# How to Track Community Growth in Forums - Jono Bacon

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-track-community-growth-in-forums-jono-bacon/113260
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [April 2, 2019, 6:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-track-community-growth-in-forums-jono-bacon/113260 "2019-04-02T18:31:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![erlend\_sh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/erlend_sh/32/119475_2.png) [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 6:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-track-community-growth-in-forums-jono-bacon/113260/1 "2019-04-02T18:31:05Z")

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> **[How to Track Community Growth in Forums](https://www.jonobacon.com/2019/04/01/measure-community-growth-forums/)**
>
> So, you set up a new community forum. How do you measure community growth and make changes based on this data? Let's get into it...

> When I work with clients, one of the key things they want to understand is how they track community growth and react to the data they are seeing. This can be a complex business: community platforms provide bazillions of metrics. Which ones should you track? Or, should you track them all?
> 
> Definitely don’t track everything. That is a fast-track to driving yourself bonkers.
> 
> Much to the chagrin of metrics nerds, tracking too many things can be a distraction. A better approach is to decide on a key set of _dimensions_ and track those things effectively. Focus less on the number of graphs and more what you want to learn from the data.
> 
> Today I want to recommend what some of these metrics should be. For the purpose of this article, I am using Discourse as an example; they are a platform I commonly I use with clients.
> 
> The graphs you will see below are from a client of mine who are running a fairly specialist niche technical community that pre-launched late last year (who gave me permission to anonymously share the graphs). This are early stages for the community, but I think they are making great traction and these these graphs are illustrative of what you might want to measure and how you evaluate the data.