How much time do you spend thinking about numbers, impressions, connections and impact? Do you have analytics, scorecards and reports? If you answered yes to any of these, I would encourage you to also spend time to think about individual purpose, identity and engagement.
From advertising agencies to call centers, many businesses seem to focus on the numbers. But can that get us into trouble? Well of course it can – especially when we take our eye off the ball and think about things over people. We tend to get lost in the numbers game. But what do the numbers really measure, what do they really tell us about engagement?
Today being 10-10-10, I thought only appropriate to reflect on the role of number crunching in our communities. What we should make time to reflect upon understands why people are really joining communities? Is there a personal purpose? In addition to this information, it would be really helpful to understand individual members preferred interaction style. If you are using a communication or social technology platforms, I’m certain they offer some type of analytics. These analytics can be useful to report on some interactions with content or advertising impressions. But do they really allow us to determine if someone is engaged with the community? Also, have you built out the definition of what ‘engagement’ means for your different community personas? In developing a scorecard for the health of your community and if you are developing community cultivation plans, this question in my opinion is central to members and community managers better understand their communities and in turn can measure more effectively.
The Lauren Klein 