There’s a point many B2B communities reach where nothing is technically wrong, but nothing feels strategically sharp either.
The space exists. Members participate. Programs are running. From the outside, it looks healthy. Internally, though, community hasn’t fully been claimed as part of the operating system.
That’s the environment DeMario Bell stepped into at Culture Amp.
Today, he serves as Senior Community Manager, North America, Marketing Developer Experience at Amazon Web Services. In this conversation, we focused on his time leading Culture Amp’s global community of more than 100,000 HR practitioners. What he inherited wasn’t dysfunction. It was something subtler. Community had momentum, but it wasn’t tightly integrated into go-to-market strategy. It was adjacent to the business rather than embedded within it.
That distinction shaped everything.
When community exists but isn’t positioned
Early on, DeMario ran listening tours both externally and internally. Externally, he surveyed members, studied NPS, and spent time with detractors rather than only promoters. Internally, he met with stakeholders across marketing, sales, and customer success to understand how they saw community and where they thought it could contribute.
The insight wasn’t shocking, but it was clarifying. Many stakeholders didn’t fully understand the function. Some barely knew the team. In a few cases, working relationships needed repair.
Before scaling outward, he rebuilt trust inward.
That work doesn’t show up in dashboards, but it determines whether future initiatives land.
Designing in sequence
There’s pressure in community roles to demonstrate movement quickly. Launch something new. Announce a program. Show growth.
DeMario resisted that instinct and instead designed in sequence.
Moderation came first. How are conversations structured? How is ownership shared without overburdening members? What guardrails protect quality as scale increases?
Rewards and recognition followed. If members are contributing expertise and time, how are those behaviors acknowledged in ways that reinforce the culture of the space?
Only once those foundations were stable did deeper initiatives like voice of the customer and ambassador programming make sense.
The order wasn’t cosmetic. Each layer depended on the previous one. That sequencing made the system more durable.
Then the environment shifted. The team was reduced from four and a half people to two during layoffs. Director-level responsibilities landed on his desk: forecasting, attribution, stakeholder alignment, executive communication.
What could’ve destabilized the function instead sharpened it. Community became less about engagement mechanics and more about infrastructure. Data capture. Process clarity. Translating participation into signal the business could use.
That shift is what often separates early-stage community work from mature community work.
Forums, support, and the narrow mental model
Many leaders’ only exposure to community is the support forum. A place where customers troubleshoot and ask questions. That function matters. It reduces friction. It improves product understanding.
But it’s not the whole system.
A forum answers a question. Designed community shapes identity and belonging around the product. It reinforces learning before friction escalates. It surfaces qualitative signal that can influence roadmap decisions. It contributes to retention and expansion when it’s integrated thoughtfully.
None of that happens by accident. It requires deliberate mapping between member personas and business priorities. It requires deciding where community intersects with marketing, customer success, and product, and where it doesn’t.
That boundary-setting is part of the design.
The invisible labor of education
Community work carries a constant layer of internal translation.
Stakeholders change. Leadership priorities shift. Budget pressure increases. New executives enter with different assumptions.
You don’t get to quietly execute in this role.
DeMario described his posture as consultative. At times political. Not in the cynical sense, but in the sense that influence requires repeated articulation. If the value of community isn’t explained regularly, it becomes invisible. If it becomes invisible, it becomes fragile.
That ongoing education isn’t ancillary to the role. It’s central to it.
Protecting the member
As community becomes more visible internally, demand increases. Marketing wants amplification. Product wants structured feedback. Sales wants references. Customer success wants scalable engagement.
All of those requests are rational.
But member trust is finite. If the space becomes extractive, the underlying asset erodes.
Part of the community leader’s responsibility is protective. Not oppositional to the business, but protective of the conditions that allow the business to benefit in the first place. Guardrails aren’t resistance. They’re durability.
Starting with why
When asked what he tells GTM leaders considering community investment, DeMario doesn’t start with tooling or tactics.
He asks why.
Why now. What problem are we solving. What constraint inside acquisition, engagement, or retention are we addressing.
Community built because competitors have one tends to remain ornamental. Community built to solve a defined problem has a different trajectory.
Clarity at the outset determines durability later.
Decoded Insight
Community becomes durable when it’s intentionally designed to intersect with business priorities while preserving the human experience that makes participation meaningful.
Timestamps
00:01 – Identity, belonging, and how personal experience shapes community design
08:04 – Stepping into Culture Amp and clarifying the mandate
11:48 – Listening tours, NPS, and engaging detractors
19:17 – Community inside marketing and GTM alignment
27:12 – Sequencing moderation, recognition, and ambassador programs
33:08 – Layoffs, expanded scope, and operational maturity
37:13 – Forums versus intentionally designed community
46:45 – Starting with why before investing in community
