What metrics can a community manager use to measure content initiatives in an online community?
Most of the content initiatives are directed to one of the following: increasing quality of the content, increasing quantity of the content, increasing awareness that the content exists on your platform. Based on the end goals we can define the following categories of metrics for individual initiatives.
Quality metrics
The most universal and easiest way to define the quality of the content is through the interest from the content consumers. Thus, the content has good quality if people consume it and act on it. Any metrics that represent consumers’ interest can be used. For example;
- Number of page views per visit.
- Number of page views per piece of content in the database.
- Average session duration.
Internal quantity metrics
The metrics at this level represent how much content you have, how fast it gets created, or any other change in the quantity of the content on the site. For example:
- Number of pieces of content created.
- Number of pieces of content deleted.
- Total number of content on the site.
External quantity metrics
Any project at an early stage requires some work directed to spreading a word that the project exists. A typical metric for these activities is the number of backlinks to your site on other sites.
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