How I Profile A Community’s Participation To Inform Next Actions

I spent Monday working with a local publishing house carrying out a consultation-via-workshop, creating a strategy for the company. One of the main things I drill is “don’t target everyone, target the right ones” – which requires correctly understanding your community.

Here is how I profile participation and then implement next actions:

1. Get My Stats

Get data in the door. Qualitative and quantitative. Tools like Facebook Insights and PostRank help with quantitative data.

2. Generalise On My Stats

I use Forrester’s Groundswell Profile Tool, entering the ages, genders and locations of my community to get their generic profile types back. This gives me a good general direction.

3. Analyse My Stats To Actions

Now I link demographics to the 7 Levels of Participation model. How many are:

1. Consulting (looking once, via search)
2. Consuming (regular readers)
3. Connecting (followers, subscribers, account holders)
4. Competing (liking, sharing, playing games)
5. Commenting (@replies, hashtags, retweets with additions)
6. Creating (writing about you, guest posts)
7. Curating (pulling it all together for you)

4. Next Actions

Now that I know how the community participates, I can help them do more of it, fill gaps, better enable them. If the majority are consuming, I find ways to get others to consume through their consumption. If I want to up their level, I find a way to convert consumption into connection.