Community Building - Goals & Measures

Some recent work from Beeline, Deloitte and The Society of New Communications Research on the Tribalization of Business from data collected from 120 community managers.

The value of online communities:

• Increasing word-of-mouth (35 percent)
• Increasing brand awareness (28 percent)
• Bringing new ideas into the organization faster (24 percent)
• Increasing customer loyalty (24 percent)

The biggest obstacles managing communities is:

• Getting people involved in the community (51 percent)
• Finding enough time to manage the community (45 percent)
• Attracting people to the community (34 percent)

The features of a community shown to be most effective:

• Ability for community members to connect with other like-minded people: 54 percent
• Ability for members to help others: 43 percent
• The community is focused around a hot topic or issue: 41 percent
• Quality of the community manager/community management team: 33 percent

The top business measures being used:

• Greater awareness: 49 percent
• Number of new ideas from the community: 41 percent
• More referrals: 28 percent
• Increased sales attributable to the community: 26 percent

The top analytic measures being used :

• Number of visitors: 63 percent
• Number of "active" users: 58 percent
• How often people post/comment: 57 percent
• Number of registered users: 49 percent
• How often people visit: 45 percent