Community management helps you build trust, loyalty, and connection with your audience. It’s also how you make sure your audience gets the most out of what you offer them.
Given its importance, I understand why engaging with your own communities can feel daunting—you likely don’t want to mess it up.
Not to fear. I did some online digging for this piece and found some excellent community management examples to share with you. They’re great inspiration, and give you an idea of how other brands have cultivated their own successful communities.
Community Management Examples
1. The Spot
The Spot is HubSpot’s online community dedicated to supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion among underrepresented professionals. All Black Collective is a community within The Spot for Black professionals.
In the image below, Kyle Foster, Senior Marketing Manager at HubSpot and member of The Spot Community Team, shares a post that asks members what they want to see in the community.
This kind of direct communication is a great example of community management.
Image Source
Why I Like This Community Management Example
I think Foster’s ask is a great example of audience-centric community management. He asks for explicit feedback, so any replies are a direct insight into what members want.
Any feedback he puts into action shows members that they’re listened to, their presence in the community is valued, and that community managers want members to get value from being in the community.
The Spot is also advertised as a supportive community for people traditionally left out of conversations, so Foster’s post only furthers the community mission by including people in the conversation.
How to Make This Your Own: The Spot’s audience-centric community management strategy bolsters member satisfaction. To do this yourself, I recommend exactly what Foster did: ask your members about their preferences and how you can help them and act on their feedback.
2. Spotify Ideas
Spotify Ideas community is a place for Spotify users to submit ideas and recommendations for future Spotify features.
Image Source
This forum is an excellent example of using community management for audience-led growth.
Why I Like This Community Management Example
Spotify’s Ideas community is meant to help drive product innovations based on the experience of people who use the product daily.
It also does a great job of generating excitement and encouraging participation with gamification-like rules. Members can vote for and comment on ideas they like, and ideas with more traction and activity are more likely to be sent to Spotify teams to review and incorporate into product updates.
How to Make This Your Own: Spotify is a big brand, so it can create a community specifically for pushing product innovation. I know this isn’t an option for everyone, but you can still create opportunities to solicit feedback about your product or service.
A few methods I recommend are asking for feedback on a website forum (if you have one), sharing feedback surveys in email newsletters, and soliciting feedback in comment sections — these are all ways to get the information you need to drive innovation.
3. Topicals
Topicals is one of my favorite skincare brands.
Its products help and I appreciate its commitment to helping people understand the science behind its products and why they work.
It’s very active on social media and does a great job of using comment sections to provide support. The image below is an example of one of those interactions.
Image Source
Why I Like This Community Management Example
In the image above, Topicals answered a question in the comments, a good example of support as a community management tool.
First, it showed that it’s committed to helping people succeed with its products and will answer questions when asked.
Second, its response helps the original asker and anyone else browsing its profile with the same question get closer to a purchase decision.
Even if people don’t have that same question, they’re learning that the comment section is a great resource for information and probably a quicker way to get support before potentially reaching out via DM or filing a help ticket.
How to Make This Your Own: To get like Topicals, do exactly like Topicals. Actively engage with people in your comment sections and try to answer questions. I recommend keeping your responses live (unless you make product changes) so anyone who browses can benefit from the support you’ve already offered.
4. Hunter Harris
Hunter Harris is a journalist, screenwriter, podcaster, and pop culture connoisseur. Her newsletter, Hung Up, is essays, interviews, reviews, gossip, recommendations — anything she’s hung up on.
She also offers the Hung Up chat for real-time conversation about newsletter content and trending topics. In the email pictured below, Harris expertly draws attention to the chat and converts people with a sense of urgency: the latest episode just came out; let’s talk about it.
Image Source
Why I Like This Community Management Example
I think Harris’ Hung Up chat is a great example of cultivating engagement within a community based on a shared interest, which happens to be Harris’ takes on pop culture, television, news, etc.
Yes, reading a personal newsletter can feel like a conversation, but the chat lets people have actual conversations and engage with other Hung Up fans and Harris herself. Everyone participating in the conversation has a shared interest and is eager to hear more of what Harris has to say.
The chat also helps Harris keep people coming back. Most TV shows have weekly episode releases, and pop culture moments are fleeting, so the only way to stay current is to be active in the chat.
How to Make This Your Own: To follow in Hariss’s footsteps, create opportunities for your community to engage and have real-time discussions. You can create chat rooms like she did, encourage interaction on your social media channels (like a Facebook group), or use any of your branded channels that allow for discussion.
My top tip is to encourage engagement if you’re looking for it. As Harris does, set the topic of conversation and tell your audiences that you want to hear their takes, too. When people interact, they’ll deepen the connections they have with you, as well as the other members they communicate with.
5. Apple
Apple Support Community is a place for people to submit questions about Apple products and services and for extremely knowledgeable brand enthusiasts to answer them. People can vote on the helpfulness of solutions, ensuring that the forum is filled with genuine help for those who need it.
It’s a great example of community-led community management.
Image Source
Why I Like This Community Management Example
Interaction between members is critical to any online community, which is why I like Apple’s approach.
People are already passionate about Apple’s products, and it leverages that passion to create a self-sufficient community of experts eager to have conversations about Apple and support others who have questions about their products.
One of the main reasons it’s so successful and requires little intervention from Apple employees is that members earn points based on their activity. Helpful answers and solutions earn more points. Points rank people at different levels, and higher levels mean more trusted experts.
For example, a Level 10 member with more than 200,000 points (like the profile pictured below) is a trusted source of information.
Image Source
Earning points and leveling up also guarantees engagement, as people seeking expert status are excited to return, answer questions, and earn points that give them access to exclusive perks.
How to Make This Your Own: Yes, Apple has dedicated fans like no other, but most brands still have loyal supporters (even if it’s a smaller group). I recommend identifying your most loyal customers and creating opportunities for them to support other customers.
If you have the means to create a separate forum for community-led support, you can replicate Apple’s exact strategy.
However, I also recommend something as simple as asking a loyal customer for their top tip and circulating that in your marketing materials or creating case studies/customer stories that spotlight fans and their advice for getting the most out of your product.
6. Popheads
Popheads has a subreddit dedicated to pop music discussions. It occasionally invites artists to the forum to host AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions to interact with fans and generate excitement.
It’s a great example of using exclusivity and engagement as a community management tool.
Why I Like This Community Management Example
Chappell Roan is an artist who did an AMA session on the subreddit.
Image Source
Given that she has a large fan base that was likely eager to interact with her and build connections, the exclusivity of an AMA and the potential to have their questions answered drew people in.
The session generated excitement, especially for people who got responses, and also built loyalty as people were likely eager to come back to take advantage of any other exclusive opportunities to interact with famous artists.
Image Source
How to Make This Your Own: If you offer something that could benefit from exclusivity, use it to your advantage when cultivating your community. I know that having a budget for celebrities isn’t common, but they’re usually not needed.
For example, you can host exclusive events or opportunities for select members or work with micro-influencers to create unique moments for community engagement.
Hype gets people talking and can encourage people who haven’t been able to take part to do what they can to be chosen next time.
7. Canva Communities
Canvassadors is Canva’s community-led management strategy.
Every community has Canvassadors responsible for moderation, facilitating events, educating members, and inspiring conversation. Canvassadors are elected, which gives them legitimacy among members.
Why I Like This Community Management Example
I like Canva’s approach to community management for the same reason I like Apple’s: it’s a community for Canva users and enthusiasts to talk, help each other out, and get more use out of the platform.
True fans who love the product advocate for it and, since they use it themselves, know how to educate people on how to use it.
How to Make This Your Own: If it makes sense for your brand, my top tip for making Canva’s community-led management strategy your own is creating an ambassador program for your business.
Your ambassadors can act as brand champions, and you can work with them to advocate for your brand, initiate discussions, and build your community.
Over to You
I’ve just reviewed a few great community management examples from brands that I like. Taking inspiration from them is a great way to get started managing your own community.
Pick what you like best from what they’ve done, relate it to your own business, and start engaging; your loyal fans are eager to interact with you.