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.
