Today someone asked me how you measure the success of an online blog/forum community. Below are some of the ideas I replied with:
1. The simple measurements:
- Total Subscribers – how many people are syndicating your content or active in your forums
- Blog Feedback – how many comments and feedback is generated by the blog
- Page impressions – how many total views of the web pages
- New users/day – how many new users join the community daily
2. More complex measurements
- Press quotes – how many press references are made that refer to your site (print & online)
- Total bloggers – this is hard to measure because it’s really only valuable if the people are contributing frequently
- Self sustaining – does the community manage itself, i.e. do members of the community help manage and grow the community
Of course I think there are a ton of other micro-metrics you can measure, e.g. do you develop personas such as MVPs or ‘uber’ contributors, but I think the above provides a good snap-shot of the success/failure. But, if you’ve got more ideas for how you think a successful community is measured speak up!
