Guides

Orbit makes it easy for you to explore and identify different groups in your community, from top contributors to your newest members. The best way to do this is by using filters.

In this playbook, I’ll show you how to hone in on a group of members you care about in your community, and then analyze that group’s engagement.

First, you need to have some data sources connected to Orbit. Check out

I’ll be using the Members Tab to filter for groups of members. There are many filters that you can use to identify members - from job title to organization to the activities they’ve done in your community. Rather than get lost exploring all of the filter options, I suggest you start by filtering members by Orbit Level. Orbit Levels are a calculation that Orbit provides that differentiates your members according to their involvement in your community - so it’s a great first pass at grouping your community in a meaningful way.

To filter by Orbit Level, select Add Filter→ Orbit Level. You’ll see a dropdown that shows you which Orbit Levels you can select. For now, let’s just select Orbit Level 1.

Now that you can see your Orbit 1s, let’s spend some time exploring your results on the Members table. If you look around the table, you can learn things like:

I’ve compiled a list of questions that I like to start out with when getting to know my member group (along with where I find the answer!)

While looking through the members table, you’re bound to uncover interesting members that you want to learn more about and might reach out to.

To learn more about a member, click on a member’s name in the members table. This will bring you to their profile page preview. This is the best place to learn quickly about this member’s community journey. Scroll down to their Activity timeline, and you’ll see that you can view all of the activities they’ve ever done in your community.

This will give you a sense of what sorts of activities they’ve done and potential inflection points in their engagement.

You can also click Open to view a more in-depth profile about this user, including their Orbit Level journey, activity hotspots, etc.

The member profiles are great for finding trends between member journeys. If you wanted to find trends in the journeys of your Orbit 1s, click on a few more member profiles and look at their timelines as well. You’ll quickly be able to get an idea of what brought these members into the community, where they hang out, and at point they might have decided to stay. This info is helpful for determining what sources are working best for your community and what activities you should encourage amongst your other community members.

Learn more about what’s included on a member profile page here:

Lastly, I find it really useful to view to the overall performance for a group of members overtime. To do this, I use the Pulse Report. This report shows you trends in member engagement, their most common activities, top organizations in your community, etc. To check it out go to the Reports tab and click Pulse.

Since we are focusing in on Orbit Level 1s, go to the filters and select Orbit Level 1 so you can see a report just for them.

Now that you’ve learned how to dig into one member group, you can do a similar exercise for other member groups that you care about. We’ve created some guides to walk you through how to identify subsets of your community:

We’ve also put together a series of playbooks specifically focused on helping you do something with the groups you identify. Check out the following playbooks: