Ensure that your Custom Fields Strategy aligns with your Business Strategy
NOTE: The following information was created strategically as a guide, this information is not a required thought process and there are of course other ways to approach how you manage, strategize and execute your custom fields on Honeycommb.
Custom Fields (CF for short) for your community can be defined by YOU, the admin of the network. Your fields help establish the context of your network and provide each user with the ability to add more fidelity to their profile. The following are factors to consider when coming up with your CF strategy.
- What information is critical to identifying users in your network from one another?
- (IF you're a private network) What information do you need to approve a new user?
- What would users want to share on their own profile to promote, boast, or connect with other relevant users?
- What fields should/could be private and only for admins to segment the audience/network?
- What fields are crucial versus optional for users to complete in the registration process?
- Is there data that I want to use to further segment my users with a CRM or email automation tool?
- What kind of data could be valuable to my content strategy and/or my community networking experience?
For your starting place, the answers to those questions provide a really strong foundation for you to conceptualize your strategy. The good news: Your custom fields are not permanent and can be captured at any time.
As you create more information that users need to complete, however; you're adding more friction to the account creation process. That means you're making it harder for them to sign up and more tedious to create their profile. In the long-run, you could reduce the number of people signing up for the app, and that maybe something you should be conscious of.
Once you've gone through the process of establishing WHAT questions you want to ask, think about what kind of permissions that the field needs to have. (Learn More About Permissions Here) The permission of the field will dictate whether or not it appears on a profile or is only visible to an administrator.
At the end of the day, custom fields become a tentpole part of your strategy and a great resource to how you activate, engage, and create relevance with users in your community.