5 Tips for Using Online Community Analytics to Improve Social Engagement

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Take some time during your busy day to stop and look around.

These are historic times when it comes to an organization’s abilities to leverage the online communities it sponsors and the communities it participates in to improve business-level results.

The way this is happening is evolving too, just as we have seen in other areas of business.

Years ago marketing was done en mass and sales was done solely through one-on-one relationships. With the advent of CRM and marketing automation systems, organizations can nurture prospects with the right message for the right person at the right time with precision.

In political or advocacy campaigns, gone are the days of blanket canvasing and relying on a candidate’s shining personality to connect with an audience. They have been replaced by targeted social media campaigns and pinpoint micro-segmenting.

The Common Thread in These Revolutions Is Data

Businesses, nonprofits, and governments are using data to make better decisions and deliver more relevant information to their constituents.

Now, we are seeing this opportunity reach online communities and the discipline of online community management.

Why Is Data Important in Online Community Management?

How Online Community Analytics Improves Social EngagementIf you can’t prove the ROI, bottom-line contribution, and value to the organization of your online community, online community managers are at risk of losing support within the company, being unable to make a case for additional resources or expansion of the community, and potential loss of their jobs.

In addition, online community analytics enables online community managers to develop a plan to grow the community, ensure that they are spending their time most efficiently, and measure the results of their strategy.

Data-Driven Online Community Management

Socious and online community consultancy, FeverBee, recently hosted an educational webinar on how to use online community data to unlock growth and customer satisfaction.

The following are 5 important takeaways from the discussion about data-driven online community management:

Tip #1) Be More Proactive

Have a plan for how you are going to develop and grow your online community, rather than spending your time reacting to community activity.

Tip #2) Concentrate Engagement

During the early stages of an online communities lifecycle, limited the number of groups as much as possible to build momentum and create value for members by concentrating activity. Tip: Avoid allowing customers or members to create their own groups. This dilutes your “social density.”

Tip #3) Optimize Your Time

Use the data in your online community to focus your effort on the activities, community members, and areas of the online community that will give your organization the highest return.

Tip #4) Know Who To Measure

Focus on measuring active customers or members in your online community rather than overall number of community members or logins.

Tip #5) Develop a Compass

It is important to know where your community is both in the online community lifecycle and in your community-building plan at all times. This allows community managers to make sure that all of their activity throughout the day is building toward taking the community to the next level.

Get more tips and an in-depth look at how into how companies and membership organizations are using the data within their online community platform to increase brand awareness, revenue, and customer engagement by watching the full 90-minute webinar-on-demand.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Joshua Paul
Joshua Paul is the Director of Marketing and Strategy at Socious, a provider of enterprise customer community software that helps large and mid-sized companies bring together customers, employees, and partners to increase customer retention, sales, and customer satisfaction. With over 13 years of experience running product management and marketing for SaaS companies, Joshua Paul is a popular blogger and speaker on customer management, inbound marketing, and social technology. He blogs at http://blog.socious.com.

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