Community Metrics
To determine whether growth has reached critical mass, you need the following data:
Number of members the community manager invited to join.
Number of members that joined as a result of these invitations.
Number of members that joined as a result of other promotional activity by the community manager.
Total number of new registered members during this time.
Critical mass of growth is achieved when the total number of newly registered members in the community is double the number of members that have joined through your direct invitations (both one-to-one and to your existing mailing lists/audiences).
Specifically, YOU WANT TO KNOW:
Total number of registered members within 30 days
Less members directly invited
Less members joined through activities stimulated by the community manager
Conversion
Stage 1: Promotional efforts to outreach
Unique visits per traffic source per 30 days compared with the previous 30 days.
Registrations per traffic source per 30 days compared with the previous 30 days.
Activities within each traffic source that led to membership growth.
Stage 2: Visitors to registered members
Compare the number of newly registered members within the previous 30 days (or month) with the number of registrations during the same period.
To highlight exactly where you can increase this ratio, you need to break the registration down into a series of steps you expect members to take.
A typical process for a newcomer to become a member is:
Step 1) Visits (unique new visitors)
Step 2) Identifies something interesting to respond to/participate in
Step 3) Clicks to register
Step 4) Completes registration form
Step 5) Opens confirmation e-mail
Step 6) Clicks the link to confirm registration
Members
Review the total amount of activity within the community and subtract this by the level of activity the community manager stimulated.
You calculate:
Total number of posts
Less posts from the community manager
Less responses to discussions initiated by the community manager
If this figure isn’t immediately apparent in your data (Google Analytics won’t track this), then you may need to use a surveying technique. You might need to use systematic sampling of 100 to 200 members (this picks a member per every Nth (e.g. 10) that joined as listed by date—relevant due to the likelihood of older members being more likely to have made a contribution than those who joined yesterday). Of these 100 to 200 members, how many made a contribution?
Number of members approached to open initial dialogue
Number of members who respond to initial discussions
Number of discussions advanced to self-disclosure
Number of members who participated in a joint/shared activity with you (the community manager!)
Number of members with whom you maintain an ongoing relationship (minimum one discussion per month)
Volunteer
This is the easiest data to gather; look at the number of regular members in the community and the number of listed volunteers.
If the number of volunteers remained constant and the number of active members plummeted, you would see a sudden, sharp, rise in your ratio. Before you whoop for delight, be aware that this is terrible. It means your volunteers are either doing a bad job, or something very wrong has happened in the community. It’s most likely your volunteers are failing.
On the other hand, if your volunteers do a terrific job and the number of active members in your community increases, the ratio would drop. This means your volunteers are doing great, but you’re not recruiting enough volunteers to keep pace with the community.
It’s also worthwhile tracking the volunteers-to-growth ratio, volunteers-to-activity, and volunteers-to-sense of community, all of which will provide a good indicator of how your volunteers are doing in each area.
Key metrics:
Regular members to volunteers (advanced access levels)
Number of volunteers to sense of community
Number of volunteers to growth
Insider Group
Number of members in the insider group/volunteers
The number of successful activities initiated by the insider group.
The number of active members in the insider group.
Employee
Number of employees participating in the online community.
Number of processes (promotion, price, distribution, product) that have been adapted to suit the needs of the community.
ROI of the community.
Has the volume of customer service calls/e-mails gone down? And if it has gone down, can you reduce staff costs as a result?
Customers
Compare the beliefs and behaviors of people when they first join the community to after they become active members or split test those whom have purchased similar amounts prior to joining the community.
Sample the pre-/post-purchasing habits of 100 members at monthly intervals. Over a period of time, you will gain a fairly good understanding about whether the community impacts how much customers purchase from you.
You can do a random controlled trial. You take a similar group of customers, invite half to join the community and, six months later, compare this half with the half that you didn’t invite. What impact did participating in the community make?
Sense of Community
The sense of community measures the relationships that have developed between members and whether members feel they are part of a community. It’s that feeling that leads to increased loyalty, greater likelihood to purchase from your company, increased loyalty, greater likelihood to purchase from your company, increased potential to recommend to others, give you feedback, and so forth.
Chavis and others later produced a sense of community index, to measure the sense of a community. It is a survey, which means members need to be invited to participate. The index asks people to rate whether they agree with the following statements on a scale of 0 for “not at all” to 3 for “completely”:
I get important needs of mine met because I am part of this community.
Community members and I value the same things.
This community has been successful in getting the needs of its members met.
Being a member of this community makes me feel good.
When I have a problem, I can talk about it with members of this community.
People in this community have similar needs, priorities, and goals.
I can trust people in this community.
I can recognize most of the members of this community.
Most community members know me.
This community has symbols and expressions of membership such as clothes, signs, art, architecture, logos, landmarks, and flags that people can recognize.
I put a lot of time and effort into being part of this community.
Being a member of this community is a part of my identity.
Fitting into this community is important to me.
This community can influence other communities.
I care about what other community members think of me.
I have influence over what this community is like.
If there is a problem in this community, members can get it solved.
This community has good leaders.
It is very important to me to be a part of this community.
I am with other community members a lot and enjoy being with them.
I expect to be a part of this community for a long time.
Members of this community have shared important events together, such as holidays, celebrations, or disasters.
I feel hopeful about the future of this community.
Members of this community care about each other.
The answers correspond to the following aspects of sense of community:
Subscales Reinforcement of Needs = Q1 + Q2 + Q3 + Q4 + Q5 + Q6
Membership = Q7 + Q8 + Q9 + Q10 + Q11 + Q12
Influence = Q13 + Q14 + Q15 + Q16 + Q17 + Q18
Shared Emotional Connection = Q19 + Q20 + Q21 + Q22 + Q23 + Q24
Best to develop several unique segments of members stratified upon their date of registration. Rotate the survey so members receive the same surveys no more than once a year.
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