Keep tabs on what works (and what doesn’t) for your members.

Make sure that the content you’re sharing (or curating) is valuable to your community members.

You don’t want to waste all of your time sharing stuff that’s not resonating, or trying to get your community to engage on topics that aren’t interesting to them.

After you’ve shared something, you should always go back later and see how it performed. Did it get shared, did it spark conversation, did it get any views?

Build time into your community management routine where you take a look at content popularity. You should be able to check activity per content format (does your community prefer videos or blog posts). Perhaps there’s a certain author who always triggers a big discussion.

Here’s an example of how Crowdstack can show popular blog posts over a specific timeframe.

Once you start tracking this information, you’ll be able to double down on what’s working, and consider shifting focus away from the content that’s not performing well.

Beyond the dashboard, you should also ask your community members what’s working for them.

Set up personal interviews with some of your more active members, and ask them what’s missing, what you could provide, if they have ideas for useful content.

You’ll be surprised what you can find out in a quick 10-15 minute video chat. Then you are armed with more information, and your community members feel involved and heard.

A community survey can also be a good tool to figure out how satisfied members are, especially if you run the same survey a few times a year, to see how responses change over time.

Beyond performance of individual pieces of content, you will also want to keep an eye on overall engagement, including reactions, comments, and social sharing.

This module was all about content, which can be articles, forum topics and discussions, PDFs, videos, photos, links, events on the calendar, or just about anything.

Now you’ve learned how to set up a content machine, get some help, and measure results.

But the content means nothing if it’s not sparking action. That’s why the next module is all about engagement.