How to Evaluate Your Brand Community
In order to evaluate your Community, you have to look at its overall health. Based on the social psychology of communities, our Tribe Lab has identified seven key factors to develop a healthy community: passion, vision, tribesman, leader, platform, content and trust.
What does a healthy community look like?
We’ve outlined a number of benefits in our Introduction article that talk about the importance of community.
Unlike advertising, investing in your community is never just a drop in the bucket. We’ve spent years working with clients and we’ve realized the campaigns that contribute to building a community have the best ROI and long-term pay off. Community is priceless and the more you invest, the more it gives back.
It’s unbelievable how loyal and giving your community can be. They become a source of market research (which is costly in itself) and also be the first to spread the word about your latest product and/or service.
The goal isn’t the size of your membership overall, it is the depth of the relationship you have with your Tribesmen, and how many Tribesmen you have in your community. Fostering those relationships is more important than the number of Tribesman you have. Regardless of the number of members you have in your group, your Tribesmen are the key members you need to nurture.
Note that the healthier your community, the more Tribesmen will come into the mix. Focus on building a healthy foundation and the members will come.
Tribe Lab Test: Test How Healthy Is Your Community?
Take our Tribe Lab Test so we can see where your community can do better. The more honest your answer, the more likely we are able to rate it. It’s helpful to get a trusted Tribesman to answer these questions so that it’s not so biased. We can also do a more in depth test for you if you like, just contact us if you have any questions.
Check all that apply:
Has to be positioned well with your brand, can’t feel forced. No hard fast rule, but must not be more than one degree of separation from your brand’s passion.
Representative of the values your product holds
Timeless passion – cannot be a trend or a temporary fad
Passion is integrated in the way your company is run – production, customer service and product/service
It is one, very clear passion
Can’t be far-fetched Ie. A pet food company with the vision to save the world
Vision contributes to society beyond product/service
Isn’t a destination that can be reached or ever be completed
Aligns with your company values
Has to relate to the passion
A Tribesman that has the respect of the community
Wants the community to take ownership of the passion and vision
Respects opposing opinions but stands up for what they believe in
Ensures every member inquiry is responded to immediately
Role models the values, rules, regulations of the community
Actively indulges in their passion during personal time
Loves talking about the topic online and offline with everyone
Loves sharing what they have found with others on the platform
Buys into the vision and is on board for any initiative to help achieve it
Recognizes and voices roadblocks to achieving the vision
Useful content that appeals to those who are truly addicted to your passion
Fits the native voice and tone of the community
Entertaining content that helps your members indulge in their passion
Regularly shared content by the company or by the organization
The content is engaging and producing conversation with Tribesmen
Allows for member conversation with each other and without the need of admin
Allows for people to discover the group through useful content
Members can customize their settings or experience
Admin is able to respond immediately to member inquiries through the platform
Is a combination of online and offline conversations with members
Members are transparent with their identity (real name and profile pic)
Admin responds within minutes to member questions
Freedom to customize their experience
Members are freely conversing and can openly disagree with each other and the admin
Admin admits to mistakes and actively integrates feedback from the community
Results
Each checkbox is a point. If you have an overall score of:
28 and above = you have a healthy community and may need only minor refinements to get it going. You probably have Tribesman in your community. Depending on which categories you scored best on, you can be lacking in an area that could really boost your community engagement.
24.5 – 27= you have a generally healthy community but need a few changes to help it grow. You’re lacking in a few areas, or you’re not doing stellar in any of them. You’ll need to invest some time and effort on getting more of the checkboxes ticked off.
21-25 = you have a good community that needs quite a bit of work. There’s something there, but it’s not quite coming to fruition. You’re looking to build something more substantial because your community is not making any impact.
>20 means you have a lot of work to do to get it up and running. Doesn’t sound like you have much of a community. There’s a lot of work to do, so better get crackin’!
The goal is to score at least four out of five in each category above. The ideal scenario is a perfect score, which is what all communities should work towards.
These scores are generalizations to give a sense of your community’s stage. Results can vary and we have to take a closer look at your specific case to draw more confident conclusions. If you want to learn more, it might be valuable to read our community marketing strategy posts
Header Image: unsplash.com
Let us assess the health of your current brand community. Following our tried and tested methodology, we’ll help you to see opportunities to strengthen your community and give you the strategy you need in order to activate them toward conversion.
With My Loud Speaker’s Tribe Lab, we study the social psychology of communities and share our research in hopes of replacing noisy, interruptive advertising with passionate brand communities around the world.
Create a bigger impact with a stronger, louder, healthier community rallied behind you. You’ve got the vision, you’ve got the spirit, it’s time to give your community the momentum to make the impact you want. To get a free rating and recommendations for your community, get in touch!
