Building a Community in Customer Marketing: Top Advice for Beginners

Sandra Grauschopf · 2026-01-15T17:20:09.834Z

Have any of you built a community as part of your customer marketing role? If so, do you have a top piece of advice that you'd give to anyone starting from scratch?

Paola
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Cheyenne Robinson does a great job with the Tipalti Insiders community which is a Slack community for those who are in their customer advocacy program. It's considered a "perk" for those advocates to be able to interact with not only each other, but the product team and with the CMA team who provides them with advocacy opportunities.
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Amy
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Joel (Salesforce) shared this a few months back, might be useful! A comprehensive playbook for Community Launch (Guide from Brian Oblinger) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qEsTpoLZZoygWK66db3o1y9NUcSmgx3_WQUG8fPfHu0/edit?usp=drivesdk Tips: “Right size” it for your program type and company stage — don’t overcomplicate it if it’s not necessary. Go on an internal and external listening tour for your community program to gain insights to inform the build and programs run in it to add value to members. Have a very clear goal for it initially for what you want it to impact first then expand them over time. Add internal and external processes in place earlier than you would expect to help you later as it grows.
Sandra Grauschopf
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Fantastic! I'm thinking of a three-space community: One public (where we can promote events, publish information relevant to our TAM, etc), one for all customers (where I can post educational content), and one for the Advocacy group, which has perks like AMAs, access to the CAB, and more. But I'm still sketching everything out.
Nahdia Khan
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Understand what customer problem you are solving before you start. Community is a big investment, absolutely worthwhile, but a commitment to stick at it
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Sandra Grauschopf
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Amy Amazing, thank you!
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Sandra Grauschopf
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Nahdia Khan That's so true, and a reason why I'm stressing about it a bit 😄
Gabrielle Herrera
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I'm a customer marketer embedded on a community team
Nahdia Khan
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Map it out as a blueprint, cost the internal time to do all the things you say you want in the community and then decide what is most critical.
Sandra Grauschopf
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Excellen advice, Nahdia Khan, thank you!
Sandra Grauschopf
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Gabrielle Herrera Interesting, does that work smoothly for you? We have a community manager who will be working alongside me, which each of us managing different aspects of the community.
Joel (Salesforce)
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Make it valuable for people.
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Sandra Grauschopf
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Joel (Salesforce) Do you have any particular strategies you've used to make the Agentblazer community valuable?
Gabrielle Herrera
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Yes, I think it works very well. I don't oversee day to day moderation or content but work closely with a community manager and other program managers.
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Sandra Grauschopf
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Gabrielle Herrera I'm hoping to do something similar: Help guide strategy and build out community-focused programs without too much day-to-day upkeep, to help with time management.
Joel (Salesforce)
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An example I'd share is bringing our Agentforce release notes into the community, as well as sharing valuable content and related events with our members.
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