How to measure community

A corporate social network is a tool that serves various communities in an organization. The development of these communities is handled by a community manager and a team of like-minded people. In order to track the development of a corporate social network, understand the level of user activity, identify opportunities for community growth, the community manager needs analytics. Different manufacturers make their analytical tools. Let's see what they can show us.

The analytical modules of the platforms are slightly different, but in general they measure the same thing. Therefore, for example, take the Yammer admin dashboard. In the description, I cited various sections of the panel and indicated 1) what can be seen in them and 2) what to see in them, alas, is impossible, but it would be useful.
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Information in the panel can be viewed in the context of 7 and 28 days. What is the point here? A 28-day cut helps to understand the level of user involvement in the community. But sometimes it is not clear, thanks to which events the level of engagement grew or fell. To better understand the relationship between any event and the level of activity - you can see the metrics for the past 7 days.

The participants .

You will see:

• Number of registered users. This allows you to understand the degree of popularity of the network at the stage of its development. You should not expect 100% adaptation if you attract participants to the network voluntarily.
  
  
• The number of active users, that is, the number of users who, during the period under review, entered the network and did some meaningful action there, for example, made a comment or ticked “I like”. This metric most adequately reflects the level of user engagement.
  
  

You will not see:

• The number of users who logged into the network through a link from an e-mail and did not do anything on the network.
  
  
• The answer to the question of how to do to increase user involvement in the community.
  
  

Messages

You will see:

• The number of new posts that have been posted to public or private groups. This parameter depends on the involvement activities that the community manager and his team are undertaking.
  
  
• How many messages are sent to groups, and how many - private. Suddenly, out of habit, users continue to send each other a private message?
  
  

You will not see:

• How many messages are created by new users.
  
  
• How many messages are sent to closed groups, and how many to closed. After all, the more open messages - the better the information spreads in the organization and the better the communication in the community.
  
  
• What types of discussions are happening in the community. You want discussions to be about work, not “fludilne”?
  
  
• Is it possible that the majority of messages are generated by a narrow group of people?
  
  

Groups

You will see:

• How many online groups do you have? In fact, you should not worry much about this. That's not the point.
  
  
• Which of these groups were active, that is, at least one message was sent to them during the period in question. This is essentially the case.
  
  
• What is the proportion of closed and open groups. The more open - the better information is distributed in the organization.
  
  
• If there are many open groups, you will see a list of groups with the highest ratio of new messages to the number of group members. From their names it will be clear whether there are any groups in the top list related to solving business problems.
  
  

You will not see:

• How many total groups relate to the performance of work tasks.
  
  
• Who creates groups. These people you may need to manage your community.
  
  
• How to create and administer groups.
  
  
• Top sheet closed groups. Security is security.
  
  

Files

You will see:

• The total number of uploaded files.
  
  
• The number of files downloaded for the period in question.
  
  

You will not see:

• What types of files are uploaded.
  
  
• Whether these files were discussed in the discussion thread.
  
  
• Which groups have the most files uploaded?
  
  
• The ratio of downloaded and viewed files. Whether the network has become a cemetery of unnecessary content?
  
  

Notes (Wiki)

Notes are a good indicator that the organization is really accumulating knowledge and using it.

You will see:

• The total number of notes loaded.
  
  
• Number of notes downloaded for the period in question.
  
  
• How many times the notes have been edited and viewed.
  
  
• If the number of Notes is large enough - the top list of the most popular open Notes
  
  

You will not see:

• What specifically Notes edited and were viewed.
  
  
• What Notes were used for. Is this a customer card, FAQ, list of resources or notes from the meeting?
  
  

Access

You will see:

• What means did users use to access the network (web, mobile or desktop application) and send messages?
  
  
• What percentage of users installed their mobile app.
  
  

You will not see:

• The dynamics of engagement in connection with the method of entering the network. Maybe the main influx of active users is exactly the mobile application?
  
  
• Why users use this or that application.
  
  
• Data in the context of any group.
  
  

In total, the listed basic analytical reports will give you an answer about the population and community activity, but in general they will not help you find the business benefits of using the network or the semantic load of the posted content. For example, you want to know what questions are asked by online sales managers. Or find out how many inquiries related to customer support were decided on the corporate social network. Or whether users read corporate news on the road to work and back from mobile gadgets. Answers to these questions are no longer available in standard functionality. To do this, you need to upload data and deal with them yourself (you need the help of your analysts), or buy third-party analytical products.

In any case, if you are really seriously developing the communities in your organization, you cannot do without serious analytics and thoughtful work on it.

Vladimir Ivanitsa

viva@supereon.ru