Using Community Listening to Enhance Engagement

[Shawn Gossman1]

Have you ever heard of Community Listening?

Community Listening is when you track discussions and engagement through analytical forms. You check analytical metrics, likes, comments, engagement ratings, and keywords/topics mentioned in the content.

You can use this sort of analytical approach to better understand your community's type of model member. Then you can cater your content to that type of member. It can help you generalize your membership and create better engagement that meet your goals, objectives, and mission of why you started your community to begin with.

Is this something you use now? If not, is it something you'd be willing to use?

 

[joelr]

e thing that most forum startups could do a better job about is defining User Personas: the backgrounds, the thinking, and the problems of different kinds of members to attract.

Community Listening is measuring the community's objectives and tactics to those User Personas and ensuring that value is being delivered.

I do measure statistics on my Invision Community, and I segment between:
- Established / mature growth areas - growth is slow and steady or even stagnant
- High Growth - growth of new initiatives, where my growth is highest
- Social - I observe but don't hold myself to any particular metrics, since I consider this a byproduct. If I can bring in new members with high growth , the social connections will naturally happen.