Your “North Star Metric(s)” are the data points that you’ll use to gauge the success and effectiveness of your community’s growth and engagement over time, aka Community Building KPIs.
Building a community can be challenging without distinct North Star metrics or a definition of what “success” actually looks like. Paying attention to the impactful data points and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can provide the right attention to detail that you need to measure the success of your community.
Community measurement is both a qualitative and quantitative practice, that being said, many organizations and groups want to create statistical points of success that provide measurable outcomes to owning and operating a community.
One of the things we would always hear was: “Guys, we’re investing a lot of budget in this, how many active members do we actually have?”
Yousef Hammoudah, Global Director Culture & Community Running, Adidas
via co-matter, The Community Podcast
Here’s a list of a few Community Building KPIs to pay attention to:
Growth
Both public and private communities should be highly focused on growth & marketing. These Three KPI’s provide some baseline understanding of the efforts you’re spending on Growth + Marketing.
App Store Impressions
At the top of your funnel is the first touchpoint you have with new and prospective users. App Store impressions provide a good sense of the amount of traffic your application is generating in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
New User Sign-Ups
A much deeper KPI in your funnel, but the ultimate measure of growth. A new user sign up is equivalent to your community size. The more sign-ups, the more users in your community.
Invites Shared / Sent
Specifically for open communities, this KPI provides some insight into the virality of the community you’re building. After your community has been “alive” for a bit, it’s important to pay attention to the number of invites being shared & sent. As great content is created in your world, members of the community can share that content externally on major social networks or private one-to-one instances.
Retention
Every community needs to closely watch retention. Are you creating a unique and exciting experience for your audience? Part of creating a “sticky” community is to diversify the kinds of opportunities to connect with the brand and other members.
Monthly Active Users
Monthly Actives or MAUs often times are the North Star Metric that drives decisions related to retention. As a measure of how many users are coming back or visiting your community on a monthly basis, you can start to asses the correct trends and behaviors that drive a higher monthly active rate and ultimately make your community a desirable place to be.
Sticky Events Created
“Sticky” Events are a KPI that will be fairly specific to the kind of community that you manage. Live Events, Short Story Videos, Group Chats & Discussions can all act as their own “sticky” event. Lead by a manager, moderator or just a regular member of the community, a sticky event is a great tool to create programmatic experiences inside of the community you’re building.
Because each community is different, sticky events will also be defined differently. As you determine what your communities care about most, clearly state and outline what a sticky event means to your brand and the group of people that you’re bringing together.
Engagement
Different that retention, engagement is a bit deeper of a theme that provides detail on the content, discussions, and subjects that your community likes to engage with. Not only will engagement metrics provide you with quantitative performance, but also indicate qualitative components that drive positive repeat behaviors.
Post Type Created x Quantity
Is your community sharing more content over time? What kinds of content? Understanding what your community is creating at scale can indicate the kinds of content that you’ll feature and curate for other members.
Posts Type Liked x Quantity
Is your community engaging more with a specific type of video or live events? Measuring specific content engagement for the entire community, this data point indicates the performance of your content in your community. The more likes that are created, the more engaged your audience is in the content and with others in the community.
“Add To home” Count
With your community following the basic rules of a traditional follow model (I follow you, then I receive your content) keeping track of how users follow and connect with each other is reflective of how engaged they are in the community.
Groups Joined
As a vehicle for organizing content and users in your community, leverage “Groups Joined” as a way to understand how well you’re exposing, curating and promoting new content to members of your community.
Honeycommb has also created a resource document to help plan, build and maintain an online community.
Reach out to Honeycommb today to get started or Book a Demo to see what we can build together for your audience.
