the quantified community - rachel happe

The Quantified Community

Tracking Behavior to Prove ROI

Rachel HappeCo-Founder, The Community Roundtable@rhappe

Do you want to play Friday night poker or do you want to run the tables?

Community operations is emerging and critical for scale

Community building is critical to success – always has been

But it’s often been in implicit responsibility,

And success has been hard to see and define

Online the value of communities comes into focus

1. Who engages and how

2. How communities form and evolve

3. How network structure impacts outcomes

4. Aggregate behaviors and culture

5. How to trigger and influence behavior

Online, we can see

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We now know how to build communities efficiently…

…which means we have standard recipes and measurements

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“If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.”

- Peter Drucker

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We are drowning in data… so where do we start?

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Focus on what matters, not what is easy

Inputs & Outputs

Things that matter, which can be measured

Input: ManagementThe approach to building successful communities

Output: BehaviorHow individual communication behavior is changing

Output: ResultsThe value produced by the community; benefits including ROI

Investment

Return

Return

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Input: ManagementThe Community Maturity Model

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✔

✔✔

✔✔✔

✔✔

Input: ManagementMeasuring community management

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Behaviors

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“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there”

- Lewis Carroll

• Information Seeking• Content Management• Collaborative Analysis and

Decision-Making • Co-creation of content• Work Synchronization• Stakeholder review• Communication of

decisions or outputs

When a member wants to ___________________________

they will use the community to __________________________,

instead of doing _____________

__________________________.

Output: BehaviorDefine behaviors that generate value

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Output: BehaviorsKeystone behaviors

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Metrics & ROI

Output: BehaviorsMeasuring Community Behaviors

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Output: The Holy Grail - ROI

5 Data Points You Need:1. Number of answers

2. Number of searches

3. Estimate of % of successful searches (start with 20%)

4. Financial value of an answered question (customer support will have a good number for this)

5. Cost of the community program (z)

Calculations: 1. Answers * Value of Answer

= x

2. (Searches * % Successful) * Value of Answer = y

3. x + y

4. (x +y)/z

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Output: Results

August September October November0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Responses Helpful Response Correct Responses

August September October November$0

$10,000

$20,000

$30,000

Value of New Answers Value of Search Results

Response Rate

No Response ResponseHelpful Correct

Response Rate Trend, by Month

Value of Questions, by Month Compounding Value of Community

August September October November$0

$20,000$40,000$60,000$80,000

$100,000

Value of New Answers Value of Search Results

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Output: ROI

Return on Investment

August September October November December January

-$50,000

$0

$50,000

$100,000

$150,000

$200,000

$250,000

ROI Cost Total Value

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Five Ways to Improve Community Value

1. Define a Compelling Shared Purpose and Shared Value

Organizational

ObjectivesMember

Objectives

Shared Purpose

Shared Value

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Psychological Hack: Need for identity, completion and belonging

1. Dedicated community manager

2. Professional development – this is an emerging discipline

3. Invest in advocates

2. Invest in Community Management

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Psychological Hack: Need for challenge

1. Start small2. Watch, ask and listen3. Experiment until

optimal engagement profile develops

4. Use social norms to rapidly acclimate new members

3. Start as You Mean to Continue

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Psychological Hack: Behavioral mirroring

4. Invest in Operations that Scale

1. Build out policies and governance

2. Develop a playbook and training

3. Grow your community management team

4. Invest in customizing the technology to support what works

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Psychological Hack: Triggers, habits and conditioning

5. Measure what Matters, not what is Convenient

1. Identify behaviors that generate value

2. Focus measurement on those behaviors

3. Use metrics to educate stakeholders and make tactical adjustments

4. Translate behaviors to financial value and ROI

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Psychological Hack: What people see determines what they think

1. Determine the value of a answer

2. Prioritize key behaviors

3. Optimize community management to encourage and reward key behavior

Tasks for tomorrow:

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Thank you!

Rachel Happe@rhapperachel@communityroundtable.com