Savannah CRM Guiding Principles

Distill collective knowledge and best practices

Make the best choices for the most communities, out of the box
Don’t try to be a bespoke solution that’s different for everyone
Help guide community manager actions

Manage your community, not Savannah

Require minimal setup, minimal maintenance, and have good defaults
Be able to produce the same kinds of insights for any kind of community
Don’t spam users with useless emails or notifications
Automate what can be automated, make suggestions for the rest
Your time should be spent on your community, not in Savannah

Insights are better than Metrics

Numbers tell a story, but it’s not always obvious what that story is.
“The truth is in the trend, the power is in the pattern”
Try to answer the question: “What is this data telling me to do next?”
Avoid noise and metrics for metrics sake

Personal is better than automated

Your community is made up of people who want to interact with other people, not an algorithm
Make community managers better at communicating without replacing them in the communication
Automate everything but the actual engagement

Focus on your community, not your product

A healthy community will lead to a healthy product, but not necessarily vice-versa
Focus on what is valuable to the community, regardless of its value to the product
Show how community directly or indirectly contributes to the product’s success

All Contributions are equal in the eyes of the Contributor

Different kinds of contributions from different kinds of contributors average out to the same amount of time and effort from the contributor, and should be valued equally by the Community Manager

Relationships matter

They are a fundamental part of any community, and should be at the core view of your community
Activity without relationships, while still valuable, aren’t part of your community

Audience is not the same as Community

Just because somebody is using or talking about your product, doesn’t mean they’ve become part of your community
They only become part of your community when they connect with it