A great community manager can build a great online community. That being said, a community shouldn’t be reliant on one person for its success. Yes, it needs a leader – but it shouldn’t depend on that leader for its daily survival.
Here’s a quick and easy way you can determine just how independent your community is – find your community’s total post count, and figure out how many of those posts were made by you.
When you’re building a new community from scratch, it will be largely reliant on its manager – you need to encourage the development of existing conversations and get new ones started. In the early days, it’s likely that you’ll contribute up to around 75% of the community’s content (perhaps even more).
As the community develops, you want to get this percentage down.
- Insomnia Land is two years old. 22% of forum posts were written by me
- Female Forum is three years old. 4% of forum posts were written by me
- Just Chat is twelve years old. 0.17% of forum posts were written by me
There’s an obvious pattern here – the older the community (and typically, the stronger it becomes), the less it relies on contributions from the community manager. As a community grows, more of your work as a community manager shifts ‘behind the scenes‘. That being said, it’s important to interpret these numbers correctly. Your aim isn’t to get your contribution percentage as low as possible.
Insomnia Land is two years old, but it’s clear that it still relies on my contributions to keep it going. This community is one of the most challenging I have ever built, yet I am seeing a clear trend as the community ages – I see more members posting as the days and week go by, so I know the community is on the right track.
Female Forum is three years old and it’s clear that this is a community that is now self-sustaining. That being said, it’s important that I remain involved and visible as the community manager.
Just Chat is a strong, well-developed community with its own culture and dedicated members. That being said, the fact that only 0.17% of forum posts were written by me suggests that I need to be more visible in the community.
It’s impossible (and perhaps, irresponsible) for me to tell you what percentage of contributions should be made by you based on the age of your community. Run the numbers yourself and see if you’re happy with what they say.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I think this is a really useful exercise and I’ve done it on all of my communities. I’ve often extended it though to include the top 5, top 10 and top 25 posters. This gives me an idea about whether the community is heavily reliant upon a few people or has a much wider user base.
I am the owner & community manager of the Indian based Personal finance forum – Investta.com which is 18 months old. (I started it in June 2010.) I have calculated my Total contribution in the community up to now. It is 38%.
Total 10969 posts have been posted up to now from which I have posted 4181 posts which is 38% contribution.
You are right. My contribution is gradually decreasing as more and more new content is being created.
This is a great post by you. I am a regular follower of your blog since past couple of months.
Being a community manager can become a full time job depending on the community. I’ve turned the reins over to far more patient soles who can handle the petty complaining that can blow up out of proportion without cause. A good community manager is priceless.