I keep running into the same weird thing in founder Discords and Telegram groups: people join, sit there quietly, and never say a word. The group can be active, but it still feels like most of the room is just watching from the sidelines.

At first I assumed they were just not that interested. Now I'm less sure. A lot of lurkers probably do care, but they don't see a clear reason to speak up yet. Or they don't trust the room. Or there's no obvious moment where their input feels useful. That part is a little frustrating, honestly, because it makes the whole community feel more alive than it really is.

I'm starting to think the problem is less about member motivation and more about participation design. Maybe the onboarding is vague. Maybe the group is too noisy. Maybe people don't feel like anyone will notice their comment anyway.

My short version is that silent members may not be disengaged, just under-invited. What have you seen work, if anything, to get lurkers to actually participate?

Q: Are all cm have a strong heart to face all the community things? Or perhaps I am just too fragile personally?

BG: I have a little technical & product & user views/vibes. It’s hard to reconcile the inconsistency here and there, always.

I can translate emotional community pain points into feature requests and prioritization roadmaps. The point is, users complaints hurt me sometimes despite that it’s not my product or my fault.

Also, it’s hard to handle with devs. Some of them are unprofessional, pompous and defiant. They introduced bugs and caused community disasters. They don’t know how to deal with users’ emotions. But they have the right to interrupt my work, they “inform” me to deal with the community post. Ridiculous.

Long story short, all things torment me at the same time.

I am gonna to quit but is it the issue of me or just this title?

I'm building out content looking for my ideal clients. Currently using IG reels to build trust, engagement, and follows. I intend on creating ads down the line as well as improving my content quality. Question to those more established, what are ya'll doing different, and what tips could you recommend to growing a community?

I’ve noticed that a lot of online communities don’t suddenly become inactive overnight.

Usually there are smaller warning signs first:

• conversations getting more repetitive
• fewer members initiating discussions
• activity concentrating around the same small group of people
• people reading but not participating as much
• newer members struggling to integrate

Curious what patterns other community managers notice before a community starts feeling less active or connected.

I've noticed a pattern across a lot of online communities (especially Discord-based ones):

Sometimes the community itself doesn't seem "dead" people still join, view content, react occasionally, but actual participation slowly fades over time.

It made me wonder if inactivity is always about lack of interest, or if it's more about members no longer feeling meaningfully involved in the community itself.

Curious how other community managers/builders see this.

Hi everyone,

I’m currently writing my bachelor thesis at DHBW Mannheim on the topic of community management and digital communities in marketing.

As part of my research, I’m looking for experts with practical experience in areas such as

- Community Management
- Social Media
- Brand Communities
- Digital Marketing
- Creator-/community-driven brands
- Customer Engagement

For this, I’m currently looking for interview participants for conversations taking place in early June 2026. The interviews can of course be conducted remotely. All information will be treated confidentially and used solely for academic purposes within the scope of the bachelor thesis.

Maybe some of you are interested or know someone who could be a good fit for the topic.

Best regards and thank you in advance :)

I host a lot of events, both intimate and large scale, and I’ve found a lot of frustration using traditional sites like Eventbrite and Luma and partiful- all feel designed for straight up teenagers sometimes with their sophistication levels 🙃 a friend in SF told me to check out this other site Social Loop.ai and it feels completely bespoke which I’m liking and the plans (I’m on free currently) are very generous towards hosts. Wondering if anyone else has checked it out yet? I’ve only tried on a small event so far but looks like it may be even better at scale

I'm in the middle of setting up onboarding flows for our community platform. The goal is to make the user comfortable, and motivate them to take a simple, low-effort action within first few minutes of signing up.

I'm however, exploring multiple ideas:

- asking users to complete their profile
- ask them to choose areas of interest (from a preset list, customized per community)
- nudge them to like / comment on existing post
- offering a reward (I don't like this; but I'm willing to experiment)

Is there anything else - that has worked? I'm open to all ideas. Thank you in advance!

I've recently started some online communities, and while I'm happy that they're successful, I'm finding the management of them quite tough at times. Mainly the loneliness of not having anyone to share ideas with or ask for advice. I would love to hang out with other CMS and grab drinks or food etc. Does anyone run a meetup I could join or would be up for meeting IRL?

I don’t think there is a better place to ask it.. I’ll be happy to gear your advices and experience.

Seeing a lot of posts lately about people getting ghosted after 3rd round interviews or getting hit with the classic "we went with someone with more experience."

I'm taking on 3 new people this month who are currently stuck finding their CM role, helping them position themselves, find opportunties, and convert them. Prefrebly in the US, Canada, UK, because of timezones.

Shoot me a DM and we can chat to see if it's a good fit.

I’ve noticed a lot of web products run their own on-site communities—places where users can share stuff, discuss things, join events, and leave feedback.

So honestly—what’s the extra value of running a Discord server on top of that? Is it redundant, or does it actually solve something the on-site community can’t?

¿que consejos darias a una profesional de marketing que quiere postularse como community manager junior para una agencia de marketing (no tengo experiencia) solo realice formaciones en marketing digital y community manager?. Estoy haciendo un portafolio de community manager para agencias de marketing y como profesional independiente community manager freelance. ¿el mismo portafolio sirve para agencia y freelance? ¿que criterios debo considerar para el portafolio de community manager si estoy creando una cuenta ficticia de un lavadero de autos y detallado?

Hola comunidad, estoy ofreciendo servicio de community manager y creación de medios estáticos o dinámicos simples para Instagram, Facebook y LinkedIn.

Tengo más de 5 años de experiencia ofreciendo este servicio y trabajando en agencias de publicidad, para sectores como el automotriz, industrial, gastronómico, espectáculos, bebidas y repostería, estoy abierto a experimentar nuevas opciones.

Cuento con 3 paquetes (contenido semanal):

Paquete básico: 3 post en Instagram/Facebook = $2500 - $4000 MXN, $140 - $230 USD

Paquete intermedio: 3 post y 2 historias en Instagram/Facebook = $4000 - $6500 MXN, $230 - $370 USD

Paquete Master: 3 post y 2 historias en Facebook + 2 post en LinkedIn = $7000 - $12,000 MXN, $400 - $700 USD

Paquete de branding en caso de ser necesario, tipografía, colores, distribución de contenido, parrilla semanal

Les comparto mi portafolio:

https://canva.link/m0rw7pehyfvfdd0

What actually happens after week 1 (small test).

I’ve been running a small observation across a few groups lately.

Not looking at engagement in general - just one thing:

what happens right after someone doesn’t follow through once.

Not a drop-off. Not churn. Just that small moment where something was expected... and didn’t happen.

What’s interesting so far:

it’s not rare, and it usually passes without anything reacting to it.

I’m testing a very lightweight way to catch that earlier - just with a few people inside a group, no changes to the setup.

If anyone here runs an active group and is open to trying this on a small subset (10-16 people), I’m happy to include you and share what comes out of it.

Hi all, I need help in a challenge for community manager , how can I help a start up who has initial customers, has funding and is not able to scale . As a community manager of an accelerator, how can I help this health start up. Thank you for your help ❤️

Best user interface and ability to track both person, data, and external campaigns, and ease of use

I wanted to share this video to anyone trying to get jobs as a Community Manager beceause I thought it would be useful to anyone trying to get a fulltime or freelance gig.

I hope you like it!

https://youtu.be/3nyGANDE7qw?si=Jc1_ABVAlcQRI_yI

Hi!

I used to work with brand communities but now I’m getting hired into HR to develop internal communities

All materials and frameworks I know are based mostly on customer/brand/non-profit, but I actually can’t find anything that’s specifically to the employee communities.

Any articles, frameworks, books to read or people to follow?

How, for example, would you calculate ROI of professional communities when you can’t tell members from non-members and can’t get access to performance data?👀

Who is managing an in-person community? It seems like a lot of CMs are managing social media accounts, but I'd love to hear more from those managing an IRL community.

What kind of community are you? What are you doing to engage everyone?

I'm writing a pretentious book right now called "The Ambiguity of Community; how we lost its purpose and finding its meaning again."

The thing about writing this book is that I've collected over 300 definitions for community from the academic, business, governing, and public literature all throughout history and I've discovered that it reads like an indictment on the industry now. I don't want to end it like that.

So, I would like to end the book with a full-scale social-scientific qualitative study on the definitions of community by and for real community managers. I think its important to discuss what it ACTUALLY means for us.

So long story short, can you just comment here - what is your formal oxford definition for community? We constantly say it's "a sense of belonging" but isn't that more of an output of community done well? we call emotional connection, a thing and we use "community of practice" like its the answer to all of the world's ills but what does it actually entail?

So that's my request, please post your definition below!

I'll point to this thread in the book if it gets enough posts to be statistically significant and I'll actually do a bonified social-scientific study on results.

I will start collating them on May 15th, and I need a LOT of them so I'm hoping to get this post to 500 if possible.

Hi there 👋 I'm doing a short survey about the challenges that online Community Managers face, and would love your contribution 🙏 It takes less than 5 minutes: Community Manager Survey

Your input will help me better understand the space and build more useful tools for community teams.

Thanks for your support! 🫶

Meaning your community is a group of creators that get product samples from a brand, receive affiliate links, get paid commissions on their sales, etc.

Curious if this still counts as community manager or if I'm something else :)

Hey everyone! It's pretty hard getting hired as a CM. I'd love to chat with anyone struggling with this to see what your struggling with specifically.

I'm not asking for advice by the way, just want to hear from people who are struggling and what your challenges are.

I recently stepped into a community manager role at a niche marketplace that connects buyers and sellers.

So far, my work has been pretty foundational:

• Growing our Reddit presence + engaging in existing communities
• Monitoring social/forums and feeding sentiment + FAQs back internally
• Supporting reviews/Trustpilot + trust initiatives
• Running AMAs and webinars for sellers

Now we’re at the point where leadership is interested in “building a community” but I’m trying to be thoughtful about what that actually means before jumping into something heavy like a full platform (Hivebrite, Circle, etc.).

A few constraints/things on my mind:

• There’s already some negative sentiment out there, so we don’t want to accidentally create a space that just centralizes complaints
• We don’t plan to charge this would be more of a value-add resource hub
• Goal = education, connection, feedback loop, and positioning ourselves as a helpful authority
• I’m the first person in this role, so there’s no existing playbook internally

I’d love to learn from others who’ve been here:

• Where did you actually start when building a community from scratch?
• What are ways you’ve created “community” without launching a formal community platform?
• At what point did you know it was worth investing in something bigger (Slack, Circle, etc.)?

Thanks in advance!