My theory on successful community building is that ROI is a term that needs to be applied to the community in question too.

As well as catering to the investor or community sponsor's need for tangible metrics that justify putting money behind community building efforts, I also think tangible incentive and and motivation to participate and engage needs to be communicated to the participants themselves.

In this sense, a community manager is someone who "promotes" the value of participating in a community to both sides of the equation.

I say "equation" because, just like an algebraic formula, both sides need to balance out for the whole thing to work. 

Also remember that the ROI you are promoting to investors and the one you are creating excitement about to your community don't necessarily need to be related.

For example, a publisher of content that's looking to monetize posts that community members create can be "sold" on a very specific ROI - like, the revenue that a page of content generates over a specific time period (or something like that).

But I believe community managers should offer their community the same kind of validation too. In the example above, maybe the incentive for community members to create content is something like self-promotion, boosting their status and online profile in a professional field, or

Every time a member engages with your community, uses your platform, or gets involved - they are investing time and effort (at the very least), and sometimes they'll invest things like money, content, or other tangibles.

To promote and encourage this behaviour, I believe it's a community managers responsibility to outline in very clear terms what participation will pay back.

One great example of this is Hootsuite's Diplomat program:

Once a member of the Hootsuite community reaches out and applies to be a "super-member" (or 'Diplomat' in this case) by organising Hootsuite events and promoting the brand, they are sent a bullet-pointed list of perks or benefits that contributors to the Hootsuite community will be able to access:


I think the lesson to learn from Hootsuite's approach is also a little less obvious.

Yes, they are identifying perks to participation - but the key is that these benefits are specifically targeted at a certain type of individual. They know who they want to partake in this scheme, and these rewards are designed to cater for them.

The advantages all suggest that Hootsuite's diplomat program is intended for people in a certain professional field.

And that's where you will really see success - when you can identify a specific type of community member who's contributions will be of value to your business, but who's needs and goals you can also realistically meet and cater for.