This overview helps to introduce the basic principles of community management, why it's important, and how you can measure your community's health.
What Is a “Healthy” Community?
A healthy community is one with engaged members who understand the value and impact they’re providing to your business. This in turn contributes to their motivation to participate, ultimately leading to higher response rates, better quality data and lower member churn.
A healthy community also results in satisfied stakeholders who feel closer to the voice of their customers than ever before.
When you achieve a healthy community, you can leverage the collective wisdom of your members.
Why Is Community Management Important?
Community management is the practice of building and managing an insight community; much like the process involved in managing a digital community via social media. Community management focuses on the practices and processes required to maintain a healthy and responsive community. Community management ensures the ongoing success of the community. It provides time to reflect on what is working and what needs improvement, plan member engagement and retention strategies, organize the research calendar, and showcase successes to stakeholders to ensure continued buy-in. It’s important to look at community management strategically and tactically to ensure you get the most value from your members.
Elements of Community Management
Community Health
- Review key metrics including size, participation & utilization, community profile, activity cadence and response rates
- Purge non-responders (free up space, and improve data quality)
- Recruit new members (fresh perspective, boosts size)
Member Engagement & Retention
- Review member retention strategy
- Member experience evaluation: member feedback and expectations
Showcase Success
- Getting buy-in from stakeholders
- Increases awareness throughout the organization
