# Community building Human Guide

## What This Is For
Build and grow online communities across all platforms and contexts — from developer/B2B communities (Discord, Slack, Circle, Discourse) to social communities (Twitter/X, Reddit. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for social content: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Community building agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for community building.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Community building guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- Community strategy (goal, members, value exchange, movement thesis)
- Platform selection: home base + outposts (Discord, Slack, Circle, Discourse, Telegram, Twitter/X, Reddit, Farcaster)
- Channel architecture, onboarding, and activation
- Programming/rituals and ambassador/champions programs
- Governance, moderation, and crisis management
- Holder psychology and retention engineering (crypto/token communities)
- Social community building across Twitter/X, Reddit, Farcaster, forums
- Measurement and community health
- You haven't defined ICP/positioning (use `brand-messaging-and-positioning` first)
- You want paid acquisition (ads/creative) rather than community
- You want to spam/scrape DMs or manipulate members
- You need customer support ops overhaul (ticketing/SLAs) more than community

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Workspace Context, Operating Contract, Scope, Community Philosophy, Community vs Audience, Core Frameworks, The Community Flywheel, Community Maturity Model, The 1-9-90 Rule, Member Journey.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- **Enforcement ladder**: Warning → Temporary mute → Permanent ban.
- Multi-bag culture: "This AND that" — avoid forcing either/or decisions
- MODERATION: Bans | Warnings | Scam Attempts Blocked
- **Metrics over meaning** — Vanity metrics don't equal healthy community
- **Spam/DM blasts** — Never auto-DM or manipulate members
- A) Safety + trust checklist (required)
- **Rule in this pack:** Value-first contributions in outposts; avoid spam; convert repeated questions into starter resources.
- Use this mapping to avoid trying to do everything:

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Community building human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the manojbajaj95/claude-gtm-plugin skill entry for `community-building`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Community Building

## Workspace Context

Read bootstrap context before asking questions: `strategy/brand.md` for brand, audience, offer, channels, tools, constraints, and metrics; `about/me.md` for personal voice; `content/ideas.md` and `content/calendar.md` for content planning. Use legacy product-marketing context files only as fallback. Save generated drafts to `content/<platform>/drafts/YYYY-MM-DD_short-topic-slug.md`, and route durable learnings back to `strategy/brand.md`, `about/me.md`, or `content/ideas.md`.

## Operating Contract

This skill is self-contained for its frontmatter scope: use its local instructions, references, scripts, and assets as the playbook; ask only for missing task-specific inputs; hand off to adjacent skills instead of expanding scope; and return an actionable artifact, decision, plan, draft, or diagnostic.


Build communities that turn members into believers and believers into advocates.

## Scope

**Covers**
- Community strategy (goal, members, value exchange, movement thesis)
- Platform selection: home base + outposts (Discord, Slack, Circle, Discourse, Telegram, Twitter/X, Reddit, Farcaster)
- Channel architecture, onboarding, and activation
- Programming/rituals and ambassador/champions programs
- Governance, moderation, and crisis management
- Holder psychology and retention engineering (crypto/token communities)
- Social community building across Twitter/X, Reddit, Farcaster, forums
- Measurement and community health

**When NOT to use**
- You haven't defined ICP/positioning (use `brand-messaging-and-positioning` first)
- You want paid acquisition (ads/creative) rather than community
- You want to spam/scrape DMs or manipulate members
- You need customer support ops overhaul (ticketing/SLAs) more than community

---

## Community Philosophy

Great communities are built on three pillars:
1. **Shared purpose** — Members need a reason bigger than the product
2. **Genuine connection** — People stay for people, not features
3. **Member empowerment** — The best communities run themselves

### Community vs Audience

| Dimension | Audience | Community |
|-----------|----------|-----------|
| **Direction** | One to many | Many to many |
| **Value** | From creator | From each other |
| **Ownership** | Creator owns | Members co-own |
| **Content** | Creator produces | Members produce |
| **Retention** | Content-dependent | Relationship-dependent |
| **Scalability** | Linear | Network effects |

---

## Core Frameworks

### The Community Flywheel

```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                             │
│   ┌──────────┐    ┌──────────┐    ┌──────────┐             │
│   │  ATTRACT │───▶│ ACTIVATE │───▶│  ENGAGE  │             │
│   │ (Reach)  │    │ (Value)  │    │ (Habit)  │             │
│   └──────────┘    └──────────┘    └──────────┘             │
│        ▲                                │                   │
│        │          ┌──────────┐          │                   │
│        │          │ ADVOCATE │          │                   │
│        └──────────│ (Amplify)│◀─────────┘                   │
│                   └──────────┘                              │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```

### Community Maturity Model

| Stage | Size | Characteristics | Focus |
|-------|------|-----------------|-------|
| **Nascent** | <100 | Founder-led | 1:1 conversations, manual everything |
| **Growing** | 100–1,000 | Early champions emerge | Systems, rituals, first programs |
| **Scaling** | 1,000–10,000 | Self-sustaining activity | Governance, moderation, delegation |
| **Mature** | 10,000+ | Community-led initiatives | Sub-communities, ecosystem |