Questions about community metrics and setting goals

Why would you say setting goals for a community can be difficult? 

“How much do you love your partner?” (hard to measure, vague)

“A lot” (not measurable)

“What would you make your relationship perfect?” (open ended)

“Oh, if my partner did x, y, z… “ (we’re getting somewhere)

“One a scale from 0-10, how would you rate your current relationship with your partner?” (sounds measurable, possibly actionable)

“What are you willing to do together to make it a 10?” (very actionable and with accountability)

There are questions that are framed in ways that are really hard to measure.

Even worse. Hard to take action.

When I first tiptoed into the realm of community management, I quickly realized that setting goals for a community is akin to trying to hit a moving target.

Communities are living, breathing entities, constantly evolving with each new interaction, discussion, or member. There's a plethora of directions a community can veer towards, each with its own set of outcomes.

So, setting goals becomes a delicate dance of aligning organizational aspirations with the ever-changing dynamics of the community. It’s like trying track serendipity in a spreadsheet. A bit tricky ;)

Framing it though, can help you make them more attainable.

Is there a way/process you used to plan for communities that has changed over time? 

Yes.

My initial days of community planning were somewhat akin to sailing in open waters with a rather vague or no map. The process was more instinct-driven, a touch of trial and error, sprinkled with a dash of 'let's see where this takes us.'

Fast forward to now, and it's like having a GPS in the tumultuous seas of community management. Data-driven insights, member feedback loops, and agile strategies have refined the planning process.

It's less about shooting in the dark and more about making informed decisions with a clear understanding of the community landscape.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a lot of validation of hypothesis, but with a much better understanding of where to go and alignment with business and community goals.

To make it more digestable, I would break it into:

1. Initial Days - The Instinctive Approach: In the early stages, much of the planning was instinct-driven. It was about creating a space for interactions and hoping for the best. The metrics were basic, often revolving around membership numbers and general activity levels. It was more about casting a wide net and seeing what comes in.

2. Learning Phase - Embracing Feedback: As time progressed, the importance of feedback became apparent. It was a phase of learning, adapting, and iterating based on what the community members were saying and how they were behaving. The metrics started to get more nuanced, focusing on engagement quality over sheer quantity.

3. Data-Driven Transition: Then came the transition to a data-driven approach. The advent of analytics tools provided a lens to delve deeper into community dynamics. Planning started to become more structured, with clear goals based on data insights, like retention rates, active engagement levels, and the value generated for members.

4. Integration with Broader Organizational Goals: The planning process then evolved to align more closely with broader organizational goals. It became about how the community can contribute to the overall objectives of the organization, be it in terms of brand loyalty, customer feedback, or even product development.

5. Cross-Functional Collaboration: There's also an increasing trend of cross-functional collaboration between community teams and other organizational units, such as marketing and product development. This collaborative approach ensures that community planning is holistic and aligned with the broader strategic vision of the organization.

How different has your planning process been from last quarter to this quarter? If there’s been no change: How different is your planning process from this year to last year? 

Plans change every time. In fact, I’m a terrible planner.

You don’t need a full quarter but even weeks to have slight change of plans happening.

Especially in the startup world.

Reflecting on the transition from last quarter to this, it’s like watching a plant adapt to the seasons.

Last quarter was about laying down the roots, establishing structures, and nurturing the core community elements. This quarter, it’s about blossoming, exploring new engagement strategies, and adapting to the feedback received.

But new plants grown, evolve, change, get deprioritized. And so does your planning (or lack of).

The planning process has shifted from creating a nurturing environment to fostering growth and vibrant engagements. It's a testament to the fluidity and responsiveness that community management necessitates.

In recent months, the strategies for building online communities have been evolving to adapt to the changing landscape of digital interaction and the growth of online platforms.

Here are some notable changes and trends in community building strategies:

1. Better integration with Marketing and Sales activities This integration is seen as a positive development that has opened up new avenues for awareness, demand gen and lead nurturing. It comes packaged with a lot of initiatives and strategies that are part of our bigger plans in community.

2. Experimenting with emerging Tools and Platforms: Not a shift but a constant evolution of tooling to improve efficiency, more notably AI tools.

3. Levelling up Event Planning for Communities: Event planning as part of our communities is now evolving to more intentional and levelled up approaches. Creating new and unique ways to drive value IRL is something that I’m very passionate about.

Have you worked at differently-sized companies? If so, how would you say the goal setting has changed between them? 

Yes indeed!

I worked in a relatively large gaming company (Zynga, with ≈2K employees), PLG hyper-growth company (Dropbox, with over 500 million users), massive enterprise companies (VMware with 25K employees) down to startups like Persona (≈200 employees).

Dealing with the larger behemoths require much more orchestration, alignment, crowd-pleasing and communication than a hands-on hypothesis based approach.

It’s like steering a massive ship as opposed to a tiny boat. The smaller ensembles, on the other hand, had the liberty to improvise, adapt to the rhythm of the community, and sometimes create a melody that was uniquely their own.

The agility and close-knit engagement in smaller setups allowed for a more organic and responsive goal-setting process.

A breakdown of the most obvious difference:

1. Structure and Hierarchy: Large organizations often have a more defined structure and hierarchy. You do your best to adapt to a cookie-cutter and goals are mostly tied to your pre-defined roles and responsibilities. Startups are usually the opposite. Your roles are barely defined as an example.

2. Resource Availability: Dealing with large organizations typically mean that you have a lot more resources at their disposal - be it human, financial, or technological. This abundance of resources can be a bless or a curse. Trying new tools could mean months of procurement and you may even be limited to changes of how you use existing tools.

3. Risk Tolerance: Startup communities have a higher tolerance for risk, given their nature of being experimental. It’s a great way to learn and adapt fast. Risky goals won’t happen in large organizations.

4. Impact and Visibility: In a startup community, every team member's contribution can have a significant impact and this can be seen even on an individual level.

What are, in your opinion, your best and worst goals for measuring community thus far? 

I promised myself to never answer a questions with ‘it depends’.

Even if they ask me “is it safe to travel to Brazil?” :)

So based on my experience in various community sizes, level of maturity, level of my own maturity and industry/ecosystem changes, I have what I believe are ideal or best goals for measuring community success (even though ‘success’ was not given as a result to what to measure, I’m assuming that’s what you ultimately want to measure)

1. Retention Rate: Retention rate reflects the percentage of members who join the community and return within a given period. High retention rates indicate that members find value in the community and are likely to continue engaging over time. However, in communities where the goal is time-based or the success mean getting out of the community, you may measure NPS, advocacy, word-of-mouth and few other ways. Example: A dating community where singles meet and the end goal is that you find your loved one and leave that community (as you’re no longer single).

2. User Generated Content (UGC): The amount of content generated by community members, being it on their own channels, side-platforms, IRL, and whatnot. Don’t expect people to write posts on your blog as a KPI but rather how much they organically talk about you.

3. Community Metrics Tied to Business Metrics: This is probably the most important one: Aligning community goals with business metrics, especially retention and acquisition, can help measure the community's actual impact on the organization.

Least effective goals:

1. Tracking Platform Activities: Measuring all platform activities including posts, replies, event attendance, etc., and the percentage of community members who post or respond to posts are easy and yet meaningless if not clearly tied to a business metric.

2. Over-emphasis on Membership Growth: Merely focusing on growing the membership.

3. Visibility/Reach without Engagement: While visibility and reach are important and still an eye-catching metric, they are very misleading due to their nature of being super shallow and how each platform arbitrarily decided to account for them.

Measuring and setting goals can be highly “personal” (in the most professional way), meaning: you have ways to frame it, and they are closely associated with your business goals, maturity, level of traction, interests and whatnot.

Don’t take cookie-cutter templates of metrics and ROI systems to justify yours.

Thoughts?

I’m here as well:

https://linkedin.com/in/edugiansante

@edu.giansante IG