How do you prove community value? Community Chat Weekly #16
Plus, highlights from the first Community Chat Hangout!
Community Chat Weekly is a newsletter about building and growing communities, featuring collected tweets, posts and thoughts from various community managers.
❓ Question of the Week
What KPI/data point you wish you had the ability to track in your community?
Answer by replying directly to this email or chatting with us in Slack, we'll share our favorite responses in next week's issue!
🙋What Community Managers are really saying.
This week, the Community Chat Team hosted our first ever community manager hangout. It was a fantastic session, filled with raw thoughts and impassioned discussion. We discussed the evolving role of the B2B community manager and the importance of tracking the right data and metrics.
Paola, Head of Community at ThoughtSpot said it best.
Some of our favorite quotes from the session:
Community happens, whether you organize it or not. – @cjdinger
When talking about tech communities and developer ecosystems:
Open source is a little bit of software, and a lot bit of community. – @cjdinger
In reference to proving the value of your community:
Collect your small wins, and don't hide your small wins – @NeedSampleCode
The best community managers are the face of a company. Become symbolic. – @slouischarles
We also discussed how community teams and metrics are oftentimes treated as fringe programs, leading to a lack of clarity on how they roll up into higher-up organizational strategy.
Data and analytics were heavily on everyone's minds – one takeaway being that in the early days, your company's investment in community data management needs to be 10x your investment in community analytics. A solid data foundation with connections between the right marketing, sales, and support systems are necessary before you can worry about metrics, else you're at risk of tracking the wrong KPI's in a silo.
Be careful of community vanity metrics. Total members and engagement can be meaningless without the right context or an explicit link to business value. – @NeedSampleCode
Tracking the right B2B community KPI's, and understanding how community is moving the dial for your customer journey should be top of mind for community managers heading into 2020.
📈 Setting Meaningful KPI's for your Brand Community
In related news, the community consultancy Gather just released a thought-provoking piece on the topic of community metrics.
Gather defines a community KPI as having four components:
A clearly defined, quantifiable goal for your work
Tied to a measurable metric
Vital to the team or organization’s goal
Easily communicated back to relevant team members or leaders in your organization
A community KPI is a key performance indicator that helps you monitor your community’s contribution toward larger organizational outcomes.
– Carrie Jones, Founder & Chief Strategist of Gather
The right metrics and KPI's are a powerful storytelling tool, and necessary to help you properly narrate your community's success and progress.
🐦 This week in the community Twitter world...
Community is a 🔥investment in 2020, and new winners await.
In the spirit of Community Manager Advancement Day.
Community = People. Plain and simple.
Community community community.
📝 Blog Posts
A handful of recommended readings from the past week.
Community Growth Tactics You Should Try (3 min read)
Seasoned community veteran Mary Green highlights a dozen tried and true growth tactics for fledgling communities.
Firm's own social networks better for business than Facebook (3 min read)
Using Facebook and Twitter may be good for a company's bottom line, but firms can drive significantly more revenue if they have their own virtual brand community, according to a University of Michigan study.
Another day, another new Google message service (2 min read)
Is google releasing a Slack clone as part of it's G-suite stack? Their new messaging service is set to unify Gmail, Drive, Hangouts, and more.
💬 Join the Community!
Did you know that Community Chat is more than just a newsletter? We’re also on Slack, where community leaders and builders connect with each other and share tips and tricks. Join us to partake in the next virtual hangout session!
Have a suggestion for a piece of content we should include next week? Email us and let us know!