Community in GTM30
How to build and run the GTM30 community engine from zero by designing repeatable loops, measuring what matters, routing signals into product, and recruiting operators who can carry the system.
1. What community means
In GTM30, community is the persistent public surface where your users see how your team works, how your product moves, and how you listen. It replaces one-way marketing with visible, two-way interaction and produces data, trust, and compounding GTM assets.
Buyers increasingly trust visible humans over brands. Discovery happens in conversations, not ads. A healthy community is proof that real humans work here: staff are visible, answer quickly, admit mistakes, and share work-in-progress.
2. Bootstrap mode
Most companies fail because they try to launch a "full" community too early. Bootstrap mode is the GTM30 pattern for founders and small teams with no community staff.
Bootstrap rules
- Choose one surface only (LinkedIn comments, one subreddit, one Slack, one forum).
- Make it founder-led until repeatable activity appears.
- Spend 15 minutes daily responding publicly to real questions.
- Capture every question in a simple table (date, surface, ICP, topic, tags, link, status).
- Anything asked 3+ times becomes a resource (doc, Loom, template, pSEO page).
- Ship one small public "what we shipped / learned" update per week.
- Avoid launching your own Slack/Discord until demand is obvious and people ask for it.
Bootstrap goals
- Produce visible proof of life in public channels.
- Generate the first 50–100 genuine interactions.
- Build a predictable weekly cadence of show up → answer → log → convert.
3. Five operating loops
The GTM30 community engine runs on five loops that turn conversations into signals, assets, and trust.
Presence loop
- Staff show up publicly where it matters (owned and borrowed surfaces).
- Cadence is role-based, not ad hoc or personality-driven.
Signal loop
- Every significant thread is classified within 24 hours.
- Signals are tagged: bugs, feature requests, jobs-to-be-done, integration needs.
Conversion loop
- Repeated questions become docs, guides, or pSEO pages instead of new bespoke answers.
- All assets are linkable, indexable, and tied back to the original question.
Reliability loop
- Critical bugs are acknowledged publicly within 24 hours.
- Fix updates are posted back to the originating thread.
Personalization loop
- Community behavior modifies onboarding, messaging, and in-product guidance.
- Traits sync into your CRM and automation stack via stable tags.
4. What to avoid
- Launching more community spaces than you can maintain.
- Ghostwriting all staff presence so no real humans are visible.
- Treating community as a support hotline only.
- Slow response times and unclosed loops on critical threads.
- No conversion of repeated topics into durable assets.
5. Proof
Community case study coming soon. This section will feature a real example of how a company built a community engine using GTM30.