Mining for Awesome: Metrics to Identify Your Community

This fine young man has a different type of impact on the community.  He impacts more users … without his participation, about 2% of the community no longer participates.  He does not impact the total oxygen of the community as much, in other words, he doesn’t impact the number of tweets or number of conversations.  But he does bring along 2% of the community.  And his impact lasts through the forecast cycle, meaning he impacts new participants as well.

This exercise can be run for every user in a community.  We can easily forecast what impact each user has on the overall future of a community.  By looking forward, we get to see what might happen, and we can take steps to change the future.  When we simply look back into the past, we only measure what happened in the past.

In this simple example, when we remove just two users from a community of about four hundred weekly participants, we lose close to 8% of all future activity in this community.  In spite of a ton of new users, these two folks, @michelehinojosa and @immeria, foster a wonderful and vibrant community.  That’s a decent measure of influence, don’t you think?

Kevin Hillstrom: MineThatData: Hashtag Analytics: Removing a Member of the Community

(Received in Twitter via @TiffanyRichison – my AMAZING Community Lead, who scored it via @TheCR and @mindthatdata)

Over the last year there have been THREE huge benefactors to understanding an audience that I feel like I can’t stress enough:

1. Avoiding the operational FAIL WHALE (oh man, do I have withheld rants on this)
2. Understanding that a competitive site in this industry must have diversity in everything (from gaming, to customizations, to approaching an audience)
3. SMART METRICS

For a few short minutes here, and I stress short, I simply must ramble about the importance of metrics and how our industry HAS to step to bat and start finding the value of users NOT just the abuse.

And when I say “our” industry – I mean specifically the CS, Moderation, and Community.  We need to TOTALLY BFF-up our Metrics peeps… and if there aren’t metrics peeps at your biz, then you need to step up to bat and figure out enough of a base line understanding regarding metrics and analytics to be able to support what you do.

Why? WE’RE EXPENDABLE.  That’s a lie.  I know it, you know it, but there are many a board member who don’t understand why CS & Community & (more specifically) Moderation staffing/tools/practices are so important – POST launch, when the belt gets tighter and the big bucks are takin’ a bit longer to roll in.

We’re just people who manage people – anyone can do that… interns can do that, right? PUUUUUUUUUUUKE.

WRONG. UGh. Shudder. Frustration + fist at the sky with some sort of user engagement battle cry!  Just because you have a background in marketing – that doesn’t mean you have that GUT understanding, nor ability to read a community.  Marketing folks can spin statements and emphasize the value of advertising and approaching product, but it’s not the same […feeling another tangent coming on. Must jump off this tangent path, my apologies].

What was I talking about?  Oh yes, Metrics.  Analytics.  Whatever you wanna call it – basically, this day and age those of us people-people need to have back up.  Stories are fun for conferences and for nailing a point home.  Leaderboard-esque insight into top players is great to show your front-line knowledge of the audience’s ability.  Social media platforms and conversations are great for keeping the product within fingertips of users everyday conscious.  But when it comes to number crunching – dude bettah getz some backup. For realzies.

So far, metrics have been great for game designers and registration flows.  It’s been great for microtrans and heatmaps (which, may I say – I love me some well developed heatmaps).

Blargh – OKAY, I’m biting off more than I can blog-chew at the moment.  I’m going to kinda filter through my metrics conversation from the big point (overall metrics and their importance), and wittle it down to SPECIFICALLY moderation + community necessity.

Finding ABUSE
– Individuals who abuse the system / community / experience
– What is the individual abuse (on a case by case, report, basis)
– Brings questions of WHY individuals abuse: is it the lack of game? Is it the drive of the content?
– Is it a growing group behavior?
– What exactly is the abuse of this growing group behavior?
– Brings again the questions of WHY individuals abuse: is it the lack of game? Is it the drive of the content? Is it the lack of appropriate competitive interaction?  CAN YOU FIX THIS?

Finding VALUE
– Individuals who represent the best of the community
– Individuals who engage from within
– Individuals who lead by example
– *Individuals who seem to be the best of the best, but actually become somewhat cancerous in their righteousness and maybe should be used as a best case
– Groups who lead by example
– Groups who promote desired community efforts
– Areas that promote desired goals for game or specific area
– Individuals or areas that can help promote the MONETARY VALUE OF UPGRADING (via microtrans or subscription)

Remember – you want to gently lure and entice users into becoming monetary assets… and not just monetary assests but SUPER USERS.  For as gross as statement from a “purest” perspective as that is… YOU CANNOT RUN A GAME WITHOUT INCOME.  Just can’t.

Why would you just use metrics for landscapes and game agendas, or finding bad users?  Dude – it’s the day and age of community! Of social media!  Own it.

BALANCING THOSE OF ABUSE AND VALUE
Just as this AWESOME article above points out – not all users are just “good” or just “bad”… Use metrics and analytics from:
– Chat (a filter that reads positive chat and associates percentages, a chat filter that reads abusive chat and associates separate percentages)
– Interactions (Community event item clicking and purchasing metrics, guild-grouping, chat submissions, logins, time spent online, friending, time spent in social areas, time spent in gaming areas, time spent multiplayer gaming/interacting, leaderboards, time spent in “home” areas customizing, etc)
– Friending – viral quality outside of game, as well as inside the game.

If you are in the MMO or VW space… I would SERIOUSLY suggest taking a moment to have a solid “think” regarding understanding the bookends of your community, and the elements that drive the bulk middle either direction over the course of their experience.  The more you can automate that process for your moderations, customer service reps, and community managers – the stronger / swifter / and better the process will be for you!!  You will still need the insights and stories and multisocialmediaextravaganzamadskillz of community pro’s – naturally.  But you also need number crunching and proof of pudding products.

So, my dears, in this slightly confusing, probably ADD fueled post – my point is this:
Community and Moderation and CS folks… go rogue for a moment, totally ninja-BFF any metrics/analytics people on staff.  Make tools or practices that will help you to find the value, find the abuse, and back it up with the best kind of numbers you can find… AND THEN use your mad community skills to help understand why numbers show what they show, and improve your audience, your product, and the WORLD.

Make sense?  Hope so.  If not, as always, leave a comment at the beep……

Beep.