Measuring the Value of Community

As a technology evangelist, I spend a good amount of my time with various customer and partner communities, attending and speaking at events around the world, meeting with customers and partners, and managing product councils and advocacy programs. In addition, I've helped launch more than two dozen community-focused technology events, largely in the Western US where I reside. Its not just that I enjoy being involved in community events -- I have also seen the impact on my business, with community relations being a major factor in the successful acquisitions of my last two companies.

A key question every enterprise must ask at some point: How do we measure the value of community?

Some organizations are better than others at promoting and tracking their community activities. For example, I am promoting two events right now almost exclusively through social media -- one of which is an online gathering, the other a weekend conference with speakers, exhibitors, coffee and doughnuts. While a purely social promotion is sufficient for my online endeavor, its just one piece of a broader promotional strategy for the in-person event. But in both cases, my teams are watching the numbers closely to see which methods are the most successful in getting the word out, and where we can improve.

Some organizations do community-building through more structured tools, such as through their CRM platforms where every customer interaction is tracked as a separate activity, and every touch-point within their customer and partner relationships are measured. Organizations need to improve their ability to mine this data, looking for trends, interpreting and taking action on insights and customer feedback. Of course, you cannot measure something if you are not currently tracking – so you could say that community + measurement = opportunities to iterate and improve.

Community is viewed by and large as a qualitative activity -- a way of reaching out to customers and partners to improve relationships, and to build trust -- but organizations still need to be able to quantify the value of those qualitative activities, tying good will, improved perceptions, and product or service advocacy to more leads, improved conversion rates, and stronger sales.

As you create or participate in community activities, think about the following questions:

• Are you properly tracking our community activities?
  How are you defining your community activities, and how are you capturing them within your customer relationship management (CRM) or other management systems? Maybe it was a user group, or maybe you connected with a prospective partner while participating in a job fair. You might track two activities differently if one is an online activity, and the other required someone to jump on an airplane to participate. Both may drive value, but without proper tracking and measurements, you won't have an accurate view of the cost of participating.

• How are you measuring community-influenced activities?
  Assuming you have defined the types of community activities, you also need to measure the weight (value) of each outcome, such as whether the activity drove downloads, sales, or some other important KPI. Flying someone around the globe may result in wonderful feedback from dozens of customers, but may not provide the ROI that an enterprise hopes to get out of every community activity. Sometimes the benefit is improved relations, or good will. But for most organizations, it is also about decreasing costs (such as support) and increasing revenue. Understand your organizational goals for each community activity so that you can track which ones are the most successful.

• Are you investing in tools that encourage deeper community involvement?
  All of this tracking can mean a lot of overheard. Some companies employ full-time operations personnel to keep things organized, while others seek to build or buy tools to automate. How much visibility do you have into your social activities? How quickly are you able to adjust your systems and processes based on what you learn? And what kinds of tools are you making available to your own teams -- as well as your customers and partners -- to enable more accurate metrics and reporting?

Personally, I don’t believe community is an option – it is essential to business, no matter what industry you are in. It is a key method for identifying prospective customers and partners. It is a great way to develop and extend relationships with customer and partners, moving beyond the transactional sale and into a more empathetic, solution-focused relationship. And it can be the best way to find out what trends are happening, what customers are thinking, and what competitors are doing.

Are you ready for this change to your business? Do you have the right level of visibility, and the right tools and processes to track and measure your community activities? Time to start planning.