Community Acquisition Channels: Beyond "Build It and They Will Come"

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In a blog post titled “Community Acquisition Channels: Beyond ‘Build It and They Will Come’,” mae argues that successful community growth requires a deliberate acquisition strategy rather than relying on the assumption that users will naturally appear. The post highlights the “Field of Dreams Fallacy,” noting that reaching the first 100 active members is often harder than scaling later. Key strategies include defining an Ideal Member Profile based on motivations and values, distinguishing between acquisition, activation, and retention, and using content marketing to attract participants rather than just readers. Mae emphasizes that culture must take precedence over vanity metrics and that acquisition tactics must evolve from personal outreach in early stages to systematic loops at scale.

In the comments, melody_maker asked why Facebook was not mentioned as a promotion channel. mae clarified there was no specific reason against it, advising users to go where their ideal members already spend time, which for many hobby or local communities is Facebook. satonotdead praised the article’s focus on sustainable development. In response to a prompt from mae, satonotdead requested future content on growth strategies for niche/self-hosted communities, leveraging Discourse AI for retention (such as summaries and semantic search), real case studies from small communities, and insights into how Discourse’s internal teams collaborate.

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Too many communities are launched with the “if you build it, they will come” mindset, only to find empty discussion boards and disengaged members. Successful community growth doesn’t happen by accident. You need a deliberate acquisition strategy that goes beyond vanity numbers and focuses on attracting the right people. 

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://blog.discourse.org/2025/10/community-acquisition-channels-beyond-build-it-and-they-will-come
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Blog posts would be nicer if authored by an identifiable person
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Good article. I am interested in using social media to promote my forum. I could use LinkedIn. I noticed you didn’t mention Facebook. Is there any reason why?

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Thanks!

No particular reason. The key is to go where your ideal members already spend their time, and for many communities (especially hobby and local ones) that’s Facebook.

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I understand and agree with everything that has been published. It takes time to internalize it, but in the end, it is the only thing that yields positive results for community and sustainable development.

Thank you for publishing and sharing this. It is always a pleasure to learn about perspectives from marketing teams at companies like Discourse.

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Thank you! Are there any other topics or types of content you’d like to see from the Discourse team?

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Good question, Mae. A few things I’d love to see:

  • Growth for niche and self-hosted communities: acquisition when we can’t rely on big social platforms, or our audience deliberately avoids them.
  • Using Discourse AI for retention, not just moderation: daily summaries, translations into minority languages, semantic search over community knowledge. Custom integrations.
  • Real case studies from small communities: what worked, what didn’t, with live cases and numbers.
  • How your own teams work: how they’re organized and where they connect day to day (marketing, product, community, engineering). Honestly, I’m curious about this one, and I completely understand if that’s internal by design.

I’ve been running and customizing a community on Discourse for a while, and I’m happy to share our experience if it’s ever useful.

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