Navigating Community Engagement
yeah yeah, another engagement ramble 😂
Throughout your career as a Community Manager, your understanding of community engagement will evolve at different stages.
As a newbie, the craze around having engagement within your community is high and you’d find yourself obsessing over vanity metrics a lot. And you know what? That’s fine! Those metrics are ‘surface level’ important to some communities or they can simply serve as personal milestones. And it’s possible, you may not yet be in a position where you have to prove the community’s value to your superiors.
But then, soon enough, you'll start craving more 😅 The vanity metrics getting you excited soon becomes “so what now?” You'll realize that engagement is just one part of the equation and that there's more to pay attention to. For instance, what does a particular metric mean for your community and brand? How can you leverage that engagement to provide more value to your members?
And the cycle continues as you progress in your role, change jobs, interact with different communities, acquire more knowledge, and so on.
Nevertheless, one thing remains constant: people join your community for a reason, and your community need to serve those reasons.
So regardless of the tactics or strategies you employ to enhance engagement, ensure that it aligns with the community’s purpose and the ever-evolving needs of your members. And when you get down to measuring insights, plug into the metrics that aligns with your goal.
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In the past years, I’ve worked with communities that have moderate activities, extremely high activities, coordinated activities, and low or no activities. Through these experiences, I've learned to discern what truly matters and what doesn't.
Regardless of the level of activity, if your strategies are helping members move from point A to B in their journey with you, then you’re winning. Don’t expect your community to be like some other community before you can say it’s successful. Success means different things for different people as we all have unique goals we’re pursuing.
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Currently, my mindset around engagement metrics is understanding who the community members are, what their aspirations are, and ways we are helping them get there (wherever ‘there’ is for them).
With this mindset, I can identify what should be measured and what metrics are unnecessary. This way, the value delivered can be properly measured and areas of improvement can be articulated.
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An example;
Brandversations Africa Community
About: A brand education and resource community bringing brand professionals together to connect, share knowledge, and grow with like-minded individuals. The community provides value through events and the sharing of high-end resources.
Engagement metrics: Number of members attending events, number of new members gained through events, number of shared resources, conversation rate within the community, member helpfulness
Other metrics: Referrals, member growth, reach/engagement on social media content, etc.
I hope you found this insightful.
Thank you for taking the time to read through! I’d love to hear your thoughts.