Best Of

Every community has a handful of members who consistently step up by answering questions, sharing knowledge, welcoming newcomers, and modeling the behaviors you want others to follow. A powerful way to strengthen your community is to formally recognize these standout contributors as leaders.

❓️Why this matters

Elevating helpful members isn’t just a nice gesture, it’s a strategic move that improves the community for everyone. Bringing your most active, excited, and knowledgeable members into a community leadership program will:

• Recognize, reward, and encourage their contributions: Active members often put in significant time engaging with others, researching answers, or identifying resources to share. Recognition shows you notice and value their effort, and will encourage them to continue to engage, help, and support others.
  
• Create consistent peer-to-peer support: The majority of the peer answers and user-generated content will come from a small number of members in your community. Recognizing them and engaging with them directly will help to keep the answers in your community coming consistently.
  
• Reinforce positive norms and behaviors: Recognized leaders naturally influence culture by demonstrating how to participate effectively. These members can also remind others of the rules of engagement or your code of conduct when needed.
  
• Inspire others: Public recognition signals that leadership is accessible, motivating more members to contribute. You want to make these leaders highly visible, as something other members can aspire to. Note: It’s also important to rotate or add a few new members on a regular basis (quarterly, semi-annually, or yearly) to both have fresh voices in leadership and to help other members feel like it’s something they will have an opportunity to be part of if they want to.
  
• Augment your team: Most community teams are small; empowering end-users who can help to keep an eye on things in the community, remind users of the rules of engagement, or alert community managers to spam attacks or bad actors can be critical in effectively managing your community as it grows.

➡️ How to do it

• Create a lightweight “Community Leaders” or “Champions” program with clear criteria: helpfulness, accuracy, friendliness, consistency.
  
• Use visible markers, such as badges, titles, or profile highlights, so other members know who these leaders are.
  
• Connect with this group on a regular basis via consistent meetings, a private discussion group, or whatever works best for them. Find out what they think is working well in the community – and what isn’t – so that you can improve things with their insight.
  
• Invite leaders into occasional feedback loops or early-access discussions. Offer “Town Hall” type meetings and share what’s coming for the community or anything going on at your organization or with their product that they are interested in. These activities become the benefits of participating, give them helpful context and information to bring into their responses to other users, and create a sense of ownership and loyalty.
  
• Celebrate them publicly in posts or newsletters. Spotlight a leader, share why they were chosen, and offer a genuine thank-you. Take these recognitions beyond the community – feature them in social media, at events, or wherever makes sense for your organization.

💥 The takeaway

Recognizing your most active and helpful members as leaders transforms them from participants into partners. It builds trust, distributes expertise, and fosters a culture where members support each other, strengthening your community from the inside out.

Hi @marygreencnyinfor - thank you for your question! I'm sure that some of the amazing community managers here will have some great insights but I wanted to share some ideas based on our experience.

Scaling community across 50+ products is an exciting challenge — and one we’re seeing more organizations encounter as community becomes a strategic part of the customer experience. There’s no single “right” model, but the companies that do this well tend to share a few common practices:

1. Build a Centralized Framework — Then Localize It

Instead of treating each product community as a one-off, create a consistent, scalable framework that all product areas can follow. This usually includes:

• Standardized community guidelines and moderation practices
• A repeatable onboarding and launch process for new spaces
• Clear expectations for product teams (e.g., ownership, SME participation, cadence of updates)
• Shared templates for FAQs, announcements, and recurring content

This keeps quality high while still letting each product customize discussions, naming, and engagement strategies for their audience.

2. Organize Around Themes, Not Just Product Lines

With 50+ products, you’ll likely have overlap in user needs, workflows, and use cases. Many companies find success by grouping spaces into:

• Solution categories
• Audience roles (admin, developer, end-user, partner)
• Lifecycle stages (onboarding, advanced usage)

This helps prevent a sprawling, fragmented experience and encourages cross-product learning.

3. Create a Cross-Functional “Community Council”

At scale, community stops being “owned” by one team — it becomes a shared initiative. Mature organizations create a structure that:

• Includes representatives from each major product line
• Establishes communication loops with product, CX, support, and marketing
• Aligns community priorities with company-level initiatives
• Ensures each team understands their role in maintaining active, healthy spaces

This spreads ownership and prevents community from becoming a bottleneck.

💡 Use tools like Automation Rules to escalate posts to the appropriate team members without adding to your workload.

4. Invest in Strong Internal Enablement

Your internal teams need to know how to participate effectively. Common enablement resources include:

• Playbooks for responding in community vs. support channels
• Best-practice training for product SMEs
• Quarterly office hours for community contributors
• Role-based guidance on when and how to post

Companies that scale well treat internal enablement like an ongoing program, not a one-time initiative.

💡 Create a staff only Category or KB where you can collect SOPs and answer any internal questions.

💡 Use a Question widget to highlight an unanswered posts for your staff to help with:

5. Let Data Drive Your Scaling Plan

When you’re managing dozens of spaces, data helps you decide where to focus. Consider tracking:

• Engagement trends (active members, posts, answers)
• Time to first response / time to accepted answer
• Search topics with no good results
• Which spaces attract contributors without additional prompting

This helps you identify which communities should be expanded, consolidated, or redesigned.

6. Phase Your Growth Intentionally

Even if you’re past the “bite-sized” stage, you don’t need to launch everything at once. Many successful orgs scale like this:

1. Start with your highest-impact product groups.
2. Launch core community structures (Q&A, discussions, knowledge areas).
3. Establish ownership with product and other internal teams.
4. Collect insights and apply the playbook to the next set of products.

This phased approach ensures consistency without overwhelming internal teams.

7. Plan for Ongoing Governance

Finally, long-term success comes from visibility and governance. Companies that manage scale well often:

• Publish quarterly community health reports
• Revisit structure annually to consolidate or expand spaces
• Maintain product lifecycle flags (e.g., “sunset,” “legacy,” “new release”)
• Keep a centralized inventory of all community spaces and owners

This ensures everything stays aligned as products evolve.

I hope this helps, please let us know if you would like more details for any areas!