community metrics Archives

Growing Organizational Interest in Community Metrics

May 22, 2023 By Jim Storer

The Metrics & Measurement competency of The Community Maturity Model™ helps organizations understand the “why” of social approaches and the results they see when they do. Community teams are often responsible for collecting, analyzing, and reporting back to the organization, which evolves as the community grows. The same occurs as a community program matures: Beginning with activity metrics and anecdotal evidence of behavior change to more performance and behavior-based metrics.

When The Community Roundtable launched in 2009, community managers were responsible for almost everything associated with their community program. As time passed the role changed leading to the creation of the Community Skills Framework™, which highlights five skill families, each with ten skills.

Keeping the Community Skills Framework™ in mind, seeing community metric ownership move from the community manager to a specialist — on the team or elsewhere in the organization — is exciting. On larger teams (or in more mature communities), this work is done by a part-time or dedicated person on the core team (27% in 2022 vs 19% in 2021). Smaller teams often fill this role by someone outside the core team with these specific skills (10% in 2022 vs 7% in 2021).

Gone are the days when communities shared little beyond the core team and executive sponsor.

As more outsiders help the community team report successes via community metrics, the number of “eyeballs” receiving community program reports increases. This trend supports earlier findings that community programs are on their way to becoming a key operational unit. 2022’s respondents reported increased external stakeholder interest in community metrics from senior executives and HR leaders. Boards of directors’ interest stayed consistent year over year.

For those respondents who provided no reporting, if it’s too early to start sharing activity or behavior metrics due to your community’s age, capture examples of new and/or valuable behavior with screenshots. Have an older community? Identify metrics supporting the business use case to start and grow from there. Sharing the community’s impacts on business leads to gained influence and the resources needed to grow your program.

Proving the Value of Community Metrics: Making Strides

As communities mature, organizations want to see the value for the business (at a minimum), and the return on investment (ROI). The last two years’ responses in these areas are promising. There’s been a modest increase in communities proving their value, with even more headed that way. Every community — even young ones — needs to document successes with proving ROI in mind.

ROI is crucial for community managers, as it’s a language business leaders understand. The Community ROI Calculator provides an easy- to-explain framework to show ROI based on a valuable community behavior: Asking and answering questions. With this approach, key constituents in the organization discuss and agree on the value of a community answer, and then it’s simple math from there.
This year’s respondents were less likely to be able to calculate ROI than those in 2021, but they’re actively working on the calculation. Based on collected anecdotal evidence, there’s no reason to believe value in calculating community ROI is decreasing. Instead, those who are in the “no” and “don’t know” categories should try the Community ROI Calculator.

community roi community metrics — **Click to Calculate Your Community ROI**

Best-in-class communities measure behavior over activity – SOCM Fact #12

September 23, 2016 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training

What is the best way to capture the value of your community?

Communities serve a number of strategic uses, so it can be hard to come up with the metrics that best demonstrate how the community delivers on that strategy. But one thing is certain – the basic activity metrics – logins, visits, and such – won’t capture that value. While almost every community tracks basic activity, best-in-class communities are far more likely to measure behaviors and outcomes than the average community.

Why? It’s no accident. People, groups and organizations typically focus on things that they know are being measured, from the kid who asks, “Will this be on the test?” to the executive who pays closest attention to the numbers that go in the report to his CEO. When you select metrics that get at the behaviors you want in the community, you focus on those behaviors. It’s human nature.

So what should you do? Here are 5 tips.

1. Start with what you want to see, not with what you have.

One bit of bad news if you hoped this was easy. The easy stuff that your community platform delivers you in pretty charts probably doesn’t get it done. Visits, posts and logins make for easy graphics, but they don’t necessarily tell you if people are getting value.

Behavioral metrics also take longer to move. Activity can ramp up quickly – and there is nothing wrong with looking at activity metrics to make sure people are coming to the community and doing things, especially when you are just getting started. But as your community matures, it’s less about them showing up and more about the ways they are giving and getting value.

“Visits, posts and logins make for easy graphics, but they don’t necessarily tell you if people are getting value.”

2. Push the value conversation.

It’s really hard to measure fog. If you can’t express the value of the community to the organization and its members in a clear, concise way, you’ll have a hard time getting members to engage (because they don’t know why they should). But equally important, you won’t know when you are truly delivering value. Stories and anecdotes get you there for a while, especially at the start. But at some point, you’ll need hard numbers – so nail the value piece down.

3. Make metrics a part of the strategic conversation from day one.

Once you have your value defined, identify and begin tracking the metrics. It’s OK if your numbers aren’t huge right off the bat. Your metrics are the way you will be able to track your progress, and will help you troubleshoot, generate new ideas and recognize gaps.

Plus, you don’t want to be caught flatfooted when someone above wants to know whether this community investment is paying off.

SOCM2016_Fact_#12_Reporting

4. Share your data with an eye toward your audience.

When preparing your data – remember who it’s going to. Your immediate boss may want the intimate details of which customer forums are generating the fastest community response times to support questions. Your CEO probably doesn’t.

5. Storytelling still matters.

While getting the right metrics is critically important, qualitative data, case studies and clear examples bring a human face to the numbers on a page. Don’t get so caught up in the numbers that you stop gathering the pieces that you can attach to show the human business impact of a 58% increase in number of questions answered in your platform.

The State of Community Management 2016 from The Community Roundtable

We can’t wait to hear what you think – tag your thoughts with #SOCM2016 to join the conversation!

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If you run a community, don’t think like a website on metrics

April 30, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

As we continue to slice and dice the data from more than 200 communities for the State of Community Management 2015, we know that one of the most viewed pieces of the report will be the engagement profiles – the percentage of members who are lurking, contributing, creating and collaborating in the community. It’s a natural thing, especially for new communities, to want to look at engagement and growth metrics early as a way to show to people the success of the community.

Is this constructive engagement?

When you focus on engagement and growth, though, it defines your tactics in ways that may not benefit the long-term health of the community. In the recently published Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes, we highlighted some alternatives to basic engagement and growth metrics we are drawn toward – the kinds of metrics that might get more effectively at how your community will perform long term.

Think about these kinds of metrics:

Engagement depth – Can you demonstrate that members asking good questions and having real discussions? Many “engagement tactics” lead to one-and-done kinds of engagement, which boost your numbers now, but will come back to haunt you later.

Member satisfaction – Satisfied members are much more likely to come back than those who come, engage, and depart unsatisfied. Surprisingly, new communities often don’t prioritize finding out if members are satisfied. You shouldn’t reshape your strategy for every complaint and question, but knowing how people are feeling about the community is crucial in moving forward.

Membership referrals and renewals – If your members are renewing and referring new members – they must like what you do. If your members are becoming advocates – you’re doing something right! Getting member referrals and renewals tells you that your members don’t just have to be there, they want to be there.

Signs of changing behavior – By the time you begin, you should have a sense of the behaviors you expect from members. Are they moving toward your behavioral goals? If not, it’s easier to change behaviors in a small community than a large one, so now is the time.

These metrics are sometimes more difficult to measure, but using your community goals to drive the metrics you use, rather than just “doing the basics” can help ensure you’re looking at what defines a valuable community, as opposed to a popular website.