The Community Roundtable

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Using metrics to understand community growth and business impact

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Note: This guest post is sponsored content from Common Room. Learn more here.

As community leaders dive into 2023, we want to offer them ideas for showcasing the impact their work has on the business. Aligning on the right metrics with stakeholders is a great place to begin. If you’re not sure where you and your stakeholders’ goals and community vision intersect, use this free 5-question self-guided alignment assessment. 

Connecting community growth to business goals

Business-wise, the value of a thriving community comes from strategically applying community initiatives to business goals. At its core, community-led growth is about finding creative ways to use community channels to empower product users with deeper knowledge, support customer acquisition, increase retention, create opportunities for upsells, and more.

When executed well, community-led growth boosts nearly every department across the organization:

  • Support and success teams can meet users where they are to address bugs and issues in customer experiences.
  • Marketing teams can create messaging and content that’s specifically tailored to the community’s needs.
  • Sales departments can identify prospects with high intent and bring increased context and value to sales calls.
  • Product and engineering teams can get direct product feedback and learn what features users want next.

Success can be difficult to prove to stakeholders across an organization when it’s not measured—this is why metrics are so important to community-led growth efforts.

What metrics can tell us about community health and growth

Community growth is a long-term investment with compound interest. To make more strategic choices, what data do you need?

There are four main categories of metrics that community leaders should consider:

  1. Membership
  2. Engagement
  3. Responsiveness
  4. Business impact

Membership

Membership metrics provide insight into the makeup of your community and help you quantify your reach.

Useful metrics in this category are:

  • Member headcount is a staple of community growth metrics because more people means more perspectives, knowledge, and reach. 
  • Understanding members’ role types is important, as teams may need to engage differently with prospects, current customers, and influencers.

Measuring membership metrics over time gives you insight into the overall growth of your community, and getting to know your members more deeply offers insights into topics they’re most interested in, commonly shared pain points, and how to provide the most value.

Engagement

Engagement metrics indicate whether or not members and prospects get value from participating.

Useful metrics in this category are:

  • The total number of posts across channels. 
  • The ratio of observers to active participants can give insight into how welcome, interested, and empowered members feel.
  • The percentage of members who qualify as product champions can indicate how likely it is that your most satisfied customers will advocate for your product.
  • Understanding trending topics is key to knowing what’s hot (or not) in your community. Topics can spark content production ideas, factor into sales conversations, and inform product development.

Check your engagement metrics often. With this data, you’ll be better able to course-correct before spending resources on community initiatives that aren’t a good fit. If engagement is low, it’s an indicator of disconnect. Adrian Speyer discusses ways to re-engage a stagnant community in this live author Q&A. 

Responsiveness

Responsiveness metrics help you understand how valued and supported your community members feel.

Useful metrics in this category are:

  • Your response rate, or what percentage of members’ posts receive replies.
  • Median response time, or how long it takes for someone to respond to a post, can greatly affect the flow of conversation.
  • The ratio of community responses to team member responses is important because dynamic interactions between members (and employees!) are what makes a community.

Responsiveness metrics provide interesting insight into how your community feels. If you’re looking to boost engagement, offering quick responses to posts can create a sense of organic conversation. If you notice your team is responding the most, look for ways to encourage members to chime in.

Business impact

If you can’t tie the impact of community to overarching business goals, you won’t be able to drive your business forward through community-led growth.

Useful metrics in this category are:

  • Customer acquisition gets a boost from a thriving community because it creates opportunities for prospects to engage with product advocates, and it helps them get questions/objections addressed quickly.
  • Retention improves when customers have access to more information, templates, and use cases, ensuring they have everything they need to get the most value from your product.
  • Account expansion is made possible when members share innovative ways to use your product, opening users’ eyes to greater value opportunities.
  • Community-attributed revenue is revenue from an organization whose members engaged in the community before they appeared in your CRM or marketing automation system. Being able to share this number is one of the best ways to demonstrate the impact of community on the business.

Proving community ROI can look different from one business to the next, and it’s critical to determine which goals you’re trying to achieve in order to make informed decisions about where you should focus your efforts and how to track your progress.

Intelligent community growth platforms

Layering data-based insights across your community channels is what we call intelligent community growth. Instead of manually pulling metrics, use an intelligent community growth platform like Common Room that aggregates data from across your community channels, social sites, and CRM to provide a holistic view of the members and activity in your community and enables reporting that gives you visibility into the metrics that matter for your community and organization, allowing you to draw a straight line from your community work to the impact it has on the business. We can’t wait to see how you engage and support your community in 2023.

The full version of this post was originally published on the Common Room blog on December 8. For more insights about community metrics and benchmarks, check out our free 360: Community-Led Growth Report.

Pushing the (Community) Dialog Further, Together

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TheCR Connect conference is always striving to push the dialogue further, and this year did not disappoint. Between an in-depth exploration of the vendor market in their Community Solutions Showcase to the two thought-provoking keynotes on entrepreneurship and trust in Community spaces, my notebook is more frantic and full than ever with takeaways. Below are three themes (of the many) that seemed most prevalent in The CR Connect conference this year. 

Loved these real-time graphic recordings of the sessions!

Technology Needs to Catch Up (and Listen) 

As Community Managers, we’re often closest to the technology and the last to be invited to the table. As the platform landscape is shifting faster than ever before, with a wealth of migrations on the horizon, being included as part of the design is critical to Community success and platform harmony. 

Own Your Space (and Your Power) 

If you needed a confidence boost, you were in luck at this year’s Connect. As Rachel Happe states it “influence is more powerful than control”; and as community leaders we are on the front lines of influence. We heard from several presenters on how articulating your expertise and ownership of your skills is necessary for not only this industry, but the success of your own Community. 

We’re In This Together

When asked about key takeaways, one attendee summarized the feeling of Connect beautifully with the statement “I’m not alone!”

No matter if you’re more focused on executive dashboards, building out your ROI, or launching a community for the first time, we’re here for each other. Words cannot express the gratitude I feel each year in the availability of my peers to share their successes (and trip-ups) with each other, building a network that gets deeper and stronger over time. What other industry can put that to their name and truly practice what they preach. 

Bringing It Together, Together

Through the distilling in my notebook, I feel committed to owning my space, articulating my expertise, and leaning on the power of my network to direct where I can grow. As we hear from others in the coming weeks their big ideas from Connect, my hope is that we keep the conversation going. It is through this sharing, trust, and vulnerability in each other that we can truly lift each other up and succeed. See ya all next year! 

Mentor Match: The Good, Bad and the Ugly On Getting a Program Started

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Guest post by Laura Brook, Director of Community Development at OneFPA.org and member of TheCR Network.

Last year, I was at our annual conference catching up with a colleague who used to work with me at the Financial Planning Association (FPA).  I shared with her that we were about to launch a mentoring program where our members could mentor fellow financial planners.

Her response was a snorted “Good luck.”  My eyebrows went up in surprise.  She told me that she had tried to launch a similar program five years before without success.  I asked about her experience, saying that I hadn’t even realized that she had worked on this.  She explained that members responded positively to the program in theory, but when it came down to them actually signing up to take part in the program, not so much.  As a result, the initiative never got off the ground.

Oh boy.  This was a long-time staff person, very well networked with chapter leaders and very well liked.  Her story didn’t exactly boost my confidence in our chances.

Well, it’s now a year later and the program is serving our members well.  As the person in charge of community development, this was a natural extension for me to take on.  Our communities are often fertile ground for these types of connections.  Participants want to help each other succeed.  And from a community management standpoint, it can be a great point of engagement.  So in this regard, it can become a true win-win.

Let me outline the program and then give you the dirt on the good, the bad and the ugly for how things have gone.

How It Works

  • It is a six-month, coach-supported program.
  • Membership is required for both mentors and mentees, and there is no cost to participate.
  • Matching is done online through HigherLogic’s MentorMatch module (envision a simplified version of Match.com for those of us who have experienced the online dating scene).
  • Mentees are limited to one mentor at a time.
  • Mentees are expected to set the agenda and drive the relationship.  Mentors just need to be responsive to their requests.  Go here to read more about roles and responsibilities.
  • Each MentorMatch round includes an FPA-facilitated kick-off call, check-in call, and wrap-up call.  Kick-off and wrap-up calls are held jointly.  Check-ins are separate—one group call for mentees and one group call for mentors.
  • Mentees are required to fill out and share with their mentor five mentoring worksheets before their first call.  This is to help mentees get clarity on what they want/need out of their mentoring relationship.
  • In the first call, mentors follow an initial discovery call checklist to get the relationship started on the right foot.  From that point on, mentees are the ones to set the agenda.
  • Mentees and mentors generally meet once per month via phone or Skype, although some relationships are in-person.
  • Mentees complete an exit interview to rate their mentors and the program overall.

Ok, so that is the overview.  Now let’s talk about the negatives first so that we can end things on a positive note.

The Bad/The Ugly: What our challenges have been to date

  • Even with a good online program where people self-enroll, it is still a time-consuming program to manage.
  • People have a tendency to enroll as a mentee …  and then just sit there, even after being prompted to search for a mentor.  As a result, most matches have been facilitated by FPA, adding to the management burden.  The irony is that award-winning financial planners go unchosen because people are too intimidated to ask to be their mentees.
  • There are enough steps that people sometimes struggle with the process.  As an insider, it seems really simple—enroll, search for a mentor, choose the one you like, and send them an invitation to mentor you.  They then have to accept the invitation for mentors/mentees to be formally linked.  Most have been fine, but our technologically less-savvy members have been challenged at times.
  • Add in a chapter network of nearly 100 locations, some of which already have local mentoring programs, and things get really interesting.  We are currently strategizing around how best to blend our national and chapter efforts.
  • We have gotten some (thankfully pretty limited) feedback that mentees don’t always do their homework or prep for calls as well as they should.  We have had conversations on whether charging a nominal fee for the program would help to address this, but have elected to keep it free for now since the program is still young.  Ultimately, we want to make sure that our mentors’ time is respected and well used.

The Good: What has been going well

  • First and foremost, our members love it.  We have had a couple hundred people go through the program to date and 98 percent of the feedback has been glowing.
  • The limited-time horizon helps ease mentor commitment concerns.  Nine hours over six months (three hours on FPA calls and six with the mentee) helps define the program in a way that feels doable.
  • The facilitated calls and initial discovery checklist helps mentors feel supported.  (Even very experienced professionals can find it daunting to be a mentor!)
  • The mentoring worksheets help give the mentees direction and focus.
  • I have been surprised by how many of our mentors have said that they learn a lot from their mentees.  These young planners are often fresh out of school and possess skill sets that are very different than our seasoned planners’ competencies.
  • It engages tough-to-serve demographics—students, young professionals, and those who are mature members or already retired.
  • Our profession needs it.  Financial planning is young—it began only 45 years ago—and the career path for those who want to become planners can be challenging.

So far it’s been a fun ride.  The program is proving to be a quadruple win—good for our mentees, our mentors, the organization, and the profession, which makes dealing with a little bit of bad/ugly worth it in the end.

 

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The Community Roundtable  is committed to advancing the business of community. We offer a membership based peer network, community management training programs and advisory services for corporations and individuals.

Guest Post: Talking with TheCR About The Business Of Community Management at Walgreens

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Guest blog post by Chris Catania, Online Community Manager at Walgreens.

This post originally appeared at www.christophercatania.com.

When you’re building an enterprise social network at a large company and aiming to make your organization more social and collaborative, one of the most important things you should do is surround yourself with smart people who have done or are doing the same thing as you’re aiming to do.

That’s why I’ve enjoyed being a member of the Community Roundtable. The CR network is run by and is full of smart leaders who know their stuff when it comes to the business of community management. Over the last two years, being a member has helped to build and strengthen our internal social media and community management strategy at Walgreens.

It was a pleasure being on the advisory board for the 2013 State of Community Management Report and in 2014 the Community Roundtable is kicking off a new live webinar series called “Community Manager Spotlight” and I have the honor of being the first guest.

I invite you to join us next Wednesday January 29th @ 2pm EST for the 30 minute live webinar to learn how we’ve been using community management strategies to build our internal social media program at Walgreens and where we’re heading as our program grows. It’ll be lots of fun and I’m looking forward to sharing our story with you.

Get more info and register for the webinar here.

Guest Post: Social Business Trends for 2014 from Scott Hebner

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Last week Scott Hebner, VP of Social Business Solutions at IBM, came in to facilitate a discussion with TheCR Network members about trends for social business in 2014. Here is a guest post from Scott on the subject.

Social Business in 2014 – An Entirely New Way to Work

Social has transformed the world — evolving from a medium of personal interaction to an indispensable tool for business engagement.  The journey into the world of social business is a multifaceted one, and in order to succeed businesses will need to think differently.  It’s going to happen regardless, given the changes in the marketplace, and businesses that prioritize becoming a social business from the top of the business will be those that best harness the new age of digital, socialized marketplaces.

2013 was an exciting year for social business, but what will 2014 have in store when it comes to the way enterprises capitalize on social to connect, empower and energize the people who collectively determine the  success of the business?  Here are a few of my predictions for how social business will make an impact in 2014.

1. Social business is not just about collaboration, its about creating new “production lines” of actionable knowledge   Social is no longer just about collaboration.  Social today is enabling businesses to break down organizational and hierarchal silos and barriers – providing employees an opportunity to share knowledge and locate expertise.  In 2014, we’ll see social transform into an organization’s enablement and learning platform, social learning, that is able to offer the ability to share knowledge and expertise through real-time videos and interactive social capabilities.  Social’s new role will be helping to build a smarter enterprise.  A recent study has shown that a small improvements in workforce engagement can drive significant improvement in outcomes – just a 1% gain in engagement level can drive up to 800% improvement in ROI.  The most effective employees and business leaders are now working differently, by leveraging the newly amplified ability to engage, share knowledge and manage relationships.  The new way to work is not an “if”, it’s a matter of “when.”  Employees expect the change as will your business partners and clients.

2. Social is producing a new human face to data, improving decision making by mining behavioral data
In the past, business has relied on instrumented data – machine generated data – to help drive decision making.  With the influx of social and the massive amount of information on these channels, social is now the number one use of the internet, with more than two billion social connections and more than five billion expressions per day.  Buried within all of these interactions is unique behavioral data that is allowing organizations to analyze sentiment, listen and learn from the experiences and behaviors of their customers and employees like never before.  With this information we can understand how, why, who, and what of our employees and consumers.  This is a unique and groundbreaking capability, and mining social behavioral analytics will enable businesses to build resilient and secure social business fabrics that collectively deliver value for both consumers and employees alike.  In 2014, social behavioral data will be king.

3. Fuel innovations that really matter through highly transparent, customer activated social enterprises
Becoming a social business inherently means becoming a more integrated business.  A major imperative for business leaders to put in place is to open up to customer influence, pioneering social and digital innovation and totally reinventing the customer experience to become more seamless and compelling.  With new abilities to harvest and harness activity and sentiment, coupled with integrated front and back office processes, businesses can now deliver highly personalized, seamless experiences for customers.  IBM’s recent C-Suite study reveals that 70 percent of C-suite recognize the importance of shifting to new models of social and digital interaction to reach customers and new markets.  The emergence of a new type of consumer behavior and a new way to work are highly related; and in 2014, we’ll see that the highest performing businesses are those that create a bridge between the workplace and marketplace and begin to think and act differently in the context of social.

4. Rise of the individual and the notion of “marketing as a service”
Up until this point in time, social networking has been seen as a marketing machine for most organizations, providing the ability to build armies of advocates for your brand.  As we move into the next phase of social, there will be a greater emphasis on quality vs quantity.  Marketers will be less focused on the number of likes they’re generating; instead concentrating on the quality of things such as Likes and Twitter followers and who the people are engaging with your brand.  Social, driven by the new behavioral data, will allow organizations to capitalize on this trend and individualize consumers.  Looking at customers as individuals instead of segments, marketers will now be able to deliver personalized experiences customized to individual or community needs. Social will transform marketing from a function to a service and consumers will reap the benefits.

5. Social business takes on human resources and talent management
Similar to how marketers will personalize consumers’ experiences, human resource departments will also begin to capitalize on the power of social.  In a world where employees move from job to job at a rapid pace, when it comes to human capital, loyalty trumps everything.  By  integrating social into Human Capital Management systems, organizations will not only be able to deepen loyalty and engagement with employees – in 2014, they’ll begin tapping social and behavioral data to better understand what is important to employees, what motivates them, why they stay with an organization and much more.  Say good-bye to the traditional HR survey and embrace a new set of social behavioral assets to retain and nurture talent and build your elite workforce.

6. The true convergence of Social, Mobile, Analytics and the Cloud
This year will bring the true convergence of social business, big data, the mobile workforce, and cloud computing as ‘business as usual.’ Bringing together all these enterprise technologies in a highly dynamic, ever-changing environment like a social business will require a well architected solution.  Therefore, organizations will want a highly integrated, holistic platform that is based on SMAC – social, mobile, analytics and cloud.  This social business platform will serve as the universal foundation for how an enterprise works and engages in the marketplace.  This also means the platform must be intelligent and accessible anywhere, anytime in order to securely connect, empower and energize the workforce while enabling self-service.  Equally important is the ability to harvest data of all types and origins, as that is what fuels the personalized experiences that are so critical.

The time to act is NOW.  Businesses and institutions around the globe have already begun the journey.  It’s a transformative moment for business, and making the transformation into a social business will play a decisive role in determining the successful businesses of the future.

Scott HebnerScott Hebner has over two decades in enterprise software market development, product management, and marketing, across a broad range of technology segments.  Since July 2013 he has been the vice president of Social Business Solutions at IBM, which helps clients improve work force productivity, deliver exceptional client experiences and achieve community-inspired business innovation.  Prior to that, Scott served as vice president of marketing and channel management for the last 12 years for IBM’s Cloud & Smarter Infrastructure, Tivoli, Rational, Websphere, and related solutions.

 

Do you agree? What trends do you see in store for social business in 2014?