The Community Roundtable

Empowering global community leaders with research-backed resources, training, and tools.

The Value of Community Management

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Most community managers know that the discipline has worth (i.e. significance) - our experience shows us that communities without community managers are much more likely to die off, go off track, become thorny stews, or get so insular that they can't grow or evolve. For sponsoring organizations who … [Read more...]

Community Manager Appreciation Day #CMAD

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This is not our idea but we think Jeremiah Owyang is on to something with his call for a Community Manager Appreciation Day.  Community Managers have tough and often under-appreciated responsibilities.  They are the glue that often keeps a community from going off the deep end, metaphorically … [Read more...]

Hiring A Social Media or Community Manager?

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We recently had a member call on Hiring for Community Management and also discussed the topic at last week's #TheCRLive. It's a hot topic for a variety of reasons.  There is growing interest in the field and growing demand for community managers. Our members' had some additional … [Read more...]

Looking for a Community Management Job?

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We've seen the community management discipline mature over the past year - both in terms of how well it's understood and in the recognition by companies that their social initiatives are more successful if they have a dedicated community manager.  Demand for community management skills has also … [Read more...]

What Online Communities Will Expose in 2010

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There is a lot of chatter in social media and online community circles about how social initiatives lead to increased transparency - and some of that is definitely true.  Customers and the public can find out a lot more about what others think about a company's products and service than ever before. … [Read more...]

Orchestrating Emergent Control

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I ran across this quote today and it reflects something that I've been thinking a lot about over the past few years, namely how to encourage specific activities within communities without explicitly telling people what to do. Control is not discipline. You do not confine people with a highway. But … [Read more...]

Community Is A Management Approach, Not Just a Role

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The way we currently think about community management - for the most part - is a role played by someone managing a set of relationships often mediated by an online destination.  One of the reasons Jim and I started The Community Roundtable is that we saw it emerging as a career path for many and … [Read more...]

Consistency & Translation in Community Management

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Alicia Staley (@stales) pointed me to the following post on the Wego Health community. While the topic of the post was about communicating as a community manager in a health community, the post was full of some pretty complex topics: Balancing consistency of 'voice' with the needs of various … [Read more...]

Measure, But Measure Wisely

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Two things recently got me thinking about using measurement and metrics.  The first was a post by Bertrand Duperrin who pointed out that just because we don't want to or don't measure something doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't be measured and that every business goal, hard and soft, has an … [Read more...]