Community led growth gets pitched as a cheaper alternative to paid acquisition, which is roughly like calling a garden a cheaper alternative to a supermarket. Both feed you. The timescales are not comparable.
Developers comparing approaches, operators comparing vendors, hobbyists comparing results. If your customers have no reason to speak to one another, no amount of programming creates one, and that is a product fact rather than a community failure.
Do this: Ask whether two of your customers would benefit from meeting. If not, build something else.
The first year mostly produces relationships, not pipeline. Teams that measure it quarterly kill it at month nine, just before the compounding starts, and then conclude community does not work.
Do this: Agree the review horizon before starting. If nobody will wait eighteen months, do not start.
Tell us members, posters and who answers. We reply with the stage you are at and the one thing to change first.
People who spend time in a community buy more and churn less, and you will rarely prove causation cleanly. Anyone showing you a precise community-sourced revenue figure is showing you a modelling choice.
Do this: Report participation and retention side by side without claiming one caused the other. It is more credible and it survives scrutiny.
Communities die of silence, not of criticism. The predictable killer is launching a space with no recurring reason to return, and then filling the silence with announcements.
Do this: Before opening a space, decide what happens in it every week. If the answer is nothing, you are not ready.
This is teaching material and our own reading of standard practice, not advice for your specific community. Check anything important with your own specialist before you act on it.
How many members, how many post, who answers questions. We reply with the stage you are at and the one thing to change. No call, no pitch.