Even if your bags aren’t quite packed (to be honest I’d be impressed if they were), there is still plenty to plan for this years premier Community conference, TheCR Connect. As a three-year veteran of the event, I thought I’d take a minute to layout four ways to extract the most from your Connect experience.  […]

Welcome to the latest episode in our community management podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” Join TheCR’s Shannon Abram as she chats with Rachel Happe, Principal and Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable, and Jeff Ross, Community Manager at Humana about the State of Community Management 2019 report. In Episode #59, Rachel and Jeff discuss key finding #1 from […]

Community roles have long been misunderstood as positions “merely” requiring social skills and the ability to interact. In fact, they neither represent just one role nor are they simple. Great community leadership is mostly hidden work focused on enabling others to interact constructively in service of creating agile and collaborative cultures. This approach is far […]

Or 10th annual State of Community Management survey revealed that online community professionals are both incredibly optimistic and incredibly burnt out. A full 50% of community professionals experienced a high degree of burnout over the past 12 months. At the same time, 69% see a future for themselves as a community professional and 80% are […]

Communities are complex and ever- changing. In the real world, they are challenging to see in aggregate and, therefore, almost impossible to measure. Online, however, we can see how communities form, change, fragment, divide, and dissipate. That allows us to communicate community dynamics, value, and impact. Some community value is still easier to see because […]

Welcome to the latest episode in our community management podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” Join TheCR’s Jim Storer and Shannon Abram as they chat with community managers from a variety of industries about their community journey. They ask the community questions you want to know the answers to, including: What’s your best advice for someone just starting out […]

34% of community professionals surveyed in the State of Community Management 2019 are still on teams of one, with the average community team now at six individuals, four of whom are full-time. Surprisingly, the size of a team currently does not show consistent correlation to use case, the number of members in a community, the […]

The famous Alexandre Dumas quote “Nothing succeeds like success” illustrates a critical aspect of successful communities. In particular, because individuals do not always know what to expect from communities, success shows people what is possible and, in turn, tends to change their expectations and mindsets. This is true of any initiative, but especially true with […]

Community roles are more differentiated than they were just a few years ago, but they still lack consistency and rationalized salaries. Our sample includes individual contributors all the way up to vice presidents and over a third of community teams include more specific roles, including community analyst, community strategist, and community engagement specialist. Salary ranges […]

Communities are often mistaken as approaches for a single use case – and they can be successful that way. For decades, online communities used in a business context were often focused on customer support case deflection and 74% of external community programs still identify this as a functional process they support. Those community programs deliver […]