A community either has a pulse or it does not, and this page is where you take it.
The figures
| Figure | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Members | Everyone with access to the community |
| Online now | Members who opened a page in the last 15 minutes |
| Active members (30d) | Members who wrote a post or a comment in the last 30 days |
| Posts | Every post ever written, all time |
| Comments | Every comment ever written, all time |
| Points awarded | Every point the level system has ever handed out |
Posts, comments and points awarded are running totals, so they only ever grow. The "+N this week" line under posts and comments is the period figure, and the engagement chart is where you read a trend.
The one number that matters
Not members. Active members against total members.
A community of 800 with 40 active is a quiet room with a big door. A community of 90 with 40 active is busy. The second one is healthier, and only the ratio tells you that.
Only writing counts here. A member who reads every day and reacts to half of it never shows up in this figure, so treat it as a floor rather than the full picture.
Watch it monthly. The direction it moves in matters more than where it is.
Posts against comments
The engagement chart shows both over time, and the relationship between them is the interesting part.
- More comments than posts is a healthy community. People are talking to each other.
- More posts than comments means people are broadcasting into a room that does not answer. Usually the posts are announcements, or the questions are too big to answer in a sentence.
If comments are thin, write smaller posts and ask smaller questions. A post ending in "what would you do?" outperforms a post ending in a summary.
The activity heatmap
Weekdays down the side, hours of the day across the top, over the last 30 days, the last 90 days or all time. It answers two questions quickly.
- Which days are alive? Post when your members are there, not when you are writing.
- Which hours are alive? The strongest cells are the times of day your members write and reply. Publish into them, so a post is read while it is new.
The grid has no timeline, so it cannot tell you when something changed.
Level distribution
Members per level, and the fastest read on whether your gamification is set sensibly.
Everybody at level 1 means the first threshold is too high. Everybody at the top means the ladder is too short and your most active members have nowhere left to go.
Points awarded
The volume of interaction in one number, counted since the community started. Points only exist because somebody reacted or replied to somebody else, so it grows with real engagement rather than with how much you posted.
Reading it honestly
- Compare like periods. Read them from the engagement chart, not from the totals. Communities have weekly rhythms; comparing a week to a month tells you nothing.
- Expect a January. Every community has quiet stretches, especially around holidays.
- A new community is volatile. Ten members means one enthusiastic person swings every number on the page.
From numbers to action
Three common readings and what they usually mean.
- Members up, active flat. People arrive and nothing catches them. The problem is the first week, not the community.
- Posts up, comments flat. You are broadcasting. Ask more, announce less.
- Everything down at once. Find the week it started in the engagement chart, then look at what happened that week.
The dashboard carries a shorter version of these numbers next to the rest of your business.