Glossary

Analytics is a perfect way to examine community engagement via members' activity data. It is the most quantitative and qualitative way to observe your community with a comprehensive view. Community owners focus on using insights derived from data to make more informed decisions that help run their community smoothly.

A community admin is a person who operates the community. She/He is the member with all the control in her/ his hands. There can be more than one admin in a community.

An audience is a group of people who consume your content and keep an eye on your brand's activities. They actively follow the content that you put on your site and community. It can include blogs, articles, videos or any newsfeed. It’s basically a one-way communication where the flow of knowledge goes from you to your audience.

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An activity feed can also be referred to as a newsfeed or activity stream which is a list of recent activities performed by the members of your community. Activities can include the gamut from posting to commenting.

Banning is a way of restricting a member from accessing the community. It is done when a member constantly violates the rules or guidelines of the community. Once a member is banned all her/his actions get ineffective.

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Bio is an abbreviation for Biography. It is a part of the personal profile where you need to put a short description of yourself. A good bio creates a positive impression and provides a solid reason for the readers to follow you

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These are the loyal customers who recommend and advertise your brand for free. In this digital era, a brand is no longer what companies showcase to people, instead it is what people convey to other individuals. That’s why these days innovative companies are investing in building communities, not customers.

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A brand community is a group of customers who are brought together by their common interest in a brand’s products & services. These customers engage with your brand’s content on a deep level and help in building a strong image of your brand in the market.

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It's a process in which a user comments on his old conversation thread, with the aim of getting the attention of the admin and other users toward his past post.

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A customer community is a focused group where customers interact with one another and with brand representatives. They use it for various reasons, including discussing things about brands, accessing customer support, and posting reviews.

CAPTCHA is an acronym that stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. It is used to identify whether an internet user is a human or a bot. It provides challenges that are difficult for computers to perform but relatively easy for humans. Users often encounter CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA tests on the Internet.

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A community is a group of people who come together with a shared interest to explore or understand a common objective. Online communities are unique because they offer members an opportunity to connect with one another, regardless of where they’re located.

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Community advocates are those members who are influential and inclined towards the development of the community. They also contribute to building your community by sharing their positive experiences with others.

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Building community is a process that fosters connection and engagement among people who together share common beliefs and objectives.

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A Direct Message (DM) is a private mode of communication between two individuals. The content of the message can only be seen by the sender and the receiver.

The word “doxxing” (or "doxing") is derived from the term “dropping dox,” or “documents.” It is a type of digital attack that involves publicly revealing personal information about a user.

An event is a perfect way to grab the attention of the community members and keep it. It’s a calendar-based resource which can be used to notify members of upcoming occasions.

Evergreen Content is content designed to be relevant and valuable for a long period of time. It refers to any topic with an always-on level of interest or relevance. There is always an audience that wants to consume content around these topics, and the information in evergreen pieces should reflect that.

Feedback is the reaction of the users after understanding the current development. In community building, both positive and negative feedback is equally important. It provides a sense of engagement and ownership and allows members to take part in the development of the product. Effective feedback shows owners their current level of performance and lets them know what they need to do to reach a higher level.

Flaming, also known as bashing, is hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users, often involving the use of obscene language.

A follower is a term used on social media to describe a person who is swayed by your content and has opted-in to follow your account or community with an intent to receive all your updates.

FOMO is simply an acronym for “fear of missing out.” It’s a term that’s used to describe the anxiety of missing out on opportunities. It is characterized by the need to remain engaged with others' activities to ensure you do not miss out on something fun, exciting, beneficial, or profitable.

A forum is an online discussion board where people can share their thoughts, ask questions, and discuss topics of mutual interest. It is one of the oldest forms of online communities and an excellent way to create social connections and a sense of community. A forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics.

In our platform, members earn points (Karma) on uploading posts/ when they comment/ when their post or comment gets a like and with many other tasks. The point is to inspire users to engage with the content and promote interaction inside the community, especially with tasks that are not enjoyable.

Gated communities (also called private communities)- is a community that is closed to the outside world. It’s a kind of restricted space that is accessible only to certain members. As it's private, all the content shared in this space is visible to the members only.

It's a community that has characteristics of both the private and the public community. It's simply a social space where some of the engagement opportunities are available to the public and others are accessible only by customers or members.

An icebreaker in a community is an act of initiating a discussion via games, questions or any other activity. Icebreakers are used when an event requires people to comfortably interact with each other. A facilitator may use an icebreaker to fill the awkward silence or discomfort in the room.

Ideation refers to the process of generating and conveying creative ideas. It is innovative thinking, basically aimed at solving a problem or providing a more efficient means of doing or accomplishing something

Members who have a profile in the community but who are inactive, which typically means they have not accessed the community in the past month.

Integrations are tools offered by the platform to connect with other different platforms you use.

As the name indicates, it’s a private community or closed community generally composed of employees of the organisation. It is used to enhance communication and make collaborations easier

A knowledge base is a repository of helpful documents that generally includes commonly asked questions, how-to guides, product tutorials, troubleshooting instructions etc. These are self-service resources and their purpose is to make it easy for the members to find solutions to their common problems without the help of customer support.

A leader is a person from a community who is highly active in all community activities.She/he knows the community inside-out and does everything from helping the members to raising important issues. A leader primarily focuses on keeping the members together to work towards a common goal in the community.

Leaderboards are part of a community gamification system in which the members are ranked according to their contribution to the community. The objective is to encourage participation and some healthy competition, giving credit and visibility to the people who contribute the most to the community.

A big part of every community comprises lurkers. They are the members who only view content but don’t get involved in discussions or post updates of their own. They passively observe information and do not reveal information about themselves.

Member advocates represent and empower members of the community. They are the voice of the members who put forward members' requirements and ensure their problems are heard and addressed by the community owners.

Member discovery is about understanding and recognizing your target audience before building a community with them.

Member retention refers to the actions a community takes to reduce the number of members' defections. Member retention is a metric that measures customer loyalty, or the ability of a community to keep its customers over time.

A moderator is like a supervisor of your community. His role is to consistently monitor every activity in the community and maintain a healthy environment for the community members. He also has the authority to delete and report a thread which violates the rules. There can be multiple moderators in a community.

Community is a valuable asset, and monetization is the way of generating revenue from an asset (Community).

Newbie is a word used to describe a newcomer to an environment in which they have little or no previous experience. The term newbie is commonly used in the gaming community or in online forums.

An online community (also known digital community) — is simply a group of people coming together for a common purpose, interest, or vision, and doing so via the internet.

A profile displays a brief introduction about a member of the community. It’s a way to make an immediate sense of who the member is. It generally includes the details like name, profile pic, bio, and social media contact links. It's an opportunity to make a first impression that may persuade others to follow you.

A roadmap is a high-level strategic overview of the project's goals and deliverables presented on a timeline. It refers to a plan that gives the members and the users an idea about future actions. It mainly includes a step-by-step plan for achieving the milestone.

Search Engine Optimization(SEO)  is the process that helps your website or webpage rank better on the search engine result pages (SERPs) in order to gain organic traffic. The better visibility your community and forum have in search results, the more chances you garner attention.

Spaces are the modules that help you keep your post organized. You can think of spaces as virtual rooms within your community, where you can manage posts, and create separate post feeds for specific topics and groups. This allows users to organize information within their community and for members to easily access posts that are the most relevant to them.

A thread is a sequence of responses or messages to a single post. It helps you to create organised discussions around specific messages. In a community, they let you discuss a topic in more detail without adding clutter to a channel or direct message (DM) conversation.

The process of designing web pages, software applications or processes that make tasks and behaviour easy, enjoyable and intuitive for the user.

A virtual community (also known digital community) — is simply a group of people coming together for a common purpose, interest, or vision, and doing so via the internet.

A virtual event is an organized gathering that enables a group of people to communicate and share knowledge. The only difference between physical events and virtual events is that virtual events occur online, rather than in-person. Popular uses of virtual events include webinars, live streams, virtual trade shows, online classes, online tours and company events.

A webinar is an online seminar usually hosted by an individual or a company and is attended solely by the online audience. Webinars are mostly interactive, with participants getting information, asking questions, and discussing in real time.

Some people use this term to name an old conversation or thread in a community which has come to standstill but has been revived by someone by adding a reply.