Lithium Gives Its Community Owners A Holiday Present They Need: Stats

As with many other kinds of social initiatives, marketers often have a hard time justifying their online communities.

To give them some backup, social community provider Lithium Technologies is today adding a new suite of analytics.

“The question we get from our customers,” chief marketing officer and general manager Katy Keim told me, “is: ‘what is the value of the community to me?’”

The new analytics consist of two components, Value Analytics and Cohort Benchmarking.

Value Analytics measures users’ experience in the community via an online survey for users. The customers’ responses are quantified into such standard metrics as Net Promoter Score’s likelihood to refer someone, customer satisfaction and call deflection.

Other measurements include how user visits impact customer support costs and which areas of the community are best- or worst-performing. Community owners can insert their own questions into the survey. Previously, Keim said, Lithium enabled user surveys only through integration with third-party survey providers.

Cohort Benchmarking anonymously compares your community’s aggregated stats with those of other communities by industry, geography and maturity. Metrics include unique visitors, replies and solutions, as well as comparisons of some survey results.

Lithium has more than 400 customer-facing communities which together host a reported 100 million unique visitors monthly. Keim said they are used by brands primarily for customer service, for crowd-sourcing ideas and as a gathering place for fans.

Here’s a screenshot from Benchmarking, in which the yellow vertical bar is the client company, and the white vertical bars are industry peers selected by the Lithium platform to be closest in community age, size and other characteristics:

The new analytics are intended to complement the existing Social Intelligence measurement of overall community activity and the dashboard for customizing data and sharing it.

Previously, Keim said, the Lithium dashboard presented areas where the community could improve, plus broad analytics like numbers of users. A Community Health Index showed a grade of 0 to 1000, but without indicating what was a competitive level.

Keim said that she was unaware of any competing community providers that offered this kind of analytics.

“Everyone considers us the gold standard in community,” she said, “but we’ve not been able to show them why. Now we can.”