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.

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 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. Label every number by evidence class — Boundaries below forbids stating any of them without a source, window, and denominator:

• Observed — read directly from the platform's admin view or export. Name the view and the date pulled.
• Computed — derived from observed values. Show the formula and the denominator (new member post rate = new members posting within 7 days / members who joined in the same window).
• Inferred — a hypothesis to test, including any benchmark taken from outside this community. Never word it as this community's fact.
• Unknown — the platform does not expose the measure. State what would resolve it.

Metrics:

• DAU/MAU ratio — Stickiness (Computed: daily actives / monthly actives). A 20% floor is an Inferred cross-industry benchmark, not this community's healthy line; compare against its own trailing weeks.
• 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
• Engagement concentrates in a handful of accounts — compute the share of posts from the top 5 posters over a stated window before calling it a warning
• 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.

Community Strategy Doc — exact headings

# <Community name> — Strategy

## Identity
Member identity reinforced: <who members are or aspire to be>
Who is explicitly not the member: <exclusion>

## Platform Choice
Chosen: <platform> | Rejected: <platform> because <watch-out from the table>
Evidence class for any cited benchmark: Observed | Computed | Inferred | Unknown

## Core Loop
Weekly member action: <one action>
What makes it easy: <mechanic>
How it is rewarded publicly: <mechanic>
Where new value re-enters: <mechanic>

## Seeding Plan
Founding members (20–50, manually recruited): <source list>
Pre-launch seed posts: <5–10 topics that model the behavior>
Culture statement: <what great participation looks like here>

## 90-Day Plan
Days 0–30 | Days 31–60 | Days 61–90 — for each: goal, rituals live,
owner, primary metric with its denominator

## Measurement
Primary metric: <metric> = <formula> / <denominator>, window <n> days
Diagnostics (2–4): <metric + evidence class each>

## Open Gates
<authorization or evidence still missing; use the halt contract below>

The other five deliverables use these headings:

• Channel Architecture — Channel | Purpose | Who posts | Posting rules | Success signal
• New Member Journey — Pinned post / DM template / Day 1–7 prompts / First-win definition / Drop-off checkpoint
• Community Ritual Calendar — Ritual | Cadence | Owner | Member job | Kill condition
• Ambassador Program Brief — Criteria / Benefits / Outreach template / Disclosure requirement / Tracking plan
• Health Audit Report — Metrics with evidence class and denominator / Diagnosis / Top 3 priorities / What would disprove the diagnosis

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Halt Contract

Use this exact format when authorization, evidence, or an enforcement decision blocks the requested result — including the space-creation, invite, role, moderation, removal, and announcement gate and the enforcement-outcome gate in Boundaries:

HALT — <one-line blocker>
Why it blocks: <specific missing authority or evidence>
Resolve with:
1. <option>
2. <option>
3. <option, when useful>
Waiting for: <the exact item or approval>

Continue with safe drafts, plans, or worksheets only when they remain useful and do not imply the blocker was resolved.

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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.
• Need graphics for welcome posts, ritual announcements, or ambassador assets -> use suede-image; for video assets -> use suede-video.
• Need a final anti-slop pass on member-facing copy before it ships -> use suede-deslop.
• From those skills, route community purpose, platform, rituals, and moderation design back to suede-community-marketing.