Community Management: Tactical Considerations

The modern era of Web3 has spawned a new model of community-driven growth, and many decentralized organizations distribute work to the community, unlike the typical hierarchy-driven organizations from the old economy.

Although tokens may drive financial incentives towards contribution, the long-term grassroots community leadership drives the success of the entire network by delivering strategic value. A community strategy is a multi-layered approach, I have published a framework for that, link in comments.

Communities, while delivering strategic value must tactically drive engagement. Community management is an operational role and differs from community moderation. Running and owning a community should benefit the project, the community, and the industry.

Tactical Considerations

A community impacts several functional plans across the organization/project ranging from sales, marketing, product, systems, etc. Managing communities at scale have a certain operational science and KPIs behind it. Let us examine key tactical considerations and KPIs (non-exhaustive list)

§?Measure funnel velocity; Key KPIs include TOFU to MOFU movement and MOFU to BOFU.

§?Leveraging tokens can bring engagement straight to the MOFU and understand how much cost and effort was eliminated at the TOFU

§?Understand community vs traditional funnel; KPIs include ROI from the community measured directly, traditional metrics measured channels per quarter.

§?Systemic tracking is crucial i.e., back-end tracking and attribution of virtual events with proper segregation between audiences i.e., potential customers and community

§?Value protection through controls against impersonation, spam. Control and management modules around these attack vectors need to be set in place

§?WAU (weekly active users) are important after a certain size threshold is achieved; until then community growth is the key KPI

§?Measure volume, velocity, and direction of information within the feedback loops. Analyze offensive (growth-oriented) and defensive (retention-oriented) metrics

§?Measure brand awareness, brand health and drive measurable brand equity with the community.

§?Understand click-through rates and open rates on community emails and surveys, put a heat map in place to create health dashboards.

§?Existing lead nurture campaigns can be complementary effects with the community but could also compete with them. Align incentives to drive synergy.

§?Measure adoption and revenue influence on the pipeline, understand KPIs like speed to market, product consumption rates, developer build rates etc.

§?Understand community influence on roadmap and make sure the Board understand influence, investment, and ROI from community.

§?Understand community touchpoints, measure interaction models and put continuous improvements processes in place to improve community experience.

Concluding Thoughts

One needs to have a sound strategy for community-driven growth, a strategic framework can be found in the comments. The execution is tactical, operational and must be measured, community strength and make or break a project and one must be deliberate about it. Community moderation is not equal to community management, community management is a highly operational role.