Community Superusers: How to Find Them and Keep Them
A few days ago, I added a quiz question to the Jatra community. It asks what share of members create most of a community’s original content. So far, exactly two members have played it. One got the right answer in 1.735 seconds, and the other took 8.083 seconds.
I laughed when I saw that leaderboard, because it makes the point better than the quiz does. Two players don’t make a scientific study, but anyone who has run a community will recognize the pattern. Most people read, a few people reply, and a tiny group does so much of the work that the place would feel empty without them.
Those people are your community superusers. You can’t manufacture them, but you can spot them early and give them good reasons to stay, and you don’t need a formal program to do it.
What is a community superuser
A community superuser is a member who regularly helps other members without being paid or asked to. They answer questions, welcome new people and keep discussions moving, often before you even log in.
They are a small group in almost every community.
Jakob Nielsen wrote about this back in 2006 and called it participation inequality: roughly 90% of users never contribute, 9% contribute a little and 1% account for most of the action. Your numbers won’t match exactly, but the shape will be the same.
A superuser isn’t the same as a moderator. A moderator has authority over the community, while a superuser only has the respect of the people they’ve helped. Some superusers make great moderators and many don’t want the job, so keep the two separate in your head.
How to find superusers in your community
Don’t start with a list of your most active members. The person with the most posts isn’t always the most helpful one, and as I explained in my article on community gamification, a few members will post a lot just to farm rewards.
Read the last 30 days of discussions instead and look for these signals:
They answer other people’s questions. Starting threads is great, but replying to a stranger’s problem is what separates a superuser from an active member.
Their replies get marked as the best reply. The person who asked the question has already told you who helped.
They welcome new members. Nobody asked them to, and they do it anyway.
They come back on their own. You didn’t tag them or send them an email, and they still showed up.
Your job is to write down the names. Five names are plenty, and in a small community, one is a good start.
Two community owners raised this exact problem in this thread, if you want to see how it plays out.
Skip the formal superuser program
When you search for superuser programs, you’ll mostly find what large companies run. Klaviyo’s program expects at least 4 replies and 1 best answer a month to stay in. Intuit’s Champions program launched with nominations, an application form, an NDA and a yearly renewal.
That makes sense when you have a community team and thousands of members. If you’re running a community on your own, it’s literally paperwork for three people.
Back in 2009, we created Area 51 on CrazyEngineers: an invite-only section that everyone could see and very few could enter. I’ve told that story in my guide on public vs private communities, so I’ll only add the part that matters here. We rejected most of the requests to join, and the members who got in could do little more than boast about having access. That was the reward, and it worked.
People don’t help others for your swag. They want to feel that someone noticed, and you can do that today without writing a single rule.
How to keep superusers contributing
Once you have your names, here’s what I’d do with them.
Thank them for something specific. “Thanks for your support” means nothing. Tell them which reply helped which member, and do it where others can see it. On Jatra, you can attach that note to a custom trophy or a badge, but the line you write is worth more than the trophy.
Send people their way. When a new member asks a question, don’t answer it yourself. Respond, ask for details and tag the members who can help, with a line about why you tagged them. Your superusers get a question they can solve, and everyone else sees who the experts are.
Give them access before everyone else. Show them the feature you’re about to launch, share what’s happening behind the scenes and ask what they think. It doesn’t cost you anything, and it’s in my engagement guide for a reason. A private channel works well here, as long as there’s something useful inside it.
Put them in the spotlight. Interview one of them every month and publish it in the community. They get something to share with their network, and other members learn that helping people gets noticed.
Ask what they want. Send a direct message and ask why they spend time in your community. Their answer tells you what to offer them, so you can stop guessing. Here’s how I’d match the two:
What they want | What to offer | What to avoid |
|---|---|---|
To learn | Early access to features and direct conversations with your team | Giving them only easy, repetitive questions |
To build a reputation | A monthly interview, a public thank you and a custom badge | Thanking them only in private |
To enjoy helping others | Tags on questions they can answer | Turning their help into a duty with quotas or moderation work |
To feel like an insider | An invite-only private channel and a look behind the scenes | Inviting everyone, because then it isn’t special |
Mistakes that drive superusers away
Rewarding volume. Never pay or reward people for the number of posts they make. You’ll get more posts and fewer useful ones, and your best members will notice. Nielsen gave the same warning 20 years ago: reward your contributors, but don’t over-reward them.
Treating them like free support. If your members are handling tickets your support team should handle, they’ll figure it out sooner or later. Let them help because they want to, and keep bugs and account problems with your own team.
Making them moderators as a reward. Moderation is a job, and it often means taking the blame for someone else’s decision. Offer it only to people who want it. Recognition and authority are two different things, which is why badges on Jatra don’t change a member’s permissions.
Depending on one person. If one person answers everything, your community goes quiet the day they change jobs. Keep adding names to your list, and use your tags to bring newer members into the conversation.
Taking their silence personally. People’s lives change, and your superuser doesn’t owe you a reply. Send a friendly message once, tell them they were missed, and leave it there.
Start with one person this week
My advice is simple: don’t design a superuser program. Pick the member who helped others the most in the last 30 days and send them a thank you that names exactly what they did. Then tag them on the next question they can answer, and do the same with a second person next week.
If you run your community on Jatra, you already have best replies, badges and trophies to help you spot and recognize these people, and private channels when you’re ready to build your own Area 51. If you want a second opinion on your community, book a call with me.
Who is the most helpful member in your community right now, and what have you done to keep them around? Tell me in the replies.