The Community Grid
Sales and Marketing have funnels, Community has the grid. Members within a community exhibit a variety of different behaviors, all of which play their own important role within your community ecosystem. Use these categories in addition to community personas to get an in-depth picture of who your members are, what their motivations are, and what value they’re bringing to your organization.
Super Users
These are the most active and impactful users in your community, and likely your most loyal customers, too. Super Users can be relied on to consistently show up and create value for you and your community members.
Contributors
These members are active and impactful, but not quite Super Users. These members will contribute quality content and support within the community.
Regulars
These members show up consistently and you see them around the community, but they may not contribute much. We like to compare them to the guy you see at the coffee shop every time you go, sitting in the back corner reading a book.
Potentials
You may not see these members around your community all too often, but when you do, it’s because they’re doing something that brings a lot of value to your members and your organization. Celebrate these members and their effort and they may become Contributors!
Neutrals
Members in this category care about your company or community enough to stick around and pop in every now and then. The right prompt or engagement initiative may spur them to action.
Observers
Often referred to as ‘lurkers’, your Observers tend to stick to the sidelines. They are likely getting value from what you, your Contributors, and Super Users are creating, but may not contribute in a public way themselves.
Inactives
These are people who found value in your community in some capacity, but have since stopped visiting at all. Not all hope is lost, though — you may be able to reengage them!
A member’s grid position is determined using three different metrics: Consistency, Frequency, and Impact.
Consistency: Over a recent period of time, how regularly has a member showed up to your community?
Frequency: Over the same period of time as Consistency, how much does a member engage?
Impact: What is the impact of this member’s engagement? Certain types of actions will have a greater impact depending on your community.