Data-driven Community Building: Metrics that Matter in Web3 - Mfonobong Umondia

Okay, I believe our next speaker is here and she will be speaking on datadriven community metrics that matter in web 3 in person of Umondia. Okay. Hi everybody. Hi everybody. Okay, that's better.

So you didn't mutter my name. It's pronounced asoong but you can call me Lady Bella. How do I do Lady Bella? Okay. So I am a community manager.

I currently work with Shod Africa. I'm also a developer advocate and I'm building a small not small sha just a marketing professional agency for all kinds of marketers. So if your role directly or indirectly ties into marketing that's where you should be and from time to time I do share some tech and productivity shenanigans on YouTube so you may want to check that out. And yes, I am also a chef. So that's not new.

You can connect with me at the ladybella on Twitter global. All right. So I'm going to be talking about datadriven metric. How many of us are community managers here? Okay.

You're part of a community. Okay. Interesting. All right. So, first of all, I'd like us to understand the landscape.

Sometimes people say that communities are just support groups where a bunch of people come together and just talk about random things. But in recent times, things have changed because before then, people just used to create communities as support groups. So let's say there's a company that's building a project or trying to work on something. They just put together a community of like-minded people that are interested in that product. So we give it a name called support group.

Nowadays it's not the case. It's actually the product itself because with community you're able to push your product regardless of whether it's in web three or web two whatever it is. with community you're able to push that because you have firsthand access to the actual users of that product. So you stand a chance to um access feedback testing and whatnot. All right.

And just before I talk about this, I must also add that people often open communities and then there's always that hype. Oh, I want to join XYZ community. And after a month or two, in most cases, it doesn't even last up to a month. The hype just dies down. And that's to show you that a lot of people don't build communities for sustainability.

They just build it because they want to build a community around a product or around a particular thing. Which is why I am talking to you about datadriven community. because if you understand the data to track in your community, you'd be able to keep people around much longer. So yeah, because web 3 is decentralized, traditional growth models don't always apply. We have different communities that use different metrics or different strategies to grow their communities.

It doesn't exactly work like that in web 3, right? And even there are some strategies I use in web 3 that you can't also use in web two. It just differs. First off, you need to understand the kind of community that you are building to know the kind of strategy to even use for it. So that's to say that even within web 3, there are some strategies that you use for company or community A that you cannot use for community B.

But all the same, it still boils down to the data that you're tracking in each of those communities. And these are common mistakes that we make. First of all, you might see a thousand, 2,000, 7,000 people in a community and will go ahead to say, "Oh my god, the community is so huge. There's so many people in that community." But the truth of the matter is how many people in that community can you boast of that participate in conversations?

You have an event. How many of them genuinely come out because they want to learn and grow or how many of them decide that they want to host sessions? Like how progressive is their learning? So it's not about the numbers. You might have the numbers especially on Discord and that's particularly because there are lots of people that join communities because of the hype.

They just want to be a part of something not because they don't know what they are doing there. Right? There are some communities you go to and you ask someone what is going on in this community or what kind of activities happen here they probably would not know right and these are common mistakes. So first off in community management metrics are measurable indicators that show how healthy, active and valuable your community is. So for you to understand your metrics first off you're going to know it's going to help you understand who is in the community what's the growth and demographics where are they joining from what kind of things are they doing what level in their career are they at do you have more entry levels you have more mid levels you have more senior levels how do they interact if you have events if you have sessions if you have Twitter spaces how do these people interact do they interact to pe like people that understand what's going on or are they just there to fill up the space?

Thirdly, what value do they create? There's something called giving back to the community. Something called contribution. You're not just being a part of a community. Let's say for most of you here by next year, you would want to give back to Web 3 Lagos.

Oh, I would like to speak at your event or I'd like to do this. That's contribution. And then lastly, it also helps you check whether they stay long term. Right? That's retention.

That's loyalty. The first thing is for you to attract. Second thing is for you to retain those people and get them to give back to the community. All right? So in communities in general, these are metrics that actually matter.

First off is the growth. You can't stay at a thousand community members forever. No matter how big you are, even if you have up to a 100,000 community members. So, are new people joining the initiatives, the programs you're running, are they attracting new community members? Secondly, what's the engagement like?

Are people just there because they want to be a part of your community or they are there because they see something in that community that they would like to learn? So for instance, you are building a web 3 community. Should I expect to join your community, get to understand what web 3 is and become an active contributor regardless of what I do? And then thirdly, there's contribution. After learning what next you're in a community, you've been attending sessions.

What's the next thing? Do you how do you give back to the community? Do you come back to say I want to host a session or do you come back to say I'd like to be a part of the mentors in a hackathon or whatn not and then lastly there's retention are they sticking around long enough right I understand life gets busy people get busy over time they just want to leave or something just happens and they get distracted but somehow somehow in between that you're going to see if they are able to stay long enough to be able to give back. So these four pillars give a clearer picture of what your community health should look like. And let's look at core types of community metrics.

I'm just going to run through these. So if you want to take a screenshot, please do that. The first one is awareness and acquisition. That's the growth metrics. So, you're going to look at something like your total members, um, how many members join you per month, the sign up process, referrals, where do your members come from?

If someone should call you and say people you have in your community, how many of them are Nigerians? And even in Nigeria, how many of them are in Lagos or how many of them are in Abuja, would you have that data? And then we also have contribution metrics. So what's the number of user generated initiatives? If something is going on well in a community, people in that community would want to give back by writing articles, creating videos, or generally just talking about what's going on.

And then there's contributions to produce dogs, whatever it is. Sometimes people can come up and say, um, what's going on in community? I'd like to contribute. And then there is governance participation. If there are votes or proposals or things that needs to be done, you see people come on board and say, I want to do this, that's contribution.

And then there's also advocacy. So you're not just being a part of that community, you're giving back by advocating. I'm a part of this community. This is what's going on. Come join us.

And then there's retention loyal retention and loyalty metrics. Um so these are things you get to track like member churn rate which is churn rate is actually very um normal in a community because life gets busy. Sometimes your interest might change you want to do something else in life. So churn rate is completely completely normal. Don't beat yourself up if that happens.

There's returning members, who keeps coming back, core contribute, core contributor growth, um member satisfaction surveys, word of mouth referrals. All right. And then there's also sentiment analysis. What are your community members talking about in the community? That helps you know if you're doing something right or if you're doing something wrong.

If there's a conflict in the community, how do you resolve that? And yeah, final tips. First off, remember that numbers matter. It's very important, especially if you're an organization that is interested in getting sponsorship and all that. Numbers matter.

But the only thing that you need to do is track where the growth is coming from. If a sponsor meets you today and says, I need this category of people, you should be able to provide that data. And secondly, remember an engaged community is not a space where everybody will just come and say GM GM GM GM everybody and you just respond GM every morning. It that's not engagement. Engagement is participation meaningful participation.

What kind of discussions are being held? What kind of contributions are being done in that community? And then there is contribution metrics. Remember web three communities tribe when members don't just consume they contribute and the more you contribute to keep learning keep having experience um there is also retention and loyalty metrics would your community still be active if a core team member disappeared or if majority of the team members decide that oh I'm moving on to something else would that community still stand so these These are my key insights for builders in general, builders, managers. You don't have to track everything.

I know I've showed a bunch of metrics to track here, but you don't have to track everything. Look at five to seven metrics that work for your community and track that. Balance quantitative and qualitative data. And then remember, your data should inform action. If people if it shows a drop off, try to find out what's going on.

Maybe people are not understanding the jagons. And yeah um this is what I am leaving you with today. The first thing you need to ask yourself is what metrics am I tracking in my community and also are they vanitydriven or do they reflect true community value? Thank you so much. I hope I shared everything I could with metrics in community.

If you have questions please ask me there. Thank you.