Understanding your community analytics

Member count tells you who showed up. Participation tells you who's staying. This guide breaks down the metrics and widgets in your Community dashboard, and shows you which ones actually matter depending on whether you're just launching, still seeding activity, or running a mature community.

1. In your beehiiv dashboard, open Community from the left navigation.
2. The Community overview page will open, showing your community analytics. 

Each metric shows its trend over time in the chart, with a comparison against the previous period. Select a metric to switch the chart to it.

• New members: Who joined recently, so you can welcome them by name while they're still deciding whether to stick around.
• Popular members: Your most active people, by posts or by comments. These are your future moderators and your word-of-mouth engine.
• Popular channels: Which channels get the most posts and comments. If one channel dominates, consider consolidating quiet ones.
• Top posts: Your best content by views or by comments. What earns comments tells you what to post more of.

Each widget follows your selected time period, and shows an empty state when there's no activity in the window.

All four metrics matter, but not equally at every stage:

• In your first weeks, watch New members (is the invite engine working?) and post a lot yourself. See How to invite your subscribers to your community for more information.
• Once seeded, the number that predicts survival is Member participation. A community where a handful participate is a broadcast; one where a third participate is alive. Comments are worth more than views.
• Ongoing, use Top posts and Popular members to double down on what works and empower who's working.

For participation benchmarks by community size and stage, check out these resources from beehiiv's head of community.