How do you measure the health of your engagement with your audience?
Do you engage with your audience online? In case the answer falls in for a “yes”. Kudos to that! Well, owning an online community accounts for one of the most valuable business assets to any brand that strives to grow and outperform its competitors in the long run.
Having said that, one would agree that we as brands invest significant energy and monetary resources in creating, driving, and building these communities. After all, a strongly knit, interactive, and thriving community is something that appeals to us as a business and helps us understand the desires and behavior of our community members, making ways for us to walk along with them parallelly fulfilling their needs better than the competition. While we infuse sweat and energy in making these communities roar, it is very much needed for us to track the health of these communities at regular intervals to check up on the effectiveness of our community plans and reach. Incorporating effective health checks at predetermined intervals enables brands to evaluate their engagement plans and restructure if the need be without much waste of time and effort.
Here are some effective community health check techniques and methods you may pick based on what matches your community requirements the best !!
Growth: While we speak of growth we refer to the increase in the member base for your online community. There requires a predetermined growth rate for each quarter that you might plan to achieve. Most of your community activities would revolve around the same and will attract newer folks to join in. A healthy growing community would reflect a steadily increasing rate of growth in the member base. One may also leverage the expertise of external tech community platforms such as Cohora to escalate their community base.
Happiness Score: Happiness score for any community could be measured on various factors essential to that community and simply reflects upon the satisfaction level of the community members. One way of measuring this is ascertaining the Net Performing Score (NPS) of a community and incorporating the changes analyzed during the NPS.
Retention: Well studying the retention rate of your community basically determines the average time for which a member has been a part of the community. The larger this number, the healthier would be the community. A higher retention rate expresses the willingness of community members to continue being a part of that community.
Awareness Check: Community leads can also conduct engaging awareness check polls and activities to ascertain the consciousness of community members with respect to the brand values, identity, and culture. A greater awareness defines active community members who are keen and excited about a brand and its values and hence contributes towards the overall health of the community.
Community Interactions: Communities are all about interactions and building connections. While we measure these interactions we need to understand both qualitative and quantitative aspects. Good meaningful conversations reflect the value that your community adds to the community members. Healthy communities run sound meaningful conversations developing and promoting their community members.
Referral: Increasing community base specifically through referral shows the trust and the credibility of community folks to a brand’s community. Tracking the referrals enable brands to understand the likeliness of existing community folks in promoting the brand in their social circle. Hence, higher referrals dictate the soundness of a community.
Diversity: Diversity could be measured on different parameters for different brands depending on the target market segment. Hosting a diverse group of community folks who engage for mutual goals defines the health of a community and reflects upon the impression it holds.
Well yes!! These were some exciting yet impactful techniques and tricks community leads could inculcate in their community health score checks to evaluate the soundness of the community. Additionally, these are extremely helpful while chalking out the a plan for driving your online community.