Community Health Index for Online Communities

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Editor's Note: This post was originally created by Lithium before the Spredfast + Lithium (now Khoros) merger.


In the current economic climate, companies are discovering that their online communities have become a powerful and cost-effective vehicle for interacting with customers

Online customer communities have come a long way in the 30 years since a handful of hobbyists posted messages on the first public bulletin boards.

The ROI that online communities are capable of delivering makes it all the more essential that companies be able to measure the health of their communities and take action to keep them healthy.

In this paper, learn:

  • How to define health factors for online communities
  • How to use community health factors to drive action
  • How to use the Community Health Index (CHI) as a community standard

Researchers found that community participants at an online auction site both bought and sold more—generating on average 56% more in sales than non-community users.

— Harvard Business Review

An Open Measurement for Community Health

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Defining Health Factors for Online Communities

Based on our continuous engagement with successful online communities, we were able to identify a common set of characteristics shared by healthy communities of all types, sizes, and ages. Learn about all these criteria in this report.

Driving Action with Health Factors

In addition to monitoring the community as a whole, managers can correlate health factors with usage metrics for specific community features to reveal their effects on the community. Over time, this will lead to more participants and increased interaction levels.

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Using the CHI as a Community Standard

With the Community Health Index, companies and community experts have a way to organize and compare this data against both the past performance of the community itself and against other similar communities. Learn more about healthy communities in this guide.

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