By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.
It’s hard to believe we’re coming up on 2015 – the past year flew by, and we wanted to take a minute to pause and reflect on the past 12 months before we dive into planning the next 12! We kicked 2014 off by launching several new initiatives aimed at connecting community managers with each other, and showcasing just how different the average profile of community practitioners can be. Our Faces of Community Management profile series shared a glimpse into the background of a wide array of community managers, and our monthly Community Manager Spotlight webinar series provided an in-depth look at what leading community professional are working on and best practices for furthering your career in community. 
We shared our annual State of Community Management 2014 research in April and released an accompanying infographic”Drive Success with Basic Executive Coaching” and eBook “Building a Community Roadmap” later in the year. You can check out all the related report materials including exclusive insights, expert advice and informative blog posts here.
In October we released a brand new research platform – The Community Manager Salary Survey which aims to bring more awareness to the emerging career path in community management; detailing what community professionals can expect from different roles and what hiring managers should know to grow effective community programs. In addition to the full report, which you can download here, we also released an informative infographic “Careers in Community Management” that profiled three main community roles and provided exclusive job role, responsibility and salary information for each.
The Fall also saw us assume the stewardship of Jeff Ross’s extremely popular “#ESNchat” a weekly twitter chat where enterprise social network focused community professionals gather weekly to discuss hot ESN topics and share advice and best practices for creating thriving ESNs. The upcoming topic schedule, as well as archives of past chat can be found here.
Finally, we shared some news from inside the TheCR Network – the introduction of our first formal Champion program.This program serves to deepen conversations among special interest groups who share a common use case or characteristic, enhance our content and programming by having community leaders, who have deep expertise in their domain, lead conversations and connect our members more closely with similar peers and industry experts.
We are proud to have shared so much new research and content with you over the past twelve months. 2014 was a year of growth and expansion at TheCR – both in terms of new programming and research initiatives, but also in terms of our team, TheCR Network, and our connections with community professionals around the world. We hope you also enjoyed a fruitful and fulfilling 2014, we can’t wait to connect with you in 2015 and help advance the community work you do.
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Looking to take your career in community management to the next level in 2015? 92% of members agree that TheCR Network supports and advances their personal and professional goals. Learn how our research, access to peers and experts, targeted content and exclusive concierge service can help you achieve your goals in the new year and beyond.
