Doing a good job is only half the battle. The other half is reporting in a way that your boss or client appreciates your efforts. To create a compelling story, you need to use data in most cases. Even though, in some cases, the client (or your boss) may ask you to agree on metrics to report even before you start working, choosing the right metrics that would fully show how the work you have done affects the outcome is a non-trivial task.
I think choosing metrics is somewhat similar to choosing medications. If we got a small abrasion on a knee after falling while rollerblading, many would limit ourselves to hydrogen peroxide and a band-aid. In more complex cases, we go to the doctor (and rightly so!), expecting that the doctor will choose from a variety of drugs, exactly a few that most accurately solve our problem. If there were no doctors, then each of us would have needed a ton of time to study all the available drugs, cases of their use, side effects and much more.
The situation with metrics is similar. To choose the right metrics, their visualisation and interpretation, you need to either spend a lot of time studying Data Science or ask some Data Analyst for help. Unfortunately, most people involved in community management do not have the time to study Data Science, nor do they have colleagues who understand the data.
Community Management Reports
What if we take one data scientist who also understands how online communities work and ask them to prepare a set of reports for most of the typical scenarios, and then make these reports available to everyone? I think if we can do it, the entire community management industry would benefit!
If you think the same way, let’s take a look at what my team and I have built for you, the Community Management Reports. The reports are available in the Practical CM App at: app.practical-cm.com/en/reports. Each report consists of a description of when it should be used, specific metrics, and, what is more important, interpretation of the visualisation of the metrics.
Read more about how to use reports:
- How to get reports for your online community?
- How Community Management Reports work?
- How to explore community trends using metrics?
I’d love to hear your data stories!
The current set of reports is just a small sample that sets the context for a discussion. I am incredibly curious about what reports you have worked with personally, what your workflows were and what caused problems the most.
I will be very happy to discuss the whole idea of having Community Management Reports as well as prepare new reports that you might need. Just let me know!