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Framework for measuring the relationship strength of a community

Communities often organically form around shared experiences, but when you're new to a place, how do you create a shared experience for strangers? What gives you that right to convene people?

Relationship strength is built on a number of axes: frequency, intensity and shared values. That's why so many people make friends at school, work or religious groups. These venues have built-in frequency, and often include intense points of connection and shared values. When you're trying to create something from scratch, you have to create those conditions.

Frequency (and cadence and predictability) - It's hard for people to build trust with one another if they don't have enough consistent touchpoints. We started with a monthly dinner where the next dinner was scheduled at the end of each prior dinner - this was suboptimal (particularly in pre-COVID times) as folks weren't able to plan ahead as well. At the start of 2020, I set out the dates for the entire year so people could plan around the dinner if they wanted to attend.

Intensity & Commitment - If you can ratchet up the intensity of an interaction, you don't need as much time or frequency; but this is tricky in groups of strangers (or relative strangers, which is where most professional acquaintances begin). In a group setting, I think about how to increase the quality of the interactions each person can have with another person (1:1), but also with the group more broadly. In this scenario, I've found that structure is my friend. I set topics for each dinner and use that as a starting prompt to get conversation started. The topic itself is less important than just giving people a place to start and warm-up their conversational muscles. I've found it also helps newer members ease into conversations while they are still meeting people. The commitment is pretty accessible - you just have to host dinner in the rotation of folks; this has ramped up during the pandemic as we are limited to groups of 5, which has resulted in having multiple dinners on the same night, rather than one big dinner. Unintentionally, this has also increased intensity as smaller groups are more able to get deeper with each other faster. I notice folks signing up for different hosts to rotate the people they see each month.

Values - it helps to be explicit about why a community exists, and what are the expected norms for those in the group. This is still a work in progress as I have not explicitly laid it out, instead choosing to shape it through member selection and modeling of desired behaviors. It’s not meant to be a “networking” group, as I don’t want folks to be transactional. I want folks to come with an open mind and a willingness to collaborate and be authentic. This shows up when folks ask for help in the WhatsApp group, and fellow members jump in to assist.  We celebrate members’ accomplishments, but have a tacit understanding that the group is not meant for self-promotion.

Read the full article here.

Thoughts?

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    Y'all should check out Commsor - the community operating system. https://www.commsor.com/

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      Thanks. Big fan of Commsor. Haven't had a chance to use though.

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    how do you measure "intensity"? that's a really interesting thing.

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      It's difficult. As deeper you can get while being part of this community dinner, groups, discussions, etc

      Is it if members get more value out of each session or is it the member connects that happens after each session?

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        how would you calculate that?

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    Very insightful topics, Mohammed; thanks for sharing. In the case of a platform for communities, what kind of metrics would you track for these most important aspects?

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      Do you mean the platform for building communities or community metrics in general?

      Definitely has to be engagement. If you are building a community-building platform then you need to figure out what kind of things that you can do so that community builders or creators can engage with their community.

      Ex: A weekly digest of conversation. One-click on the platform and it sends a weekly email to members of the community.

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        Yeah, I mean using services like Circle or Discourse; what numbers I should pay attention to.
        Your answer already clarified my uncertainties =)

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          Right. It's definitely the engagement rate that happens in each thread and channels. Since the forum kind of platform is for async comms it's great to measure if a question is answered in the first 24 hours or so.

          Other than that these platforms ask for more details like adding your profile details, etc.

          The gamification where a new member who joins a community at what level he/she in after a weeks time in a community. Is she a lurker kind of member or creator?

          It's definitely broader topic to discuss and can't be answered so easily. :D

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