I began building communities back in the days when ‘online community building’ wasn’t a thing.

The first (and the biggest) community I ever built grew organically on just two key questions:

1. Did I get new members today?

2. Did I have fun today?

Back in 2005, those were the only two questions that mattered. As long as the answer to both questions was ‘yes’, I’d keep working on the community.

However, communities have evolved and community building is an established profession today.

Startups, enterprises and even individual creators are investing in community building and the demand for community professionals is growing every day.

With the ‘businessification’ of community building; community professionals need to decide the KPIs and metrics to track how the community is performing. How else would you, the ace community builder, feel confident asking for a raise?

What are Community KPIs?

Community KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are the metrics that help you measure the success of your community. In simple terms, they are the important numbers you track to see how well your community is doing.

Here are the 7 top Community KPIs for every community:

1. New member growth

2. Active users (DAU/MAU)

3. Engagement rate

4. Retention rate

5. Bounce rate

6. Contribution ratio

7. Net Promoter Score

These are the common KPIs that will work for 100% of communities. However, I suggest another approach. Determine the KPIs for your community based on its stage: Launch, Growth and Established.

This approach will make it easier to focus on a limited number of KPIs that are essential for your community.

The biggest advantage of focusing on different sets of KPIs at each stage is that it will help you make better decisions about your overall community strategy.

Stage #1: Launch Phase (0 - 500 users)

A new community needs to focus on building a solid foundation, attract early members and forstering engagement.

KPIs for the launch phase would include:

1. Member Registrations

At this stage of your community, you will have to manually inform your target users about your community. The number to track is how many new users are signing-up for the community.

2. Daily Active Users (DAU)

A very important metric is to track how many users are logging-in daily to your community. Do not be disappointed if this number is small. It’s expected.

3. Number of Threads and Comments

Observe and track how many new threads are your members creating and the number of comments they are making on existing threads. This metric should ensure that your content is relevant to the members and they are deriving value from the community.

4. Number of Unanswered Threads

Community managers should ensure that this number is zero. This is an important metric to keep track of because it effectively helps build confidence among the new members that their contribution won’t go unnoticed.

Stage #2: Growth Phase (500 - 5000 users)

The growth phase of the community is important. With over 500 users, your community has now proven that it’s valuable to the members.

KPIs at the growth phase would include:

1. Monthly Active Users (MAU)

Notice the shift from DAU → MAU. As the community size grows, you will need to focus on growing the MAU count. It’s the measure of how many registered users come back to your community at least twice each month.

2. Posts per User per Month

An average number of posts per user for a healthy community is anywhere between 3-10 per month. Of course, this would vary vastly for different communities.

3. Session Length:

This is a measure of the average time a user spends per visit. This would typically be measured in minutes.

4. User to User Interactions:

If your community allows DMs, then this metric ensures healthy participation from your members. Track how many DMs are being exchanged among your members per month.

Stage #3: Established Phase (5000+ users)

The top challenge for established communities is to maintain engagement, acquire new users and reduce churn.

The following are the KPIs for established communities:

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Measure the overall satisfaction level of your users and likelihood of recommending the community to their network.

2. Issue Resolution Time

An important, but often overlooked KPI for communities. Community managers should ensure that this is minimized. At scale this could be challenging.

3. DAU / MAU

Measure both daily active users and monthly active users. These users will be the key drivers of your community’s growth. It will help you plan for member recognition activity and any community events.

4. Event Participation

Look for the number of registrations, active participation from your community members in the events that you plan for your community. For example, for a developer community; number of users who actually attended a webinar could be a good metric to track.

5. User Sentiment

It’s essential to track the overall mood and feelings of your members - an essential part of building a positive and healthy culture in your community. There are AI tools that can help identify the general tone of posts made by your users: Neutral, Positive, Negative etc.

Summary

Employing different KPIs at different stages of community building helps you focus on the numbers that are essential for your community’s growth and engagement.