Rachel Happe discusses how community managers can use benchmarking to educate executives, secure budget, and drive engagement. Benchmarking provides an objective perspective on a community's performance by defining metrics to track, establishing a baseline, comparing results to others, and using the analysis to determine priorities. It helps focus the strategic conversation and allows for confident decision-making. While it has limits, benchmarking trends can trigger deeper discussions about a community's approach. Best-in-class communities that benchmark are more likely to measure value, have approved strategies and resourced roadmaps to execute them.

1. SOCIALMEDIA.ORG/SUMMIT2016ORLANDOJANUARY 25–27, 2016
Community management
benchmarking: Educate executives,
secure budget, and drive engagement
RACHEL HAPPE
THE COMMUNITY ROUNDTABLE

2. Community Management Benchmarking
Educate executives, secure budget, and drive engagement
Rachel Happe
Co-Founder, The Community Roundtable
@rhappe

3. Getting executives to care is hard. Benchmarking helps.

4. What is a community?

5. www.communityroundtable.com
Community is not:
blogs
podcasts
chat
forums
Social Media
RSS
video
profiles
activity feeds

6. www.communityroundtable.com
Community is:
passion
voices
relationships
ideas
discussions
affinity
networkspeople
organic
conversation
relationships
collaboration
purpose
mission
support
emergent
groups

7. www.communityroundtable.com
Com·mu·ni·ty
Noun
A group of people with unique shared values, behaviors, and artifacts.

8. www.communityroundtable.com
Communities are powerful because they are how
individuals define:
• Behavioral norms
• How to learn
• Values
• Truth
• Identity

9. What is community management?

10. www.communityroundtable.com
Community management includes strategic, operational and
tactical responsibilities
1. Strategic
• Define shared value
• Develop strategy
• Build roadmap and secure budget
2. Operational
• Map ecosystem and engagement flows
• Build policies, governance and playbook
• Hire and train staff
• Build strategic, operational and tactical scorecards
3. Tactical
• Engage
• Create content
• Facilitate community programming
• Track metrics

11. Benchmarking Community

12. www.communityroundtable.com
1.Focuses the Conversation
Benchmarking provides concrete and actionable guidance that helps translate your strategic ambition into
strategic reality.
2.Injects Unbiased Perspective
Data-driven analysis removes personal or political bias, providing and objective look at performance.
3.Enables Confident Community Decision-Making
Benchmarking tells you where you are and provides the data to make confident decisions about your
community’s future.
Why benchmark?

13. www.communityroundtable.com
What do you benchmark?
Input: Management
The approach to building successful communities
Output: Behavior
How individual communication behavior is changing
Output: Results
The value produced by the community; benefits including ROI
Investment
Return
Return

14. www.communityroundtable.com
1. Define
Decide what is important to track
2. Baseline
Track your as is state so you can track
your progress over time
3. Compare
Compare results to other
communities or organizations
4. Use
Analyze to determine your
roadmap and priorities
How do you benchmark?

15. www.communityroundtable.com
1. Educating and Selling Stakeholders
2. Planning and Budgeting
3. Prioritizing Resources
Using benchmarking

16. www.communityroundtable.com
1. Benchmarking is ‘dumb’ to your strategy
Benchmarking provides a objective comparison, which is what makes it valuable, but because of that it cannot
indicate/evaluate where performance differences are intentional based on your unique context and strategy
2. Trends, not specifics
The best use of benchmarking is to see trends and use those to trigger deeper discussions about your
approach – but it cannot define priorities unique to your organization. It is one of many great inputs to a
strategic conversation.
Limits of benchmarking

17. 16
Benchmarking Community
Management

18. www.communityroundtable.com
“Goals are for Losers”
– Scott Adams
Community management is a system

19. www.communityroundtable.com
The value of community management
78% of best-in-class community programs can measure
their value…
… due to approved strategies and the funded
roadmaps needed to implement them
Data
from
The
State
of
Community
Management
2015
STATE OF COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT 37
Total members
Total activity
Active
members
Contributing
members
Volume of
new content
opens/clicks 58%
74%
63%
74%
65%
89%
78%
84%
90%
82%
76%
61%
39% 33%
42%
22%
78%
Able to
Measure
Value
Able to
Measure
Value
of those
able to
show ROI
of those
able to
show ROI
Average Best-in-Class
41% 50%
Average Best-in-Class
PERCENT OF C-LEVEL RECEIVING
COMMUNITY REPORTS
VALUE AND ROI
While most communities track basic membership and
engagement metrics, best-in-class communities are more
likely to look at behaviors that evaluate the vibrancy of the
community and effectiveness of the community team.
Best-in-class communities are more likely to
share community reports with the top levels
of the organization – giving executives the
opportunity to understand the value of the
community to the organization as a whole.
Best-in-class communities are twice as likely to be able to measure value as average communities in
this year’s survey, but determining ROI from that remains elusive for the majority of all communities.
65%
24%
100%
58%
Approved Strategy
Resourced Roadmap
Approved Strategy
Resourced Roadmap
Average
Best-in-Class
}
}
63% of communities with approved
strategies lack a resourced roadmap
42% of BIC communities with approved
strategies lack a resourced roadmap
GAP BETWEEN STRATEGY &
RESOURCED ROADMAPS:
BUCOMMUNITIES WITH DEDICATED
BUDGETS:
BIC communities are more likely to have an approved
strategy – and resources to execute on it.
Th
co
•
•
•
•

20. www.communityroundtable.com
Define: The Community Maturity Model
Companies using the CMM to
manage their community programs:

21. www.communityroundtable.com
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
Compare: Benchmark competencies
Comparing enables you to:
• Question assumptions
• Identify gaps
• Confirm strengths
• Communicate progress
• Feel more confident

22. www.communityroundtable.com
Use: Define goals and build a roadmap

23. 22
Value of Benchmarking
Community Management

24. 1. Identifies root cause of engagement issues

25. 2. Enables strategic alignment

26. 3. Captures attention of executive stakeholders

27. www.communityroundtable.com
Benchmark Yourself!
http://the.cr/socm2016survey

28. Thank You & Keep in Touch!
Rachel Happe
@rhappe
rachel@communityroundtable.com
The Community Roundtable
@TheCR
www.communityroundtable.com

29. Learn more about past and
upcoming events
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