© 2010 IBM Corporation

Communities 101 – Monitoring The Health Of The Community#4 in a series of community enablement deliverablesVersion 4-0

Contact: Bill Chamberlin, Principle Consultant, Market Insights

© 2010 IBM Corporation

IBM Market Insights

About This Community Enablement Series

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This series was developed by the Market Insights Social Insights Practice team to assist community managers in launching and sustaining successful online communities.

Deliverables in the Community 101 Series

1. Introduction to Communities

2. Planning and Launching Communities

3. Growing and Sustaining Communities

4. Monitoring the Health of Communities

5. Ten Tips for Leaders Using Connections

6. How YOU Can Leverage Communities

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IBM Market Insights

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Community Are Powerful Tools, As Long As You Put Members’ Needs First.

- Forrester, 2008

© 2010 IBM Corporation

IBM Market Insights

Community Metrics

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© 2010 IBM Corporation

IBM Market Insights

Two Important Rules about Metrics and Communities

Don’t rely on metrics to claim your community is successful.

Use metrics to understand your community better.

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© 2010 IBM Corporation

IBM Market Insights

As the community grows, perform regular demographic analysis to understand the membership and gain insights into needs

U.S.40%

Americas24%

Europe16%

A/P9%

BRIC7%

Other4%

Org 133%

Org 225%

Org 317%

Org 413%

Org 58%

Other4%

Marketing43%

Strategy33%

Finance12%

Research6%

Legal3%

Other3%

0 Updates44%

1-2 Updates

26%

3-5 Updates

17%

5-10 Updates

9%

<10 Updates

4%

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By Location - June 2010

By Organization – June 2010

By Function - June 2010

By Activity - June 2010

Source: Community Dashboard

Student8%

Professional

46%

Manager31%

Executive15%

Under 1910%

19-2929%

30-4437%

45-5919%

60+5%

By Job Level– June 2010

By Age- June 2010

© 2010 IBM Corporation

IBM Market Insights

Community metrics can help you spot trends

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Community Champions (more than 4 posts)

Community Agents (1-4 posts)

Community Users (no posts)

Community Contributor Segments, Jan-June 2010Based on Contributions to Knowledgebase

Source: Community Dashboard

© 2010 IBM Corporation

IBM Market Insights

Member profile metrics are a key indicator of success

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Source: Community Dashboard

© 2010 IBM Corporation

IBM Market Insights

Metrics help indicate where members are contributing

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© 2010 IBM Corporation

IBM Market Insights

Detailed metrics indicate how a specific tool is being used

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This page shows example blog metrics

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IBM Market Insights

Additional Sample Community Health Indicators

Page views. Indicates the growth of the total community and amount of content being viewed.

Posts. Examine what the 1 percent of your audience who post roughly 30 percent to 40 percent of the total content is doing. Look at the number of posts as well as the content of the posts. What trends emerge?

Searches. Monitor the internal community searches to find out the types of information visitors want. This should give you insights into important trends and help you gather information about the people who don't register.

Connections. Tracking the number of connections between members can help you understand whether the community is helping members network and form new relationships

Time to response. Track the time between a posting and the initial response. Users tend to expect this to take a day. If it's longer, consider having someone within the company respond. Also, monitor the number of responses to specific posts.

Comments. A growing number of comments posted to blogs and/or forums is a general indication of community health.

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IBM Market Insights

Other Potential Quantitative Community Metrics New Profiles

New Discussion Forum Topics

Total Discussion Forum Posts

New Knowledge Objects

Member Logins

Community Page Views

Number of Times Knowledge Object is Viewed

Most Viewed Knowledge Objects

Membership growth trends

Contribution growth trends

How often users interact (emails, face-to-face meetings, virtual discussions, etc.).

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IBM Market Insights

Other Potential Qualitative Metrics Usability

– Unsolicited, through on-line community feedback tools

Testimonials and other user feedback (e.g., examples of specific mistakes or problems that were avoided or solved, time saved, etc.)– Unsolicited, through community feedback tools;– Solicited, through surveys or emails

Feedback obtained from specific segments (e.g. Champions and Agents)• Conference call or event surveys• Phone calls• In-person meetings• Emails• Interviews• Workshops• Group meetings• Focus groups of users (i.e., ask the users how the community has helped them).

Community Early Progress Checklist

Story Telling (e.g., anecdotes, insights, lessons learned, and actions)

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IBM Market Insights

Other Sample Potential Performance Metrics Increase in customer satisfaction

Achievement of specific knowledge goals

Reduction in hours needed to solve problems

Reduction in planned or actual schedule hours

Reduction in learning time

Reduction in rework

Improvement in speed of response

Increase in innovative and breakthrough ideas

Reduction in cost to support collaborative workspaces

Transfer of best practices (tacit knowledge) from one member to another

Adoption of best practices or innovations that were “not invented here”

Reduction in redundancy of effort among members

Avoidance of costly mistakes

Reduction of specific cost due to superior knowledge resources or shared knowledge

Increase in the productivity of knowledge workers

Improvement in the quality of decision making

Increase in user satisfaction with the ability to access knowledge.

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© 2010 IBM Corporation

IBM Market Insights

Summary: Identify and begin tracking community health metricsExample metrics that are easy to collect and track # of Community members # of Discussion Forum Comments # of Blog Comments # of Content Rated (e.g. # of Stars # of Bookmarks Shared # of Views # of File Downloads # of Attendees at Events (conference calls)

Develop a process to collect and record the metrics monthly. Mostly manual process until a Community Leader dashboard is provided Maintain a spreadsheet with the monthly history

Use the metrics Helps you determine how to improve participation on the site. Goal: Increase collaboration/learning, which leads to community-sourced innovation

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