A Community for Community Managers

At The Community Roundtable, we’ve been running a community for community managers for seven years – TheCR Network. Running TheCR Network allows us to learn together every day along with hundreds of the best community professionals in the business, from over 150 organizations.

Our shared purpose in starting TheCR Network was to demonstrate the value of community management. In 2009, very few people understood what community managers did, let alone their value.

Together, our shared value has been to develop and document the evolving disciple of community management, which we do through research, programing and lots of conversations. Together we have helped make community management more well understood and, according to our research, a strategic enabler for the c-suite. That’s progress to be very proud of!

It’s been an amazing journey so far and as community management becomes the future of all management and as engagement becomes core to both the customer experience and the employee experience, we are learning together what it means to execute on that vision. We have learned that communities are a key enabler of addressing complex organizational goals – culture change, knowledge management, digital transformation, innovation, collaboration. Communities are what allow organizations to trigger, model and reward new behaviors – and create the supportive and encouraging environment individuals need to believe the change is worthwhile – all of which creates tremendous value for the organization.

So what makes TheCR Network so special?

First, our members are really what make TheCR Network special – individuals who sit in different types and sizes of organizations working on different complex problems all of whom want to solve those problems using a collaborative, community-based approach.

Together, we highlight when community management is done well and help organize and structure community management so it is easier to understand and easier to describe. We do that through our community programs that are designed to create member collisions in a variety of ways:

	Roundtable Calls We host 3-4 roundtable calls each month on a wide variety of topics related to community management. Sometimes these calls are facilitated by an outside expert and sometimes they are a group of members sharing an approach. A library of over 200 roundtable call reports gives members a wealth of expertise to access as needed.
	Weekly Work Out Loud Every week, we ask members to share their weekly goals. This not only encourages our members to step back once a week to think through their tasks strategically, it also helps us understand how to proactively provide connections to people and content they may not know is out there. The biggest benefit, however, is it helps members connect and share with each other.
	Weekly Community Managers Newsletter It can be challenging keeping up with all the conversations, programs and activity going on in the community. It’s our job to help curate so members can identify the topics and activity that will help them most. Our weekly newsletter is how we help our members sift through what matters the most each week.
	Community Management Training Twice a year, we run more structured training courses for both internal and external community professionals. This Community Management Fundamentals training provides an opportunity to level set on the basics for newer community managers and an opportunity to step back and refocus for more experienced community managers. It’s comprised of a series of short videos, worksheets and facilitated discussions with other members.
	New Member Calls New member calls are designed to acclimate new members to both the structure and the culture of TheCR Network so that they feel comfortable jumping in and joining conversations or Roundtable Calls. It’s also important that we get to know and understand them so that we can provide better support.
	Happy Hour Chats Being a community manager can be isolating – not everyone has a team of colleagues to meet up with for a delicious drink after work and shoot the breeze. Our weekly Happy Hour Chats are a great way for members to kick back, unwind, and maybe even vent about what’s going on in their communities. These are a great way for members to ask informal questions, stay up-to-date on industry trends and share what they are working on.
	Ask Me Anything Ask and you shall receive – literally. AMAs allow members to receive the answers to their most pressing community questions. Every month we put one community expert in the hot seat and they answer any questions that the Network throws their way. This is a great way to showcase member expertise and help people connect with the info they didn’t know they needed.
	Community Buzz Life – and content in the Network – moves pretty fast sometimes. The Community Buzz is a weekly opt-in email that provides members with a summary of the top content in the Network – questions that might need answering, hot topics being debated and discussions that they shouldn’t miss.
	Live Networking Events Our members are located all over the world, and while we believe in the power of connecting online there is something to be said to getting together over tasty food and drink and getting to know someone in person. We facilitate a number of live networking events exclusively for members. These events include lunches, dinners, happy hours and TheCR Connect workshops to bring together members and deepen the connections made inside the TheCR Network.

What does all of that look like on a monthly basis?

Here is an example of a month of events in TheCR Network. We find that different members like different things – like all communities we have listeners who read and absorb a lot but participate only occasionally. We have other members who are more socially motivated who tend to participate in the weekly Work Out Loud discussions and come to Happy Hour more often. We have Roundtable Call regulars who come to just about every discussion we have and others who really like the structured training.