analytics - Cultivating Community2024-03-28T23:53:06Zhttps://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/feed/tag/analyticsGuest Post: How We Measure Content for Community Successhttps://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/loyal-community-success2014-04-08T18:01:40.000Z2014-04-08T18:01:40.000ZShannon Byrnehttps://cultivate.ning.com/community/ShannonByrne<div><p class="p1"><em>This post originally appeared on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://loyal.is/measuring-content-success/" target="_blank">Loyal's blog</a>. </em></p>
<p><em>Loyal is a Community Development Studio. Process-driven and people-centric, they develop bespoke solutions for each of their clients. They've worked on community with a variety of organizations from Fortune 100s and international brands to seed stage startups and politicians. For more information, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://loyal.is" target="_blank">http://loyal.is</a></em></p>
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<p dir="ltr">If you’ve been following Loyal for a while, you may have noticed that we’ve recently put a considerable amount of attention towards our content, and we’re seeing great results. Most importantly, we’ve seen increased engagement and interactions with members of our community — results tied directly to our goals and values as a company, as we put people at the center of our work. We believe that healthy communities consist of networks of relationships and that content is simply a tool, a vehicle by which to deepen these relationships for <a rel="nofollow" href="http://loyal.is/measuring-community/" target="_blank">community success</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Before diving in, you should check out “</span><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3024786/dialed/the-ultimate-guide-to-google-analytics" target="_blank">The Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics</a><span>” by Belle Beth Cooper (formerly of Buffer) on Fast Company. It’s a helpful guide for analyzing Google Analytics’ most important metrics, walking through a process very similar to our own. <em>Also, we should mention that much of our growth is due to the redesign of our site in mid-January. </em></span></p>
<h2 dir="ltr"><strong>Where to Start</strong></h2>
<p dir="ltr">We always start every endeavor by defining its goals and assessing how they align with our overall business objectives, then breaking them into short-term wins and long-term gains. Beyond seeking to deepen our relationships, our other goals are to: establish ourselves as thought leaders on community design, get in front of brands, and educate our community and a broader audience on the power of designing and leveraging community for business growth. We do this through our blog content, weekly newsletter, curated social content, guest posts, and IRL interactions. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll focus on blog and social content for this post.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Visits</h3>
<p dir="ltr">At Loyal, when reporting on the success of our content, we start with the high-level metric of visits and unique visits. Although visits are not the most important metric, they’re a good determinant of the health of our content and site. We then look at the <strong>percentage of new visits</strong> to determine if our content is bringing people back (this is very important to us) and if we’re successfully growing our audience. In January, we saw a 171% increase in visits, and a <em><strong>176% increase in unique visits</strong></em>!</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Bounce Rates</h3>
<p dir="ltr">We do look at bounce rates, but they’re not as critical for us as they would be for an e-commerce company, for example, because although we hope new visitors contact us to learn more, we’re not selling a product on our site. We know that our visitors often come to our site to read a blog post or two, maybe comment, sign up for our newsletter, or contact us, then leave. As long as they interact with the content in some way, we’re happy.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Pages Per Visit + Time on Site</h3>
<p dir="ltr">We take a look at pages per visit to determine if visitors are interested enough to click through to other pages from the one they landed on. We also consider the percentage of new visits — it’s one thing if returning visitors are only reading one story, it’s more concerning if new visitors aren’t clicking through. In January, we saw a <strong>38% increase in pages/visit</strong>from the month prior for an average of 2.3 pages.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Time spent on the site helps determine the level of interest, as well as whether visitors are just skimming or spending a significant amount of time consuming the content. Our average time spent on the site was <strong>up 23 seconds</strong> in January, with an all-time high of 6:15 the first half of the month due to our new site and blog launch mid-month.</p>
<p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> <img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1282153?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center"></p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Pageviews and Specific Content Drilldown</h3>
<p dir="ltr">Pageviews help determine the success of our content in terms of the number of pages visitors are reading and how many times they’re coming back to the site. We saw a<strong> 247% increase in pageviews</strong> in January, also due to our site overhaul.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><em><strong>The most important piece of information when analyzing our analytics is what specific content is driving traffic to the site.</strong> </em>That is, what’s grabbing the audience’s attention and keeping them there — what they’re finding interesting or of value. In Google Analytics, you can see this by looking at <strong>Behavior -> Site Content -> All Pages</strong> and sort by Unique Pageviews (highest to lowest). From there, you can also see how many people entered the site from specific pages, how much time they spent on it, which pages they left the site from, and what the bounce rate was.</p>
<p dir="ltr">By looking at which posts perform best, we can identify trends in our content that are attracting an audience. O<span>ur posts that have performed best, in order of popularity are:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://loyal.is/loyals-new-look/" target="_blank">http://loyal.is/loyals-new-look/</a></li>
<li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://loyal.is/measuring-community/">http://loyal.is/measuring-community/</a></li>
<li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://loyal.is/community-process/" target="_blank">http://loyal.is/community-process/</a></li>
<li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://loyal.is/history-of-community/" target="_blank">http://loyal.is/history-of-community/</a></li>
<li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://loyal.is/productivity-tips-for-community-people/" target="_blank">http://loyal.is/productivity-tips-for-community-people/</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Our site is a little too fresh or new to gleam too much from this, considering how these are our most recent posts. However, we have noticed that our audience is interested in actionable take-aways and quantitative anecdotes. We will continue to keep an eye on which of our content performs best moving forward.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Site Referrers</h3>
<p dir="ltr">It’s crucial for us to know where our visitors are coming from so that we allocate our time and resources wisely. By looking at referrers, we can discover where our audience is and what calls to action are successfully attracting them to the site. In Google Analytics, you can see this by selecting<strong> Acquisition -> All Referrals</strong>. There, you’ll see the number of visits from each referring site, as well as how many were new visits. You can click on each referrer to see which links they drove traffic to on which days. You can then go back and see which Tweets, for example, generated the clicks.</p>
<p>In January, our top referrers with percentage of unique visits were:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Twitter:</strong> 14%</li>
<li><strong>New Site Announcement (via Mailchimp):</strong> 11%</li>
<li><strong>Loyal.cx (direct)</strong>: 9%</li>
<li><strong>Facebook:</strong> 6%</li>
<li><strong>Google:</strong> 5.4%</li>
<li><strong>Newsletter:</strong> 5.4%</li>
<li><strong>SarahJuddWelch.com:</strong> 5%</li>
<li><strong>TheCommunityManager.com:</strong> 4.5%</li>
<li><strong>Lighthouse.io:</strong> 3%</li>
<li><strong>loyalcx.tumblr.com:</strong> 2.6%</li>
<li><strong>Tumblr.com:</strong> 3%</li>
<li><strong>The Fetch:</strong> 1.8%</li>
</ul>
<p dir="ltr">As you can see, our visits are widely distributed with the majority of referrals coming from Twitter and our email marketing campaigns. We should note that this does not take into account business leads and one-off inbound emails. We also only recently began contributing to other blogs and publications. Those sites being in our top ten referrers confirms that this is an activity that we should continue with. Also, we do not have a company Facebook page <em>(because we feel it won’t be as valuable for brands in the future)</em>, so it seems that our personal networks play a significant role in attracting visitors.</p>
<h2 dir="ltr"><strong>What All This Means</strong></h2>
<p dir="ltr">All of this data helps paint a story for us — a story about our community, our content, and our distribution strategy. By taking all the above information into consideration, we’re able to determine that our new site and blog with original content are successfully attracting new and returning visitors. We know that Twitter is our most successful distribution channel, our personal networks and relationships are high-value, and that we should continue to guest post. We know that there is a significant opportunity to grow these numbers and strengthen our community.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>We tend to nerd out over learning more about our community and look forward to seeing what content does and does not resonate with all of you!</em></p>
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<p class="p1"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>About the Author:</strong></span></p>
<p class="p1">Shannon Byrne is the Content Manager + Community Associate at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://loyal.is/">Loyal</a>, where she crafts words and creates community-driven strategies. Florida native turned Brooklynite, she has a passion for writing and a knack for connecting people. Follow her on Twitter <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.twitter.com/shannnonb">@ShannnonB</a>.</p>
<p class="p1">Read more stories like this one at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://loyal.is/">http://loyal.is</a>.</p>
<p class="p1"><em>Image via GraphicStock</em></p></div>Metrics and Measurement for Community Health [Video]https://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/metrics-and-measurement-for-community-health-video2013-10-08T15:40:00.000Z2013-10-08T15:40:00.000ZAllison Leahyhttps://cultivate.ning.com/community/allisonleahy<div><p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-Jb_EeBqp8s?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><span class="font-size-3"><span class="font-size-3">If you want to increase the number of members who are participating in your community,</span><span class="font-size-3"> where should you focus your time to get the best results? Should you be promoting your community on Facebook and Twitter, or reaching out to members privately by email?</span></span></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><span class="font-size-3">If 50 community members are complaining about a site change, what should you do? Should you revert back to the original design, should you survey members to find out more, or should you do nothing at all?</span></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><span class="font-size-3"><span class="font-size-3"><span class="font-size-3">The answers to these questions and more are in your community's data. You must collect data to understand h</span></span><span class="font-size-3">ow successful your community engagement efforts are and wha</span><span class="font-size-3">t is or isn't working in your community. </span></span><span class="font-size-3">A data-driven community manager would look at which channels are giving them the members that actually convert to regular participants of the community. She would recognize the complaints, but would soon realize t<span class="font-size-3">hat what members get riled up about can actually be irrelevant to what they're doing. </span></span><span class="font-size-3"><br /></span></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Once you start gathering data, you will begin to track and learn how your community is progressing through its lifecycle. From there, you can design interventions to increase engagement, improve the sense of community, and make your community a success. Measuring data is a critical part in knowing where you are now, it can help you:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><font size="3">Deal with unseen problems</font></li>
<li><font size="3">Respond properly to vocal minorities</font></li>
<li><font size="3">Allocate your time</font></li>
<li><font size="3">Optimize your tasks</font></li>
</ul>
<p><span class="font-size-3">I</span><span class="font-size-3">n the recording above, FeverBee</span><span class="font-size-3"> founder and community consultant Richard Millington reviews the many <a href="http://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/measuring-an-online-community-master-your-data-to-gain-an-unfair-" target="_self">important metrics you can gather data around</a>, including: <span class="font-size-3"><br /></span></span></p>
<ul>
<li><span class="font-size-3"><b>New visitors</b>. This shows whether your outreach is successful. Always compare it to the previous month and six months ago. You should also analyze where these visitors arrived from and track how many of each progressed into active members. You can also track the success of each different source of members (where does the best quality traffic come from?)</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-3"><b>New visitors to new registered members</b>. This shows whether your website is optimized for converting a curious visitor into a member and whether you're attracting the right sort of visitors. You can go further and measure their progress through each stage of the registration form.</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-3"><b>Percentage of members who make a contribution</b>. This shows whether you are converting those that register into participants within the community. If this is low, you might be just collecting lurkers.</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-3"><b>Members active within the past 30 days</b>. This shows whether you are gaining or losing active members. When this number starts to drop, you have a serious problem and a limited amount of time to correct course.</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-3"><b>Contributions per active member per month</b>. This is an activity per member ratio. If this drops, members are less engaged in the community and this could lead to more members leaving. This might also show if a small number of members are dominating the discussions.</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-3"><b>Visits per active member per month</b>. This shows how often members visit the community. The less frequently members visit, the more likely the contributions will drop and the number of active members will depart. This may also show the popularity of events held in the community.</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-3"><b>Content popularity</b>. Each piece of content can and should be measured. How many people read it and how many responded to it. This will indicate which content items are most popular and which should be discontinued.</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span class="font-size-3">In addition to quantitative metrics, you may want to gather information about the the sentiment in your community. Feel free to use this <a href="http://bit.ly/18EEHrS" target="_blank">Sense of Community Index</a> to <span class="font-size-3">survey your members on an annual or bi-annual basis.</span></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">For more community management best practices, </span><a href="http://www.feverbee.com/ning.html" target="_blank" style="font-size: 12pt;">download</a><span class="font-size-3"> half of </span><em style="font-size: 12pt;">Buzzing Communities: How to Build Bigger, Better, and More Active Online Communities</em><span class="font-size-3"> for free, then thank </span><a href="http://twitter.com/richmillington" target="_blank" style="font-size: 12pt;">@RichMillington</a><span class="font-size-3">!</span></p>
<hr />
<p>Metrics and Measurement for Community Health is part of the <a href="http://cultivate.ning.com/community-management-talks" target="_self">Ning Community Management Talks</a> series. Past presentations cover topics including strategies for generating activity, managing growth, facilitating member engagement, <a href="http://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/converting-newcomers-into-active-community-members" target="_self">converting newcomers into active members</a>, and the science behind it all. </p>
</div>Upcoming Webinar: Metrics and Measurement for Community Healthhttps://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/upcoming-webinar-metrics-and-measurement-for-community-health2013-09-24T19:04:22.000Z2013-09-24T19:04:22.000ZAllison Leahyhttps://cultivate.ning.com/community/allisonleahy<div><p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1281949?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1281949?profile=original" width="302" class="align-right" height="259"></a><span class="font-size-3">You shouldn't be guessing what is or isn't working in your community. You should be gathering and analyzing data about your community's health. Metrics can paint a vivid picture about whether your existing, active members are more or less engaged in the community, and they can highlight anything that might be a cause for concern.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">If you want to answer questions about how healthy your community is, begin by gathering data. <a href="http://click.et.ning.com/?qs=0dabfa53cca88cb2f91419bf0caaaf4631f091f1ae6401816e44e0bfe0cbf9f4"><font color="#75AF2D">Join us October 1st</font></a> at 11am Pacific time to find out how to capture and interpret the data that will tell you if you have a healthy community.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">At the end of this webinar, you will be able to determine the difference between metrics for return on investment (ROI) and metrics for community health, identify key data points that you should collect to track community health, and turn this data into actionable insights about your community. </span><a href="http://click.et.ning.com/?qs=0dabfa53cca88cb2f91419bf0caaaf4631f091f1ae6401816e44e0bfe0cbf9f4" target="_blank"><br></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Tuesday, October 1st at 11am PDT</strong></span></p>
<p><a href="https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/135349318" target="_blank"><img src="http://creators.ning.com/images/signupnow.png" class="align-center"></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">(find your <a href="http://everytimezone.com/#2013-10-1,360,6bj" target="_blank"><font color="#75AF2D">local time here</font></a>)</p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong><big>Key Takeaways</big></strong></span></p>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<ul>
<li><span class="font-size-3">The difference between metrics for ROI and metrics for Community Health</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-3">Key data you should collect to track and determine Community Health </span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-3">How to turn this data into actionable insights about your community </span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-3">How lurkers add value to your community </span></li>
</ul> </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong><big>About the Presenter</big></strong></span></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/557601?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/557601?profile=RESIZE_180x180" width="100" class="align-left" style="padding: 5px;"></a>Richard Millington is the founder of FeverBee, a community consultancy, and author of the new book <a xt="SPCLICK" name="www_amazon_com_Buzzing_Communi" href="http://click.et.ning.com/?qs=560c57e3d19c1a56c67ddba1974f386d6fa9b833e60253373fa5865fd1a51365b08d12542be0bec1" id="www_amazon_com_Buzzing_Communi"><font color="#75AF2D">Buzzing Communities</font></a>. He is also a frequent guest blogger on <a href="http://cultivate.ning.com" target="_blank"><font color="#75AF2D">Cultivating Community</font></a> and our go-to presenter for the Community Management Talks series. His straightforward, results-oriented style is admired by many in the field, and it's just one of the reasons we've enlisted him to share community management best practices to help Ning Creators (and anyone else) refine their approach and cultivate thriving communities. Richard's next free talk is October 1st at 11am PDT. We hope you can make it!</p>
<p>A recording of this webinar will be available on the Ning <a href="http://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/community+management+talks" target="_self"><font color="#75AF2D">Community Management Talks</font></a> channel, and you can follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #NingTalk.</p></div>