STRATEGIC COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
How To Use Data to Prioritize The Most Impactful Activities: A Case Study from FeverBee Are you spending your precious time doing the “right” things in your Community? I’ve known several organizations who tried to take on everything and do it all. They’ve spent years struggling to improve their community in any meaningful way. Sometimes they made easily avoidable missteps. Often, they repeat the same tasks each month, hoping something improves. They almost never stepped back to consider what’s working and what their biggest wins could look like. It’s very hard to see your own blind spots. It’s far easier to stay busy doing tasks that “seem” like the right thing to do. As a community consultant, I approach organizations with a systematic, rigorous, process. A process you likely don’t have the time or knowledge to undertake yourself. This case study highlights what that process looks like and the methods you
can use to improve your community today. It focuses on a tech brand with $1 billion+ in revenue, but the core principles can be applied to any community. Where Do You Begin? Prioritization is a daunting task there are so many ways to think about improving a community. We start by inviting clients to make a list of all the activities and initiatives they’re working on. Two things are surprising 1. How many items they list: 19 unique activities each week. That’s too many things, but it’s not unusual; 2. How normal this is. Over the past decade, 200+ community professionals have listed their activities for us, with 15 activities being the average – and the record: 41! It’s impossible to do great work when you’re dividing your attention into tiny
2 1
AFTER
12
COMMUNITY LEADERS
OCT/NOV 21
BEFORE
3
chunks. This raises a question: Why are we all trying to do so many things at once? The answer is simple: We don’t know what works. If we’re not sure what works, we try to do everything and hope something works. so, How Do You Decide What To Prioritize? If your boss told you tomorrow to improve the community, where would you even begin? Do you try to improve the website? Initiate and reply to more discussions? Work on gamification and superuser programs? Host more events and activities? Offer bigger rewards and more promotions? There’s mileage in each of these activities. But how much? Which option gives you the best bang for your buck? Unless you have good data that shows what members need, you shouldn’t be doing anything to satisfy those needs.
