The Scientific Method and Community Metrics. Uncommunity #36
Hi there,
This is Biswajeeta, who joined the team at Uncommunity last week. You are going to see this newsletter from me more often from now.
We, at Uncommunity, just. cant. keep. calm. Uncommunity 3.0 is underway and we want to make sure you’re getting incredible value from our newsletter. We are quite stringent about what goes here and we would like to keep it that way ;) So tell us, what would you like to see more of? Do leave a comment.
It was hard to stay away from the celebrations and hullabaloo of Community Managers Appreciation Day (CMAD) the day before yesterday, that is Jan 24, on social networks.
Icing on the cake was when CMX Hub celebrated the achievements of Community Managers around the world through the annual Community Industry Awards 2022 ceremony. We witnessed baited breaths while the winners were being announced.
Happy belated CMAD from Uncommunity <3
On to this week’s hoardings.
What are we reading/listening to?
Panic! At the community. As Community leaders, we often come across crises that may result in panic in the community. In this post, Anjela Jin shares her way of dealing with panic when it arises. Read on to get a simple yet powerful guide up against these stressful moments and conquer them.
Where Community Fits Into The Customer Support Experience (2022). In this post, Richard Millington, explains how people solve problems, the unique role of a community, and what you need to do to align yourself to your members' needs. It also includes a bunch of handy frameworks. Read the post here.
“The goal of a support community is to reduce the level of mental effort to achieve people’s) their goal. There are several specific areas where a community does this better than any other channel. But first, we need to understand how people resolve problems these days.”
The Scientific Method and Community Metrics. One of the recurring topics in the community manager network is how to measure success and “prove value.” Read this elaborate blog post here. Here’s the TL;DR version of the process:
1) Align executive expectations on outcomes. These form your “north star” objectives. 2) Write your hypothesis on how best to measure and support progress against those objectives. 3) Define a limited set of measurable and actionable key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you course correct, if needed. 4) Develop an action plan for when things go unexpectedly.
ICYMI: Community Information Bankruptcy. This is a mandatory post for everyone involved in building communities. I really don’t like when I join a new community and see 1000 unread messages in different channels and rooms. This piece by Ian Vanagas talks about the information problem and how community builders can solve it.
1. Limit the amount of information provided to members - Maintain strong channel boundaries.
2. Make information more digestible - Summarize what happens in the community every day or week.
3. Guide members on how to avoid information bankruptcy - Hide or mute channels and notifications they don’t care about. Tell them they don’t need to read every message
[SURVEY] The team at CMX is doing a survey on the 2022 Community Industry Report. Help them by completing this survey.
[PODCAST] “Do you think there is a minimum size of customers/users that you need to have to make a community successful?” Listen to this episode of In Before the Lock.
[PODCAST] On Masters of Community, David Spinks interviewed Cadran Cowansage, the CEO and Founder at Elpha to speak about:
How to leverage an existing community to launch a new one
Why you might want to build your own community platform
How to monetize cmty through job matchmaking
Listen to the podcast episode here.
[WEBINAR] Vanilla Forums hosted the who’s who of community management on CMAD to speak about the emerging topics in Community management like Accessibility in Communities, Community career path, Community moving beyond transactional support, and transition of community team from Marketing to Customer success. All registrants will receive copies of all four recordings. Register here.
[EVENT] Circle is hosting the event this Friday, on the 5-Step Framework for Launching Your Community in 2022. Sign up here for free.
Here are some tips on how to demarcate the channels/ topics in your cohort community:
Hallelujah!
The memes will make you go (C)MAD.
The Stickiness Ratio and why it matters:
Another community analogy we swear by:
What’s new at Uncommunity?
Resource added:
Unita: helps discover relevant communities around you based on your interests and needs.
Community tool added:
Scenes: Run your community in the same place as you run webinars and courses, host events, upload media, sell digital products, run chats & forums, process payments and much, much more.
Career Corner
Fresh community job roles are listed on the Uncommunity job board! If you want to have a role featured or are a job seeker, click here! Check out the jobs from companies like Outsystems, Patreon, Automation Anywhere, Toggl Track, Graphy and more.
thank you
for joining us in our journey. We all have full-time jobs and we have built Uncommunity in our free time as we have been exploring ways to give back and support fellow community builders in their journeys.
If you are enjoying our curation and want to express your appreciation, please feel free to spread the word, or let us know your thoughts/feedback.
And oh! Happy Republic Day to our subscribers from India :)