, Circle, Reddit, Discourse, Facebook Groups), founding-member seeding, rituals and core loop, moderation and enforcement paths, health metrics with denominators, ambassador programs, and public community content that search engines and AI answers surface. Use when starting, auditing, or growing a product or brand community. NOT FOR: public social-channel content (use suede-social), referral-program mechanics and payouts (use suede-referrals), or customer-interview research (use suede-customer-research)."
metadata:
  version: 2.1.0

Suede AI Community Marketing

Use this community-growth playbook to create genuine member value and measurable business outcomes without manufacturing engagement.

Before You Start

**Check for product marketing context first:** If `.agents/product-marketing.md` exists (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md` filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered.

Understand the situation (ask if not provided):

1. **What is the product or brand?**: What problem does it solve, who uses it 2. **What community platform(s) are in play?**: Discord, Slack, Circle, Reddit, Facebook Groups, forum, etc. 3. **What stage is the community at?**: Pre-launch, 0–100 members, 100–1k, scaling, or established 4. **What is the primary community goal?**: Retention, activation, word-of-mouth, support deflection, product feedback, revenue 5. **Who is the ideal community member?**: Role, motivation, what they hope to get from joining

Work with whatever context is available. If key details are missing, make reasonable assumptions and flag them.

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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.

Example: r/homelab: the identity is tinkerers who self-host, and every ritual, channel, and recognition mechanic in it reinforces that self-image.

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

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Playbooks by Goal

Launching a Community from Zero

1. **Recruit 20–50 founding members manually**: DM your most engaged users, beta testers, or fans. Don't open publicly until there is baseline activity. 2. **Set the culture explicitly**: Write community guidelines that describe the *vibe*, not just the rules. What does great participation look like here? 3. **Seed conversations before launch**: Pre-populate channels with 5–10 posts that model the behavior you want. Questions, wins, resources. 4. **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. 5. **Define your core loop**: What action do you want members to take weekly? Make it easy and reward it publicly.

Growing an Existing Community

1. **Audit where members drop off**: Are people joining but not posting? Posting once and disappearing? Identify the leaky stage. 2. **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. 3. **Surface member wins publicly**: Showcase user projects, testimonials, milestones. This reinforces identity and signals that participation has rewards. 4. **Run recurring community rituals**: Weekly threads (e.g., "What are you working on?"), monthly AMAs, seasonal challenges. Rituals create habit. 5. **Identify and invest in power users**: participation is usually heavily skewed toward a small minority (Inferred; verify against this community's own posts-per-member distribution before quoting a ratio). Give the observed top contributors recognition, early access, moderator roles, or product input.

Building a Brand Ambassador / Advocate Program

1. **Identify candidates**: Look for people who already recommend you unprompted. Check reviews, social mentions, community posts. 2. **Make the ask personal**: Don't send a generic form. Reach out 1:1 and explain why you chose them specifically. 3. **Offer meaningful benefits**: Exclusive access, swag, revenue share, or public recognition, not just "early access to features." 4. **Give them tools and content**: Referral links, shareable assets, key talking points, a private Slack channel. 5. **Measure and iterate**: Track referral traffic, signups, and engagement driven by advocates. Double down on what works.

Community-Led Support (Deflection + Retention)

1. **Create a searchable knowledge base** from top community questions 2. **Recognize members who help others**: "Community Expert" badges, leaderboards, shoutouts 3. **Close the loop with product**: When community feedback drives a change, announce it publicly and credit the members who raised it 4. **Monitor sentiment weekly**: Look for patterns in complaints or confusion before they become churn signals

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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 driv