I was writing an article this week that got me thinking about the concept of “community aliveness”, especially in the context of communities with a heavy online presence.
How can we tap into how alive the community feels? And how will we know that it feels dead?
What should be look for?
What data points actually matter?
We love our community data, but there should be other data of interest too.
It’s so easy to get sucked into the day to day and not look at the picture as a while. Or on the flip side, we can easily get over obsessed over data that doesn’t matter, or use it in the wrong kind of way.
Sometimes the aliveness isn’t credited to the community, nor does it have to, but it ends up meaning we don’t see it and then, as a consequence, we don’t understand the bigger picture
Part of paying attention to aliveness is seeing every interaction and data point. Another part is making sense and using it. And truth be told, paying attention to aliveness can also help us spot bugs and improve our products overall, which is what happened today. 🤦🏽♀️
🔮 I’m launching a course soon on a topic that I’m deeply fascinated about — Community Discovery.