Megan Smith, the community manager at Ovation TV, and I presented this week at the Online Marketing Summit on the fundamentals of community management. It gave me the chance to revisit and refresh my thinking. As part of the exercise, Megan and I identified the most common risks of having a … [Read more...]
Announcing the State of Community Management Toolkit
By Shannon DiGregorio, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable The State of Community Management (SOCM) has been one of our core research platforms and we are excited to announce the availability of The State of Community Management Toolkit, which includes both newly released research … [Read more...]
Appreciating Community Managers – Happy CMAD!
When Jeremiah Owyang started Community Manager Appreciation Day (#CMAD) we were one of the first to jump on the bandwagon because community managers often work behind the scenes which means that they sometimes don't get the appreciation they deserve for often very challenging work. In the best of … [Read more...]
Building a Social Community: Tell Me a Story! (Radio)
In case you missed it Rachel Happe was on SAP Radio last week along with Mark Yolton of SAP and Sean O'Driscoll of Ant's Eye View. It was quite a lively discussion and makes for a great listen during your commute or lunch hour. Some of the topics discussed in depth include: - Why communities? - … [Read more...]
Community Is A Management Approach, Not Just a Role
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...]
Community Management FAQs – What is community strategy?
What is community strategy? A successful community strategy integrates social tools and methods with business goals and processes. A good community strategy also aligns an organization’s goals with member needs setting you up to succeed in both keep engagement high and provide ROI. We recommend … [Read more...]
Community Managers Are the Superheroes of Their Companies (Infographic)
By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable. In honor of #CMAD last week the great folks over at Get Satisfaction put together the infographic below -Community Managers Are the Superheroes of Their Companies. Besides creating an infographic that is fun to look … [Read more...]
Community Types and Terms Defined
I have now officially been working in the online community space for just over one year and there still seems to be a lot of confusion and disconnects when people are talking about their community or talking with The Community Roundtable about how being a member of TheCR Network can help them. And … [Read more...]
Connecting the Ecosystem (Video)
In case you missed out on IBM Connect 2014 here's a little glimpse into the conversations that were taking place in Orlando. Rachel sat down with Peter Cardon from USC Marshall School of Business to discuss how businesses are using communities and what form those communities take. . You can … [Read more...]
Connection, Friend, Member – Who’s In Your Company’s Online Ecosystem?
We came across this article last week about defining your online community to higher ups, and it resonated because people mean a lot of different things when they use the word community. As the article so aptly states, it is hard sometimes to understand if you are "referring to the online community … [Read more...]
Defining Community
by Rachel Happe, Co-founder of The Community Roundtable The challenge with the word "community" is people mean a lot of different things when they say it, but there are few definitions. Joshua Paul at Socious took a crack at this issue and provided some great suggestions on how to differentiate … [Read more...]
Emergent Learning in Networks and at Conferences
I've been thinking a bit about the unconference format and how great it is for learning. Here is a definition for unconference: An unconference is a conference organized, structured and led by the people attending it. Instead of passive listening, all attendees and organizers are encouraged to … [Read more...]
eModeration Whitepaper: Communities of Purpose
The team at eModeration - a community moderation and management services company in the UK - released a whitepaper this week discussing 'communities of purpose'. They distinguish these communities of purpose from communities of interest in the following way: Communities of purpose: An online … [Read more...]
Lost in Translation: The Term “Social Business”
There has been a lot of talk lately both internally among TheCR team and in the social world about the use of the words Social vs. Networked vs. Collaborative vs Enterprise 2.0. There is even an article titled "Social Business" is Bullshit. And we agree...sort of. Yes, the concept of change … [Read more...]
Lost in Translation: From Social Media to Social Business
At The Community Roundtable we've been talking about social media and online communities for a long time. So long that sometimes we forget how fast business is moving and how many different stages of understanding this still emergent industry is in. I was reminded of this while watching the live … [Read more...]
So What Type of Community Do You Need?
As more companies, organizations, and individuals use social technologies and networks, a vast array of community structures are being used for various goals. There are a number of great models for understanding the ecosystem in which every company is part. Bill Johnston built a Social Media … [Read more...]
Social Business in Pictures
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And we think that can be true. Especially with hard to grasp concepts like what social business is and how it works in corporations. Well here are a few infographics that we think show what is happening now and in the future of the business of … [Read more...]
SOCM 2014 Community Fact #1 – The Power of Advocacy
By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable. Earlier this week we released the 5th annual State of Community Management report. While the research led to many interesting findings, this year's report provided more interesting data points than ever before. This is … [Read more...]
Survey: Assessing Social & Community Maturity
Over the past year, we've been talking with our clients and members about the Community Maturity Model which lays out a high level framework to help organize how to approach either a discrete social initiative or general social business enablement across an enterprise. When we created the framework … [Read more...]
This Year’s All-Star Content
Many of TheCR team are not shy about how much we love baseball. So as we've hit the mid-point in our favorite sports season, we thought we would see who our website, blog and resources all-stars are this year. Here is this year's starting line-up voted in by those fans who visit our … [Read more...]
Thoughts on the Emerging Discipline of Community Management
Dion Hinchcliffe and Dennis Howlett - both well known and respected enterprise IT voices and ZDNet bloggers - have recently highlighted community management as an important piece of corporate evolution. Dion's piece, Community Management: The 'essential' capability of successful Enterprise 2.0 … [Read more...]
Updated for 2017: Community Management Fundamentals
Need to bring someone up to speed on the basics of community management? We just revamped our community management fundamentals presentation and it's a great way to explain the ins and outs of community to someone that doesn't quite get it yet. Check out the presentation: Community … [Read more...]
Want A Successful Community? Don’t Be A Social Media Manager
I've held the position that social media management and community management are not the same thing for a while. This morning, a blog post by Maggie McGary (and the subsequent comments) about the value of Klout for community managers made me pause again. There has been a lot of attention on defining … [Read more...]
What Comes After Gratitude
By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable If you've been following our Twitter handle you already know that we've been thinking a lot about reciprocity and going beyond the thank you. What happens next? How do you keep the momentum of gratitude and sharing moving … [Read more...]
What Defines a Community Manager?
By Rachel Happe, Principal and Co-Founder of TheCR What is a community manager? We all know that the community manager role comes in a wide variety of flavors with different expectations and different levels of responsibilities and often the person in the role isn't called a community manager … [Read more...]
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means. - Inigo Montoya Community is becoming a very, very over-used term. It some ways, for those of us managing communities, it has brought a lot of attention to our field which is mostly good. However, everyone seems to be hitching their star to the term … [Read more...]
