Community of Product vs Community of Practice
Organize people around mastering a practice, not merely supporting a product.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 99%
The Community of Product vs Community of Practice model distinguishes two fundamentally different reasons for customers to gather. A community of product is organized around a specific tool: members ask how-to questions, solve implementation problems, and reduce support demand. A community of practice is organized around the work itself. Members exchange strategies, learn how peers perform the job, compare approaches, and select tools as only one component of execution. The decision rule is whether the community’s value disappears when the product is removed. If it does, the company probably has a product-support community. To build a more durable community, broaden the value proposition to education, peer expertise, and improvement of the underlying practice while preserving appropriate product help.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain during a discussion of community-first Web3 companies and how their methods may influence Web2 marketing.
Core principles
- 01A community of product centers on product-specific support.
- 02A community of practice centers on how members perform their work.
- 03Peer learning creates value independent of a particular tool.
- 04Broader educational value produces a more durable community.
How to run it
- 1
Name the Practice
Define the job, craft, or discipline that customers are trying to master beyond using the company’s product.
Pro tip Use the language practitioners use to describe their work.
Watch out Do not define the practice so narrowly that it becomes another product category.
- 2
Separate Support From Learning
Distinguish product troubleshooting from strategic, peer-led, and profession-wide learning needs.
Pro tip Maintain clear spaces or formats for each type of interaction.
Watch out Allowing support tickets to dominate will crowd out broader participation.
- 3
Map Tool-Agnostic Problems
Identify decisions, workflows, and challenges that persist regardless of which software members use.
Pro tip Interview experienced practitioners about recurring judgment calls.
Watch out Do not force the product into every discussion.
- 4
Enable Peer Exchange
Create formats in which members teach, compare strategies, and help each other execute the practice.
Pro tip Elevate useful member contributions rather than making the company the sole expert.
Watch out A one-way content channel does not create a community of practice.
- 5
Connect Product Appropriately
Show how the product supports the practice without making product adoption a condition of community value.
Pro tip Introduce product education where it naturally supports member goals.
Watch out Aggressive selling can damage trust and reduce peer participation.
In the wild
A marketing software company expands its community beyond setup questions. Members compare campaign strategy, execution methods, measurement approaches, and tool selection while retaining a separate area for product support.
→ The community becomes useful to practitioners even before they purchase the software.
Common mistakes
Relabeling the Support Forum
Changing the community’s name without changing its interactions does not create a community of practice.
Making Every Topic Product-Led
Members will perceive educational discussions as sales content if every conversation points back to the tool.
Ignoring Peer Expertise
A company-controlled teaching model prevents members from developing relationships and shared ownership.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for companies serving identifiable professions, crafts, disciplines, or recurring business practices.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when customers share no meaningful practice or reason to learn from one another.
From the transcript
“We talk about two types of community. We talk about community of product, which is I think how people thought about community in the last…”
“What's happening now is we're moving in the next generation of the web, community of practice is going to be more important.”
“So how people actually do their job agnostic of any tools and how people can learn from their peers to build the best strategy, to…”
From the episode
‘Half-Baked Marketing Ideas’ with Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan
Kipp Bodnar