community-forum

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from when this skill was listed. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: community-forum
description: When the user wants to promote via forums, communities, or invite users to join a community. Also use when the user mentions "forum promotion," "Indie Hacker," "Hacker News," "community growth," "Discord promotion," "vertical community," "brand encyclopedia," "Wikipedia," "Quora," "Reddit community," "community building," "forum marketing," or "community invite." For Reddit copy, use reddit-posts. For strategy, use integrated-marketing.
metadata:
  version: 1.1.1
---

# Channels: Community & Forum Promotion

Guides forum promotion, community invitation, and vertical community marketing. Community-led growth (CLG) costs ~90% less than paid acquisition with ~3.2x higher customer LTV. Indie Hackers delivers ~23% conversion vs Product Hunt ~3%; HN and Reddit require sustained engagement. For cold start planning (first users, launch channels), see **cold-start-strategy**. For indie hacker strategy (first 100 users, Build in Public content framework, Indie Hackers tactics), see **indie-hacker-strategy**.

**When invoking**: On **first use**, if helpful, open with 1-2 sentences on what this skill covers and why it matters, then provide the main output. On **subsequent use** or when the user asks to skip, go directly to the main output.

## Initial Assessment

**Check for project context first:** If `.claude/project-context.md` or `.cursor/project-context.md` exists, read it for product, audience, and brand voice.

Identify:
1. **Goal**: Leads, community growth, brand awareness
2. **Platform fit**: Indie Hacker, HN, Reddit, Discord, vertical forums
3. **Timeline**: One-time launch vs sustained (4-6 months for Indie Hackers)

## Forum Types

| Platform | Audience | Use |
|----------|----------|-----|
| **Indie Hacker** | Indie makers, founders | Sustained engagement; authentic journey posts; ~23% conversion vs PH 3% |
| **Hacker News** | Tech, startups | Show HN launch; ~1,300 posts/day; front page = luck + timing |
| **Hackernoon** | Dev, tech readers | Content distribution |
| **Industry forums** | Niche verticals | Discount codes for leads; search "[industry] forum"; post event/activity promotion; see **discount-marketing-strategy** for code strategy |
| **Reddit** | Subreddit-specific | See **reddit-posts**; 90/10 rule; 29+ posts for traction |
| **Discourse (self-hosted forum)** | Community-specific | Owned forum; full SEO/GEO control; see Discourse SEO section below |

## Discourse (Self-Hosted Forum) SEO

If you run a Discourse forum (or similar self-hosted forum), SEO/GEO considerations differ from posting on third-party platforms:

| Practice | Guideline |
|----------|-----------|
| **Guest access** | Allow anonymous reading for categories meant to attract traffic; login-only mode severely limits indexed pages |
| **Topic structure** | First post carries SEO weight; write clear titles and substantive opening posts; avoid fragmented short topics |
| **Sitemap & robots** | Discourse generates sitemaps automatically; monitor in GSC as a separate property (subdomain or subdirectory) |
| **Content quality** | Merge duplicates, mark resolved threads, surface FAQ topics—forum-level quality signals affect crawl and citation |
| **GEO** | Structured topic titles and well-formed opening posts are extractable by AI tools; forum format with timelines and accepted answers lends credibility |
| **Subdomain vs subdirectory** | Discourse recommends subdomain for operational reasons; search engines do not inherently favor either for ranking—choose based on infrastructure, not SEO alone |

## Hacker News Launch

| Practice | Guideline |
|----------|-----------|
| **Title** | "Show HN: [Product] - [specific problem solved]"; honest, no clickbait |
| **Timing** | Tue-Thu; peak US hours; avoid weekends, Mon, Fri |
| **First comment** | Invitation to engage; product status (beta/MVP); differentiated solution; try-it link |
| **Assets** | Live demo, GIFs, screenshots, 30-60s demo video |
| **Expectation** | Tra