The following are the strategies and tactics that managers in organizations have reported using for improving community metrics:

• Engagement by Hosts: Being an active participant in your own community.
  Contribute to conversations, praise exceptional users and content. Be “present” in the
  community.
• Marketing Externally: Reach out to blogs in your space, make sure your site is
  optimized for search, mention your community via your other marketing channels.

• Marketing Internally: Educate new users on community feature set. Place prominent

calls to action to participate. Create email vehicles to send “best of the best” content
and encourage members to visit the community. Make it easy for members to refer
other members.

• Leaders: Find and/or cultivate community members that can act as your evangelists,
  community greeters, and second-tier moderators.
• Site Experience: Ensure that the site experience is a quality one. Conduct ongoing
  satisfaction surveys and usability test. Ensure site performance is optimal.

Source: Online Forum Communications

Community leaders share a number of metrics to communicate ROI back to their management and stakeholders:

• Page Views: This is not an insightful metrics for most communities, but it is essential to understand page views for ad-driven communities in order to establish CPM rates
• Registrations: Membership of a community, which some tie to “awareness”
• Satisfaction: Satisfaction with the community as well as with the host organization
• Downloads / Trials / Lead Generation: Software companies and communities with a
  premium (paid) layer can compare this metric with other marketing activities and
  channels
• Cost Savings: Cost displacement or reduction as a by-product of community activity  This could be call deflection for support communities, or R&D benefits for product teams
• Content that ties back to “Mission”: This is particularly relevant for non-profits, who generally have a very clearly defined mission. Showing examples of content and
  activity that support an organization’s mission help justify the return on the community investment by demonstrating effect
• Direct Revenue: Perhaps the ultimate metric is showing direct revenue from a community;  and comparing revenue (and donations) from members and non-members is becoming possible because of better metrics

Source: Forum One Communications

The metric tools used by some organizations are Hitbox, Omniture, Google Analytics, Jive, Comscore, Yesmail, and Web Trends

Source: Forum One Communications