The Community Roundtable has always had a two-fold purpose:
- Help our members who are community and social business leaders be successful,
- Educate the market about the role of community management.
Because of this two-pronged view of our role in the market, research, documentation and public speaking have always been an important part of our mission. We publish an annual research report, The State of Community Management, since we started TheCR and it broke new ground in sharing the management practices applied across a wide range of community contexts. But there is pent up demand for much more – answers to questions like:
- Where can I get research to support investment in community management, programming and oversight?
- How can I help executives understand, get comfortable with and adopt social technologies for their own use?
- What is the appropriate staffing profile for my community program – and where can I expect it to be as it matures?
- What metrics do others use who have similar goals?
- How much are similar organizations paying for their community moderators, managers and strategists?
- What are organizations outsourcing? To whom?
In 2012, we launched The Social Executive research and this year we will transition our annual State of Community Management to a quantitative benchmark database. We will also expand our research offerings from sponsor-supported public research to assessments and custom analysis, as well as a variety of research outputs including eBooks, infographics, interactive tools and more.
Of course, to accomplish all this we are growing and couldn’t be happier to welcome our newest team member, Maggie Tunning, who’s joining us as a Future of Business Research Fellow. Maggie comes to us from The World Bank where she was a Social Collaboration Analyst, responsible for engagement and management of their internal social network. Her experience plus her commitment to personal growth, learning and enthusiasm are huge assets for us as we begin to collect, cleanse and analyze a rich set of data about community programs. Please help us welcome Maggie by reaching out to her via Twitter, LinkedIn or email.
We look forward to sharing more details about our research agenda in the coming weeks. If you are interested in collaborating, sponsoring or partnering with us on our research, please let us know.
