vmbrasseur/gdc17-data_driven_community_management.md

## gdc17-data_driven_community_management.md

      
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              gdc17-data_driven_community_management.md
            
          
    Community Summit
Data-Driven Community Management


Data-driven CM bores people


So let's talk about fire

Post-fire, they try to figure out why it happened

Can they improve anything?
Was it a crime?
If something can be improved, is that actually done?


Codified by Law Enforcement Assistance Administration

How to spot arson
Started seeing arson everywhere


Experimented: actually arson?

"Where does the fire begin?"
If fire begins where it normally doesn't, it's probably arson
But < 6% of the investigator could locate where the fire began


So much of what happens in fire investigation was unscientific
Started a forensic approach, very scientific, # of arsons reported dropped


How much of CM are things that work & how much is cargo culting?


We have not even begin to figure out the potential of our data

If you collect the data, does it affect what you do in your community?
Find CMs are great at measuring things but not at determining insights & taking action based on it
We could be doing so much more here
We collect as much data as possible, but don't use it to change what we're doing


Measurement isn't as important as how we're going to take the insights we have & improve the outcomes for our companies & communities


Good at

Seeing what's popular & doing more of that for their community


Most community engagement is more about the people using the game than the game itself


De-lurking the lurkers

How do get them participating
Study from IBM: "lurker to leader"
Used to believe this wasn't possible
Now finding there are systematic ways to do this
Avoid novelty ideas

"Lurker week"
Small bump in participation & no long-term effects


Interviewed lurkers

Have nothing to offer
Have no experience
Have no time
Don't want friends/boss/family to see it


Started making asking questions the most valuable thing people can do in a community

Started looking for questions rather than answers
Lurkers started participating a lot more, and for the long term
STRESS THE VALUE OF QUESTIONS & make it safe for people to ask them


How to get newcomers to participate actively

Lots of visitors & bouncers (1 in 1000 will become active)
How to fix this

Don't just drop people in: Laser-focused in the action

Don't just leave it up to them or to chance
Provide direction/funnel
Cohort/analysis tool in Google Analytics


Don't just optimise for the first week of participation

Easy to get them to participate once; hard to make them participate in the long term
Long-term engagement involves psychology
Social-identity theory

The more we feel a group is successful, the more we participate
Provide history, top members of the community, what it takes to participate
Context helps people feel engaged & stick around


Add some friction to the entry process

ask people what they're interested in & provide them interesting content at the very start


Automation rules

After you join, you get a message from the community
After 1 day, 1 week, 1 participation, etc
Use this to help bolster social identity


In technical communities, encourage newcomers to make their requests as possible

Increases newcomer participation due to increased responses to requests
Even one response increases chance of participation again to 45% from 16%


They find that top 20 discussions in a community consistently end up with 50% of the page views

SEO to make discussions easier to find
Merge the good discussions into one discussion (if relevant to each other)
Can promote them elsewhere (Quora, etc)


Spend as much time improving your best discussions as creating new ones

Very good way to get people engaged & actively participating


Big announcements…often fall flat

Hard to get people to engage with them
Sticky posts are where announcements go to die & emails don't get read
How do you get people to open & read any type of message?
People don't progress through communities like we think they do

For instance, they often don't start on the home page


Figure out where people enter, then how to make the most of those entry points to promote announcements

Side-bars on blogs, etc.
Go to where the audience actually is, don't assume where they'll be


Sense of community

Building this
People who believe & identify as a member of the community
We assume that this just happens & is emergent
Yes, it's important that it happens, but we can help it along
It can happen, but it often leads to participation inequality

Core group & others don't feel they can break in


Virtual Sense of Community survey (can find this on the net)

Will tell you what you need to do to improve the sense of community


Composition of sense of community

Membership: people can identify each other

Rituals w/in the group
Anything which makes people feel a connection with each other


Unique shared experiences

Stronger sense of community from sharing these


Common symbol systems

Forum system should reflect how the community speaks & engages
Don't force a structure on them which doesn't reflect how they think of things
Use the same language as your audience


Increase the sense of influence

Those who participate are those who feel they can influence it
How can we increase this for everyone?
Give people an opportunity to show off (let them feel smart, clever, good)
Write about what people in the community are doing


Create a sense of success

How do you make the group feel successful?
Most communities don't have a clear common goal

Adding one bonds people more in the group


Having a shared emotional connection

Strong communities react the same ways to the same things
How can we encourage this?
Create opportunities for people to feel a specific way at a specific time

No practical use for sharing information, but bonds people into the group
So off-topic can be very good


Improve member satisfaction

Video gamers can get angrier than anyone he's ever seen
How do you make people feel more satisfied instead?
Looked at how to measure this

Responses from other community members are rated better than those from community managers
Turned out to be not that it was the community manager but that the community members were answer the questions quickly
Quick answers got a higher satisfaction rating


LIFO/FIFO in response methods

Generally found that LIFO got higher satisfaction rating


Response structure?

Direct answers get a higher rather than FAQ links
Even if the answer isn't as good as a FAQ or link to better answer


Wording?

Answers using validation, empathy, guidance get much higher satisfaction rating
Increase long term participation & happier community members


Are there questions which do better in the long term?

Yes. Questions beginning with "How" do much better in the long term
Take the time to develop these questions


What's the problem with increasing engagement?

It doesn't always equal more value
If you generate more engagement but it's not clear what the value is…then you'll get cut
Must connect engagement with value
FeverBee has a page "Classifying the Benefits of Community"
Very, very few communities are able to do this
Studying it is very difficult
Can figure out what metrics you need but must do it in a systematic way

Coursera course on introduction to probability & data
Outsource it to a data scientist

Explain the question, hand them a bunch of data, they can get you answers you wouldn't find


Hire someone else to do it

PhD grad students are great for this


Create a custom dashboard for the metrics & outcomes you specifically need for your community


Q&A


@richmillington