Wow, what a cool and noble community use case @teresa3! And let me also tip my hat to @communifi’s response, because it’s great advice and I will just try to add to it.
Alright, so (and let me know if I got any of this wrong at all) …
Audience: anyone touched by cancer, who has just taken a four week course on healthy eating habits to help avoid cancer.
Goal: get them to commit to those habits for as long as possible.
You’re measuring an incentivized behavior – which is really what we’re all doing in community, so this is a great scenario.
Here’s what I would do …
Typically, 80% of all questions in a support community are the same five questions – so you want to identify your five and answer them preemptively.
If the community has been around for a while, you can probably rattle them off the top of your head. If it’s new, do some discovery by chatting with 8-10 people who are involved in the program and get a sense of the questions they have about it (reevaluate as the community grows, based on what people are asking).
I realize you didn’t ask for tactics ; rather, you wanted metrics to track – which I promise I’m getting to …
Then post your answers – they are now your core solutions and the real key for any support community is to A) generate solutions; and B) drive views to them. Track the reach and engagement on solution posts. It’s fair to assume 5-10% of those who view a solution adopted it.
You’ll surely be inviting members to share their progress and questions, etc. – also make sure to note posts that generate high activity and track whether they contain solutions/report on them if they do – so you should use recognition to celebrate people who are reporting regularly (come up with a magic number; i.e. a new 5-timer today!!! ).
Reach out and offer to feature them/their story – ask what they’d like to share and focus on it. If you have budget for items beyond your own time and effort, throw it at tangible prizes for these people. If not, recognition is still a powerful tool on its own.
This should help drive more and more check-ins, which feels like the highest value behavior in this case – so the end game looks like volume of A) total check-ins; and B) people who have checked in on your magic number of occasions (and beyond).
Make check-ins a sport and prop up everyone who does it in the comments, regardless of whether they keep up with it.
Overall engagement with all posts will also give you a sense of the groundswell you’re creating.
Hope that helps – sorry it was so long …