You check comments before you’ve had coffee. You’ve got a content calendar with a different post type for every single day of the week. You answer every comment within minutes, because that’s what a good community manager does. Right?
And your community still isn’t growing the way you hoped it would.
Here’s the uncomfortable math. That’s the 80/20 rule for community management: roughly 20 percent of what you’re doing is creating 80 percent of your results, and the rest is just keeping you tired. This post walks through how to find your own high-impact 20 percent, and gives you full permission to let go of everything else.
What Is the 80/20 Rule for Community Management?
The 80/20 rule, or Pareto principle, says roughly 20 percent of your community activities create 80 percent of your results. The fix isn’t more effort. It’s finding that 20 percent.
Think about hosting a dinner party every week. You could spend hours on an elaborate twelve course meal that leaves you too exhausted to actually talk to your guests. Or you could make one simple, good dish, set a warm atmosphere, and focus on the conversation. One of those brings people back next week.
Your community works the same way. When you’re doing all the things, posting constantly, creating a dozen content formats, you’re spreading yourself thin without knowing how much of it is actually landing. Ask yourself what keeps you coming back to your own favorite communities. It’s rarely the volume of content. It’s the quality of the connections and the value you find there.
How Do You Find Your High-Impact 20 Percent?
The answer is different for every community, but you find it the same three ways: look at what your data already tells you, ask your members directly, and track your own time for a week.
Look at Your Data
Start with what’s already in front of you.
- Which posts get the most engagement
- Which events have the highest attendance
- Which topics spark the most conversation
Look for the pattern, not the exception. If your how-to posts consistently outperform your inspirational quotes, or your live Q&A sessions pull triple the attendance of your pre-recorded workshops, that’s your community telling you what it actually cares about. It’s engagement quality that matters here, not volume, and the data will show you exactly where that quality is showing up.
Ask Your Members Directly
Data doesn’t tell the whole story. Sometimes the fastest way to find your 20 percent is to just ask. Send a short survey, or post the question directly: what type of content or events would you like to see more of?
I had a client who spent hours on elaborate graphics for every post, only to learn her members actually valued her quick voice messages with tips and insights far more. She scaled back the graphics, leaned into audio, and engagement went up while she got back about five hours a week.
Track Your Time for a Week
This is the step most community managers skip, and it’s the one that matters most. For one week, track exactly how you’re spending your time on your community. Be honest. Are you spending three hours on the perfect graphic for a post that gets seen for 24 hours?
Then compare that time against your results. One community manager I worked with was spending 10 hours a week on a newsletter that only about 18 percent of her members opened, while her off the cuff live sessions got massive engagement but only happened when she had time. Once she saw the numbers, she flipped it: more live sessions, a simple monthly newsletter instead of weekly. If the hours don’t match the results, that’s your sign to rebuild the workflow around what actually works.
What Usually Belongs in the High-Impact 20 Percent?
Four things do the heaviest lifting for most community builders: member-to-member connection, consistent high-quality events, strategic outreach, and clear paths to engagement.
Member-to-Member Connection
The biggest misconception in community management is that you need to be the center of every interaction. If everything runs through you, your community’s growth is capped by your own time and energy. When members connect directly with each other, the potential for engagement becomes exponential instead of linear.
I worked with a leader who was burning out trying to answer every question herself. We put in a simple Member Monday Spotlight, highlighting one member’s expertise and pointing others toward them with questions. It took the pressure off her, and it increased engagement, because members started seeing each other as resources instead of waiting on her.
Consistent, Not Frequent, Events
One amazing monthly event people actually look forward to beats four mediocre weekly ones people skip. A wellness community client of mine was hosting weekly webinars with rotating guests, and attendance was spotty. We shifted to one monthly session instead, 90 minutes on a single topic with research, practical application, and guided practice. Attendance tripled, engagement climbed, and she freed up three weeks a month for other high-impact work.
Strategic, Not Constant, Outreach
Personal outreach is powerful, but you don’t need to message every member every week. Be strategic instead: new members who are just getting started, members who’ve gone quiet, and your most engaged members who could become advocates. A few well-placed personal messages create ripple effects that a blanket approach never will.
Clear Paths to Engagement
Sometimes the most impactful thing you can do is make it obvious how to participate. In a parenting community I advise, we created a simple weekly ritual called Wins and Worries Wednesday. The structure was so clear that participation jumped from 14 percent to over 60 percent. Sometimes the simplest intervention has the biggest impact.
What Can You Stop Doing?
Cut posting without a clear purpose, obsessing over graphics, answering every comment, manual tracking, and being available around the clock. None of that is your 20 percent.
If a post isn’t serving a specific goal or addressing a specific member need, it’s probably safe to cut. Posting too often can dilute the posts that actually matter, the same way a friend who floods your inbox with every passing thought lands differently than one who messages you occasionally with something real.
Aesthetics deserve the same scrutiny. One client was spending two to three hours per graphic trying to make every post look perfect. When we looked at her engagement data, there was zero correlation between graphic complexity and how members responded. Simple branded templates saved her about 10 hours a week, with no drop in engagement.
You also don’t need to be first or only responder to every comment. Prioritize the questions only you can answer, or the comments that have gone unanswered past a certain point, and let your community step in for the rest. It often creates more authentic conversation than you jumping in immediately.
And if you’re manually tracking attendance or scrolling for unanswered questions, that’s exactly the kind of tracking a platform should be doing for you.
Being available around the clock is the fastest route to burnout, and it doesn’t even work. One leader I worked with was checking notifications from the moment she woke up until she went to bed. We set office hours, communicated them clearly, and built out an FAQ for common questions. She reclaimed her life, and her community became more self-sufficient, because members started helping each other instead of waiting on her.
What This Looks Like When You Actually Do It
One client of mine, I’ll call her Sarah, ran a community for women entrepreneurs and was exhausted. Daily posts, comments answered within minutes, and still convinced she wasn’t doing enough.
When we looked at her data, nearly all of her engagement came from two things: a weekly live Q&A and a monthly wins and challenges thread. Everything else, the daily motivation posts, the elaborate graphics, the constant availability, was taking up most of her time for almost none of the return.
So we changed it. Posting dropped from daily to three times a week. She focused on the two high-engagement formats. We built a clear content calendar so members knew what to expect, set up automated welcome sequences for new members, and established office hours that were communicated up front.
Engagement increased by more than 35 percent. Retention improved. Sarah got back roughly 10 hours a week. And when she surveyed her members three months later, not one person mentioned missing the daily posts or the instant replies. What they mentioned was how much they valued the Q&A sessions, the structure, and knowing what to expect.
Try This Prompt
Want to find your own 20 percent before you do anything else this week? Hand this to Claude or ChatGPT.
“I run a [type of community] for [who it serves]. Here’s what I currently do to manage it on a weekly basis: [list your regular activities and roughly how much time each one takes]. Based on the 80/20 principle, which of these activities are most likely creating the bulk of my engagement, and which are probably low impact for the time they cost? Give me a short list of what to keep, what to cut, and one question I should ask my members directly to confirm it.”
It drafts the audit. You make the call on what actually gets cut.
Less Can Be More for Your Community
This isn’t about being lazy or cutting corners. It’s about being honest about where your time is actually going, and whether that matches what’s actually working.
Every hour you spend on a low-impact activity is an hour you can’t spend on the handful of things that are genuinely moving your community forward. Your members care about value and connection, not volume. Sarah’s members told her as much, three months after she stopped assuming otherwise.
A thriving community isn’t built on how much you do. It’s built on how well you do the few things that matter.
Less really can be more.
Listen to the Episode
Apple Podcasts | Spotify
If this one gave you something to work with, leave a review and hit subscribe. New episodes drop every Tuesday, and reviews are how other community builders find the show.
Watch This One
The 80/20 Rule of Community Management: What Actually Moves the Needle
More like it on Your Community Strategist, new every Thursday.
More Like This
Listen: Engagement Over Numbers: Why Quality Beats Quantity Every Time. The quality-over-quantity case, one level deeper than this post makes it.
Listen: Measuring Workshop Success: 5 Metrics Every Circle Creator Needs to Track. The exact metrics worth watching once you know which 20 percent to track.
Listen: Batch Like a Boss: 10 Strategies to Supercharge Your Workflow. For reclaiming the hours you cut from the busy work.
Keep Going
coCreator Society is where community builders and membership founders work through this together, with the templates, the walkthroughs, and people who are one step ahead of you. Join coCreator Society
If you would rather not do this part alone, Rachel and the team build, migrate, and run communities for founders who need it done properly the first time. Talk to the team
Comments +
Comments