Community as a Product  ## Metadata - Author: [[Emily Omier]] - Full Title: Community as a Product - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #communitymanagement - #productmindset - #open-source Author: Emily Omier Source: Blog/Website Reference: https://www.emilyomier.com/blog/community-as-a-product date created: 2025-08-23 00:00 --- # Title: Community as a Product — A Product Management Lens for Building Thriving Communities ## Table of Contents: - 🗺️ Overview - 📝 Summary - 📖 Main Content - 🗒️ Notes - 📖 References - 🗣️ Paraphrase - 📰 Newsletter - ✅ Action Items - 🧪 Hypotheses - 📊 Methodology - ❓ Questions - 🔮 Future Research - 💡 Implications - 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - 📊 Accessibility Assessment - 🌍 DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) Assessment - ✅ Logical validity - 🔍 DARVO Analysis - 🔍 SEO Evaluation - 🎯 Conclusion ### References: - Emily Omier, “Community as a product” — https://www.emilyomier.com/blog/community-as-a-product - Community Leadership Summit (context for the unconference session) ## 📝 Summary: The article argues that communities should be treated and managed like products. Adopting a product mindset helps teams define the community’s purpose, the ideal member, value proposition, and competitive alternatives. It also insists on organizational clarity: what is the community supposed to do for the company? Without this, measuring progress and iterating becomes guesswork. In short: define pain points, ideal members, differentiated value, alternatives/competition, and organizational outcomes—then plan with roadmaps and marketing as you would any product. Direct quotes: - “Does your community have a roadmap? A marketing effort? Are you clear on what value people get out of being involved in your community…?” - “If you are really serious about your community, it’s a good idea to approach it as if it were another product in your product suite…” - “You should also know what your community is supposed to do for you… If you don’t know what you want from your community, it’s going to be hard to track progress and iterate to improve results.” ## 📖 Main Content: The piece frames community building with core product management concepts: - Treat the community as a product in the organization’s product suite (alongside the OSS project and commercial offerings). - Use PM artifacts: a community roadmap, marketing plan, and positioning. - Clarify “jobs-to-be-done” for members: what pain points does membership solve beyond using the project? - Define the ideal community member persona, which may differ from the ideal product user. - Map the community value proposition against “competition” (other communities, platforms, events, or passive alternatives like staying independent). - Align community outcomes with business objectives (e.g., contributor growth, support deflection, product feedback, market credibility, brand evangelism, pipeline influence). - Measure and iterate: without explicit goals, you can’t track progress or improve. Personal reflections: - Viewing community as a product sharpens prioritization: it forces trade-offs and stage-appropriate investment (e.g., discovery vs. growth). - Roadmaps reduce ad-hoc event chasing; they enable programmatic experiments, A/B testing formats, and consistent value delivery. - Positioning the community against alternatives helps articulate why join and stay, improving retention and advocacy. - For OSS, separating “ideal contributor” from “ideal user” unlocks tailored onboarding and mentorship tracks. ### 🗒️ Notes - Product mindset for community: - Community as a product within a suite (OSS + commercial + community). - Requires explicit positioning, messaging, and planning. - Core questions to define: - Pain points addressed by membership beyond product usage. - Ideal community member vs. ideal OSS user. - Value proposition: functional (answers, code review), social (belonging), career (signal), learning (mentorship), influence (roadmaps). - Competitive set: other communities, Slack/Discords, Stack Overflow, conferences, social media groups, “no community.” - Operational practices: - Community roadmap with milestones, themes (onboarding, engagement, recognition). - Marketing plan: acquisition channels, messaging, campaigns, lifecycle emails. - Metrics: activation (joining → first meaningful action), engagement (DAU/WAU/MAU), retention cohorts, contribution velocity, support deflection, NPS, program ROI. - Organizational alignment: - Define desired outcomes (support, product feedback, brand, hiring, sales assist). - Tie programs to outcomes; review quarterly for iteration. ## 📖 References: - Emily Omier, Community as a product — https://www.emilyomier.com/blog/community-as-a-product - Community Leadership Summit (session context) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1) Original idea: “Approach [community] as if it were another product in your product suite… understand pain points, ideal community member… value… and what your community is ‘competing’ against.” Paraphrase: Manage your community like any other product: clarify the problems it solves, the member profile you serve best, why it’s uniquely valuable, and the alternatives people might choose instead. 2) Original idea: “You should also know what your community is supposed to do for you… If you don’t know what you want from your community, it’s going to be hard to track progress and iterate…” Paraphrase: Be explicit about the business outcomes you expect from the community. Without defined goals, you can’t measure success or improve your approach. ## 📰 Newsletter: This week in Web & WordPress: Learning paths, fresh tools, and community wins! - Learn web dev smarter: Whether you’re wrangling PHP hooks or leveling up your JavaScript, start with tiny, shippable projects—think “one Gutenberg block a week” or “one REST endpoint today.” Consistency beats complexity. - Core & ecosystem updates: Keep an eye on recent Gutenberg improvements and performance gains—small changes, big UX payoffs. For plugin tinkerers, test beta releases in a staging site and share feedback early. - Community highlights: New contributors are rocking first PRs in Documentation and Core-Performance. If you’re curious, join your local Meetup or hop into Make WordPress Slack—there’s a lane for every skill set. - New plugins to try: - Performance profiler dashboards to spot slow queries. - Accessibility checkers that integrate into your CI. - Content workflows with native editorial checklists. - Pro tip: Treat your community work like product work—write a mini roadmap for your user group or Discord. What problems does it solve? Who is it for? What value keeps people returning? Got a resource to share? Reply with your favorite learning link—or your spiciest “why is this CSS specificity like this?” story. Useful links: - Make WordPress: https://make.wordpress.org - Gutenberg updates: https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/gutenberg/ ## ✅ Action Items: Tailored prompt for alignment with your role and goals: “Using a product-mindset lens, analyze how this article informs: - Open-source advocacy: Identify how the community’s value proposition advances sustainability, governance, and transparent decision-making within WordPress. - Contributor engagement: Map the ideal contributor persona(s), onboarding pathways, and retention levers; propose a community roadmap with measurable activation and retention targets. - Education and instructional design: Derive learning objectives, microlearning modules, and mentorship tracks that translate community value into skill acquisition (PHP/JS/HTML/CSS/Git). - OSPO trajectory: Specify policies, metrics, and cross-functional alignments (legal, security, marketing, product) an OSPO would own to support community outcomes. - Transparency and inclusivity: Define reporting cadences, public dashboards, and DEIB-aligned practices for equitable recognition and funding. - WordPress ecosystem focus: Show how recommendations fit contributor teams (Core, Docs, Training), event programs, and plugin/theme maintainers. Output: a one-page brief with KPIs, a three-quarter community roadmap, risks/mitigations, and a stakeholder RACI—all tied to measurable business and community outcomes.” ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - H1: Communities with explicit roadm - Summary: Thinking about your community as a product can be a valuable approach for community managers. While some already take a product-oriented approach, many have never considered this perspective. Treating your community as a product allows you to better plan community initiatives, understand the pain points it solves, identify your ideal community member, and determine the value your community provides. It is also important to clarify what you expect your community to do for your company, as not every company has the same goals. Without a clear understanding of what you want from your community, it will be challenging to track progress and make improvements. - URL: https://www.emilyomier.com/blog/community-as-a-product Does your community have a roadmap? A marketing effort? Are you clear on what value people get out of being involved in your community, above and beyond what value they get out of using your project? I led an unconference session at the Community Leadership Summit about thinking about your community as a product, which is to me the most natural way to think about it. It turns out I’m not the only one, which is cool. Here were some takeaways: * Indeed, there are community managers who have a very product-oriented approach to their communities, but they are not the majority * A fair number of people who came do things like have creating a community roadmap and marketing plan but had never thought of the community as a product — and felt like doing so would really help them both plan community initiatives and think about how they run the community If you are really serious about your community, it’s a good idea to approach it as if it were another product in your product suite (remember, you already have your open source project and at least one commercial offering, so it’s a suite). That means getting fundamentals like understanding the pain points the community solves, who your ideal community member is (which could very well be difference from the ideal user of your OSS project), what value your community is solving for your members, and what your community is ‘competing’ against. Just as important, though: You should also know what your community is supposed to do for you. Not every company wants the same thing out of its community. If you don’t know what you want from your community, it’s going to be hard to track progress and iterate to improve results., Community as a Product, Emily Omier, 01he2wwq9h0j6wrg9h0aj0cn7d.