CMX Post-Summit Webinar Series - Community as Infrastructure & Office Hours That Drive Adoption with DeMario Bell & Alex Jorgenson
Actionable Takeaways from DeMario Bell & Alex Jorgenson
🏗️ Stop Proving Community, Start Positioning It
DeMario's core message: if you're still trying to prove community ROI, you're solving the wrong problem. The real issue isn't measurement, it's positioning. When community is framed as a program, the only question leadership ever asks is "what's the ROI?" But when community is built and positioned as infrastructure, that conversation shifts entirely. You're no longer defending a budget. You're advising on outcomes the business already cares about. The difference isn't your metrics. It's how you show up before the work even begins.
Action: Ask yourself four questions: Is your community solving a real business problem or just keeping people busy? Are you building someone else's vision or your own? Does leadership come to you for answers or just execution? And when community wins, does the business actually feel it? If the answer to any of these is no, that's exactly where to start.
Measure: Stop reporting activity in isolation. Find the one thing your leadership already cares about, developer trust, pipeline, retention, brand perception, etc. and connect community directly to that outcome. When community is infrastructure, its wins show up in the metrics the business is already tracking.
💬 Launch a Conversation, Not a Campaign
Alex's core message: community is so much more than forums, and one of the most underutilized ways to prove it is also one of the simplest. A lightweight office hours program, AMA-style, practitioner-led, low on slides, and high on real conversation, transformed passive webinar audiences into active, repeat participants. Attendance jumped from around 20% to 40–60%. The Q&A content fed directly into forums and support portals. And customers who came in lukewarm left with enough trust to start exploring products they hadn't tried before. No complex strategy. No big lift. Just a repeatable format anchored in behaviors people already trust.
Action: Pick one topic your customers are actively struggling with, find a practitioner or subject matter expert (not a marketer), and run a 30-minute AMA-style session hosted inside your community platform. Keep it conversational, invite questions in real time, and ask attendees what they want covered next month.
Measure: Track attendance rate, repeat engagement month over month, and what happens to the Q&A content after e.g. how many support tickets does it deflect? How many forum posts does it generate? How many product questions turn into adoption conversations?
🗣️ Numbers Tell the What. Stories Tell the Why.
Both DeMario and Alex landed here: data gets you in the room, but storytelling keeps you there. In a business culture that rewards instant, flashy metrics, community often loses because we let the numbers speak for themselves, and they rarely tell the full story. The move is to pair your metrics with a voice of the customer section, share what failed alongside what worked, and make the tiny moments of progress visible before leadership even asks. Relationship currency compounds. Your job is to make that visible before it's fully realized.
Action: Add a qualitative layer to your next report. Pull two or three direct customer quotes, flag an emerging pain point you're seeing in the community, and include one honest reflection on what didn't land and why. Then connect it all back to a metric leadership already tracks.
Measure: Are you being included in conversations about business problems before they become emergencies? Getting pulled in proactively, not just when someone needs community to fill a gap, is the clearest signal that your positioning is working.
DeMario and Alex closed out the series the way it started: with the reminder that community professionals were never just executors. We just weren't always given the language, the framework, or the permission to show up as anything else. That changes now.
You can rewatch the session and revisit the highlights below!
Access the Complete Webinar Replay
Actionable Takeaways from DeMario Bell & Alex Jorgenson
🏗️ Stop Proving Community, Start Positioning It
DeMario's core message: if you're still trying to prove community ROI, you're solving the wrong problem. The real issue isn't measurement, it's positioning. When community is framed as a program, the only question leadership ever asks is "what's the ROI?" But when community is built and positioned as infrastructure, that conversation shifts entirely. You're no longer defending a budget. You're advising on outcomes the business already cares about. The difference isn't your metrics. It's how you show up before the work even begins.
Action: Ask yourself four questions: Is your community solving a real business problem or just keeping people busy? Are you building someone else's vision or your own? Does leadership come to you for answers or just execution? And when community wins, does the business actually feel it? If the answer to any of these is no, that's exactly where to start.
Measure: Stop reporting activity in isolation. Find the one thing your leadership already cares about, developer trust, pipeline, retention, brand perception, etc. and connect community directly to that outcome. When community is infrastructure, its wins show up in the metrics the business is already tracking.
💬 Launch a Conversation, Not a Campaign
Alex's core message: community is so much more than forums, and one of the most underutilized ways to prove it is also one of the simplest. A lightweight office hours program, AMA-style, practitioner-led, low on slides, and high on real conversation, transformed passive webinar audiences into active, repeat participants. Attendance jumped from around 20% to 40–60%. The Q&A content fed directly into forums and support portals. And customers who came in lukewarm left with enough trust to start exploring products they hadn't tried before. No complex strategy. No big lift. Just a repeatable format anchored in behaviors people already trust.
Action: Pick one topic your customers are actively struggling with, find a practitioner or subject matter expert (not a marketer), and run a 30-minute AMA-style session hosted inside your community platform. Keep it conversational, invite questions in real time, and ask attendees what they want covered next month.
Measure: Track attendance rate, repeat engagement month over month, and what happens to the Q&A content after e.g. how many support tickets does it deflect? How many forum posts does it generate? How many product questions turn into adoption conversations?
🗣️ Numbers Tell the What. Stories Tell the Why.
Both DeMario and Alex landed here: data gets you in the room, but storytelling keeps you there. In a business culture that rewards instant, flashy metrics, community often loses because we let the numbers speak for themselves, and they rarely tell the full story. The move is to pair your metrics with a voice of the customer section, share what failed alongside what worked, and make the tiny moments of progress visible before leadership even asks. Relationship currency compounds. Your job is to make that visible before it's fully realized.
Action: Add a qualitative layer to your next report. Pull two or three direct customer quotes, flag an emerging pain point you're seeing in the community, and include one honest reflection on what didn't land and why. Then connect it all back to a metric leadership already tracks.
Measure: Are you being included in conversations about business problems before they become emergencies? Getting pulled in proactively, not just when someone needs community to fill a gap, is the clearest signal that your positioning is working.
DeMario and Alex closed out the series the way it started: with the reminder that community professionals were never just executors. We just weren't always given the language, the framework, or the permission to show up as anything else. That changes now.
You can rewatch the session and revisit the highlights below!
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