01

Community & Advocacy

Amplify Customer Success

Transform individual developers into a network of champions who amplify your platform's reach and drive authentic adoption through meaningful feedback loops.

Community & Advocacy transforms individual developers into a network of champions who amplify your platform's reach and drive authentic adoption. It's not about building large audiences - it's about cultivating relationships that create meaningful feedback loops between your developers and your business strategy.

Community & Advocacy

Transform individual developers into a network of champions who amplify your platform's reach and drive authentic adoption through meaningful feedback loops.

🏛️

Goal

Transform developers into authentic advocates who drive business outcomes

🤝

Impact

Reduce support costs, accelerate product-market fit, create word-of-mouth growth

Success Indicators

Community health scores, advocacy attribution, pipeline influence

1

Foundation

Why community building isn't just about numbers, and how to think about the different types of developers you're actually serving

1.1

Why Community & Advocacy Matters

When done right, your community becomes your most trusted product advisors, your most credible marketers, and your pipeline for identifying both opportunities and challenges before they become critical.

Business Impact

  • Communities reduce support costs through peer-to-peer help
  • Accelerate product-market fit through direct feedback
  • Create authentic advocacy that converts prospects far better than traditional marketing
1.2

Understanding Community Development Categories

Effective community building requires understanding different types of engagement and their strategic purposes.

Consumers

Developers who use your platform and engage with content

  • Usage data and basic feedback
  • Initial adoption signals
  • Foundation that creates scale for other engagement types
Contributors

Community members who help others and share knowledge

  • Peer support and content creation
  • Community contribution and moderation
  • Reduce your support burden while increasing community value
Creators

Advanced users who build extensions, content, or innovative solutions

  • Platform innovation and advanced use cases
  • Product feedback and ecosystem expansion
  • Demonstrate and push the limits of platform capabilities
Champions

Advocates who actively promote your platform and influence others

  • Authentic advocacy and strategic feedback
  • Pipeline influence and word-of-mouth growth
  • Become your most effective marketing channel
2

Strategy

How to build authentic advocacy through community development, and the acceleration multipliers that make community success drive outcomes across all other dimensions

2.1

Cross-Dimension Acceleration Multipliers

Success in one dimension accelerates capabilities in others, while neglecting one creates friction that slows the entire ecosystem.

Education & Training

Community feedback accelerates training development by identifying needs, while successful community members become training contributors, multiplying your content creation velocity.

Developer Experience

Community reveals experience gaps and provides peer-to-peer support that reduces official support burden, accelerating resolution times and reducing friction.

Marketplace & Resources

Active community members become key contributors and consumers of shared resources, accelerating ecosystem growth and innovation.

Metrics & Analytics

Community engagement provides critical business value and operational metrics that accelerate program measurement and optimization.

Program Positioning

Community success stories and customer testimonials become powerful acceleration multipliers for internal proof points and stakeholder communications.

2.2

Key Questions You're Trying to Answer

These questions guide your community strategy and help you focus on what matters most for business impact.

Community Strategy

  • Who are the personas in our community, and how do they align with our business objectives?
  • What's driving people to engage with us versus our competitors, and how do we amplify those differentiators?
  • How do we create progression pathways that move developers from consumers to champions?

Engagement and Value Creation

  • Are we building a place for people to connect with us, with each other, or both - and what's most valuable?
  • How do we give community members the recognition and platform they crave but rarely get elsewhere?
  • What does authentic advocacy look like versus manufactured testimonials or forced promotion?

Business Impact Measurement

  • How do we distinguish between vanity metrics (total community size) and meaningful engagement indicators?
  • What's the connection between community health and business outcomes like pipeline influence and customer success?
  • How do community programs drive measurable business value rather than just developer happiness?
3

Implementation

How to actually build momentum and avoid the common pitfalls that kill most community programs

3.1

Your Implementation Journey

Program velocity builds systematically across three distinct stages, each with specific characteristics and strategic focus areas.

Building Momentum
01

Building Momentum

Foundation Building

Start by building trust with key stakeholders and aligning DevRel goals with business priorities. Focus on transparency, early wins, and communicating impact in business terms.

Key Activities:

  • Launch basic community spaces (forums, Reddit, Slack, Discord) and establish regular touchpoints. Find where users are naturally congregating, or create a dedicated space for them. Make your presence known as a company representative so they know they can go to you for help.
  • Host consistent events or meetups to build initial engagement and identify early enthusiasts. This plants the seed for your community 4 C's.
  • Begin systematic collection of developer feedback and questions to understand community composition... What are they stuck on? What do they want to see more of? What can unblock them?
  • Start identifying community makeup - are there multiple personas with different needs and motivations? Which is the most common persona? Who has the most influence on buying decisions? (yes, this is community, but yes, you still have a business to run 😁)
  • Identify your first "friendlies" - naturally engaged developers who provide quality feedback and early advocacy. Lean in to what makes them successful, what makes them tick, and what they need. They will become great advocates for your community efforts and your platform.

Success Metrics:

  • Monthly active community members (not total registrations or lifetime signups)
  • Event attendance and repeat participation rates showing engagement depth
  • Registration vs attendance ratios - what % of people who register actually show?
  • Response time to developer questions and community support quality
  • Quality insights about community persona composition and their different needs
Accelerating
02

Accelerating

Segmentation and Systematic Engagement

Leverage executive sponsorship to drive cross-functional alignment and collaboration. Expand DevRel's influence by partnering with other teams and sharing business value stories.

Key Activities:

  • Launch different program formats for different personas you identified (separate content/materials for developers vs. program leaders vs. decision-makers). This demonstrates that you understand your customer base, who they are, and what they need.
  • Create opportunities for community members to share expertise and gain recognition through speaking, case studies, tutorials, and thought leadership. These are a win-win for you and the speaker. Make it a big deal, put their face on stuff... make them feel special. This will create FOMO for other community members.
  • Establish formal feedback loops between community insights and product teams to demonstrate strategic value. Community members (friendlies) can be the best way to get authentic product feedback from people who genuinely care about your product/platform being great.
  • Begin identifying and engaging potential advocates - those who are naturally enthusiastic, credible, and influential within their organizations. Think about how you're developing people in your pipeline to become champions.
  • Implement recognition and rewards systems for community contributors across the consumer-to-champion spectrum. Users geek out on having accomplishments to share on social - a badge, certificate, recognition, etc. - encourage them to share their recognition on social, get everyone in the org to celebrate with them. Likes are free 👍 - get everyone in the org to give some out.

Success Metrics:

  • Engagement rates across different persona-specific programs showing effective segmentation
  • Community-generated content and user success stories demonstrating value creation
  • Product feedback implementation rate from community input showing strategic integration
  • Developer-influenced business pipeline or customer success attribution
Peak Velocity
03

Peak Velocity

Community-Driven Strategy

DevRel becomes a strategic partner in business growth and innovation. You're shaping strategy, driving investment, and mentoring other teams on advocacy and alignment.

Key Activities:

  • Host large-scale, community-led events where members are the primary/first level content creators and thought leaders. This is the fly-wheel you want to get to... where you provide assets, and they create and drive content/sessions.
  • Enable systematic community-led content through member-driven sessions, peer mentoring, knowledge sharing, and collaborative innovation. Users helping users for the win.
  • Create competitive or gamified experiences that reveal innovative approaches and foster peer learning while showcasing platform capabilities. Highlight those users who are pushing the boundaries that even your product/platform team hadn't thought of. Pushing those limits inspires others, and pushes everyone to be better.
  • Establish community as strategic input - product roadmap, market insights, and business strategy informed by community feedback and trends. Feature voting/prioritization can add a ton of value for your product team, and make your user community feel like they have input on the product they love.
  • Build cross-community partnerships and ecosystem collaboration that extends your platform's reach and influence - how can partners help extend the things you're doing to make them even better.

Success Metrics:

  • Volume and quality of community member applications to speak, contribute, or lead initiatives
  • Organic advocacy content creation and peer-to-peer support reducing official support burden
  • Business pipeline contribution directly attributable to community advocacy and word-of-mouth growth
  • Product strategy decisions influenced by community insights and innovation patterns
  • Community retention and organic growth rates indicating self-sustaining ecosystem health
4

Principles

The hard-won lessons that separate successful community programs from the ones that just feel good but don't drive results

Recognition drives advocacy

Developers and program leaders crave platforms to showcase expertise and gain professional visibility. Create a win-win situation.

Persona segmentation is essential

Different user types need different community approaches and engagement strategies. Who's the buyer? Who's the primary user? How is it implemented?

Competition reveals innovation

Gamified experiences uncover creative problem-solving approaches that inform product development. Putting up challenges to the community can be a fun way to encourage cooperation and fun competition.

Community feedback informs strategy

Engaged communities become your best product advisors and market intelligence source. They already love your product/platform... help your product get even better while helping them in the process.

Ready to Build Your Community?

Start with any stage that aligns with your current community maturity. Each stage provides detailed guidance for systematic implementation that drives measurable business outcomes.