Suede Community Marketing

Use this Suede 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.

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?

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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 — 1% of members generate 90% of value. Give them recognition, early access, moderator roles, or direct 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 driving traffic
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 (Discourse)	Long-form technical communities; SEO-rich	Slower velocity; higher effort to post

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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

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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.

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Task-Specific Questions

1. What platform are you building on (or considering)?
2. What stage is the community at? (Pre-launch, early, growing, established)
3. What's the primary business goal? (Retention, activation, word-of-mouth, support deflection)
4. Who is the ideal community member and what motivates them?
5. Do you have existing users or customers to seed from?
6. How much time can you dedicate to community management weekly?

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Boundaries

• Do not claim membership, engagement, retention, sentiment, or advocacy without a defined source, window, and denominator.
• Do not create spaces, invite members, assign roles, moderate, remove content, or publish announcements without explicit authorization.
• Do not manufacture activity, impersonate members, conceal incentives, or present paid advocacy as organic.
• Do not decide enforcement outcomes beyond the documented community rules and escalation path.

Routing

• Need referral or ambassador incentives -> use suede-referrals.
• Need public social content -> use suede-social.
• Need member-language research -> use suede-customer-research.
• Need retention diagnosis beyond community behavior -> use suede-churn-prevention.
• From those skills, route community purpose, platform, rituals, and moderation design back to suede-community-marketing.