Analytics

Analytics or Data Analytics is a way to utilize certain tools and information to analyze and measure the impact of engagement (see engagement) or community management strategies. Data is the most statistically reliable way to observe your community with a bird-eye view. Analytical deducations can give you information, information can give you better insights, and better insights can help you make better decisions.

Quantfying the impact of your efforts is the only way to efficiently understand what works and what doesn’t. Building a community is a game of engagement and experimentation; a lot of the things that go on within a community can fly under the radar if you rely on intuition. Analytics becomes an even greater part of community building (see community building) as the community grows beyond the reach of just one person.

As organic conversations scale, you need to be able to get an overview of how things are going - are conversations still healthy? are community guidelines being followed? how many new people joined in? Are newer posts getting the attention that they should?

Here are some ways in which you can leverage anaytics to make informed decisions:

• Observe engagement patterns - See to it that conversations are steadily growing with time and not the other way around. Keep a close eye on when enegagement decreases and when it increases. Understand what triggers irregular patterns and see how it can be improved or evaded (depending on the pattern).
• Compare timeframes. For example - compare engagement with when you have lower members to when you have high numbers. This can help you understand if an increase in members helped contribute to increase in engagement. Compare ratio of members and engagement over time. Quantity doesn’t always equate to quality
• Revisit impact of events - This can help you measure exactly how effective the event proved to be. You can also compare multiple events to see which ones worked for you and which ones didn’t. Also, compare events to normal days and see how much of a contribution does an event really have in improving engagement.
• Stay on top of conversations - Always keep track of questions, replies, answers, and content sharing. This is a great way to ensure proper support to members. Also, a great way to moderate content within the community.
• Measure retention - See how many members actually stay back once they join. Depending on what the analytics points to, you can understand if the community is offering the value that it promises. Are new users being misled? Is the community culture not clear? Is navigating the community confusing?

You can measure your community’s health score by making use of analytics. Check out this framework (see framework) from Community Jarvis.

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