The Community Manager

#Cmgrchat – 11/2: Do Numbers Tell the Whole Story?

January 16, 2012
Jenn Pedde
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All of us have to report some kind of activity to those either higher up or in different departments at our companies.   However, there aren’t consistent community metrics, or standard methods that CMs are using at the moment.   After a lively debate, below are some of the best and most common answer.

Q1. What kind of reporting do you do for your community and how often?

NatashaKhan For Social: GA=Traffic/Revenue, Growth=following, and Engagement=Feedback Score

Historian I do a weekly account of the number of connected users (Likes/Follows/Registered) & the number of interactions we’ve had

corecorina Reporting for my clients = Google web Analytics web + social engagement data + reach data + ID of any issues/opportunitie

corecorina The best reporting I do draws specific insight from the data; so if 500 people “Like” something, I must identify WHY via data

mhandy1 Depends which kind of community, sentimentality with custom variables is huge, SOV, Comp analysis, industry reports

mbhahn I track the number of shares and to what type of social site. I get an email digest weekl

onideas Usually weekly or monthly, depends on level of content and engagement. Everything from brand sentiment to user demos

rodicka differs for clients. I use @SproutSocial eeports weekly and summarize diff. parts for differing stakeholders

evanhamilton I (try to) do a monthly report on my community efforts – how & why I am succeeding or failing at retaining/gaining customers

djfanco Weekly.. DAU, Interactions (twitter, FB, app), competitive benchmarking, change, weekly CS issue trends, ratings

KellyLux Also just started using Storify (monthly) to show upper mgmt the types of mentions/comments we’re getting on twitter & FB

JPedde We’re heavy on reporting here. KPI reports regarding keywords, web traffic, blogger outreach, & social media engagement

jaimehutkin report to clients what posts were more engaging, less engaging, and what commonalities exist among them to repeat success

corecorina A few $$$$ monitoring tools include @Radian6 @Sysomos @Hootsuite

evanhamilton I’m all about @argylesocial. Radian 6’s pitch included the phrase “infinite drilldown” and that made me sick.

Q2. Which metrics are the most important to demonstrate a growing/healthy community?

alphamommie Growing comm is our raw number of total fans/friends across all networks. Healthy is a bit more complex..

mbhahn The metrics of user acquisition if your a membership, Page shares/views if your a content site. it revolves around the uniques

NatashaKhan: Engagement Score and Month over Month channel growth, are the top two for me

corecorina Healthy community metrics: user engagement (activity), new visitors/conversion (growth), and buzz (energy/sentiment)

dshanahan I consider engagement (type, frequency of give/take) and my share of the convo to be topline metrics

mbhahn You also want to know how much time you visitors spend on your site

nickcicero SOV, Sentiment, having Google Analytics on custom FB tabs makes it awesome these days. Insights more than numbers for me

mbhahn Raw data reporting is always better then an arbitrary formula someone made up in many cases

asheshayes  Social media engagement, attendance at events, friend referrals, internal program ie User Engagement

rodicka  Quantity (frequency, type) and quality (did we learn something new? is it actionable?) of engagement. Retention

corecorina How to measure community sentiment? ASK. Survey your fans, talk to them about their experience, watch their reactions

Q3. Are there stories to tell beyond numbers and KPIs? What kind of unique reporting can you do?

evanhamilton Providing actual quotes and screenshots is always key. Our job deals with emotions, we need to make sure bosses see ’em

evanhamilton think surveys can work well, but you have to make sure it’s not just the evangelists taking time to answer.

mbhahn Surveys are also a great way of gauging performance without using statistics. They sometimes confirm what you knew

 Q4. How data focused should a community manager be?

evanhamilton Anyone looking at data but not relationships or vice versa is missing the big picture

jcness It’s on the community manager to balance personal interaction with hard data analysis. Can’t choose just one

theTsaritsa Data only tells a partial story. The human element fills in the blanks with the data

DigitalKaitlyn Data should be a natural part of your daily process. Numbers help guide your choices so your creativity shines at its best

mhandy1 This is where a split team is so important… let each do what they do best.

mbhahn a CM should be focused on core metrics like user acquistion, sharing and content happiness

djfanco Each person has a head and a heart to guide them. Each CM should have metrics and relationships to measure

 

Jenn Pedde

Jenn is a Co-Founder of The Community Manager and the Editor-In-Chief. She's also an adjunct professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. You can find her almost anywhere online, but specifically on #CmgrChat every Wednesday from 2-3pm ET.

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