How Community Builders Prove Their Community’s ROI
The Sanskrit language has a popular saying, “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,” which translates to “The world is one big family”. It is likely that every community builder embraces this philosophy in one way or another.
Despite common misconceptions, being a community builder is not an easy job. It requires significant mental, physical, and emotional strength. While it may seem glamorous from the outside due to events, travel, and sometimes DevRel status, it is not a job for the faint of heart.
If you are in the community building field for the right reasons, there is no better place for you to be. However, it’s important to remember that community building is not for everyone.
Community building comes with its share of challenges, the most prominent of them is, proving the worth of your community with your KPIs and ROI. Though in reality, it’s not so difficult to prove as it has been made out to be.
Tracking your community’s ROI is beneficial to show the business value created by your work.
The first and most important thing to do is align your community goals with the business goals. One major business goal should be in line with your community plans. Once you have done this, if you follow the community’s mission and vision, it’s simple to track and prove your ROI.
What ROIs should you track?
- Direct sales generated
- Community engagement
- Product feedback
- Community-created content and traffic generated
- Events hosted and sponsored, as well as associated traffic, product queries, and adoptions
- Social media traffic generated
- Influencers connected and associated traffic
- User Feedback
You can track these ROIs using various applications and integrations available. Some of the tools that I use include Threado, Zapier, and Statbot for Discord.
It’s important to keep track of your metrics consistently, by doing so, you’ll remain on top of the situations when you are asked to prove your ROI. Further, it goes on to show that you know what you’re doing.
As Richard Millington said, “When a full data set is available, it is possible to analyze the data and calculate the ROI with 100% accuracy”. Unfortunately, obtaining a full data set is rare when working with large organizations.
In conclusion, community builders play a vital role in creating business value by
- Building strong relationships with their communities.
- By aligning community goals with business goals
- Tracking relevant metrices
Ultimately proving the importance and impact of community building. Remember to keep tracking your metrics consistently and keep up the great work in building and nurturing communities.
Don’t forget,
Community Builders are the unsung superhumans who don’t wear capes.
Hi there, I am Akash, an avid storyteller, a meditator, and a community builder. To know more about me, you can visit here: Akash
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
