The Community and ESN Market is in Flux The community platform market is in flux, leaving customers anxious and uneasy. The two most mature independent community platform providers - Lithium and Jive - have been acquired by private equity firms. Even more recently, Lithium turned around and … [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...]
Become a Part of the Network You Need… Before You Need It
By Jim Storer, Co-Founder and Principal at The Community Roundtable 2013 has been an amazing, busy and productive year here at The Community Roundtable. Membership grew by 34% and we now reach members in thirty-one US states and seven countries around the world. I am personally thrilled with the … [Read more...]
Building a Community Roadmap
By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable. We are excited to share with you a free eBook based on the findings in the State of Community Management 2014 report - Building a Community Roadmap. The State of Community Management 2014 research found that the best–in-class … [Read more...]
Building Value: Articulating the Power of Community Management
Over and over we hear from members and peers that articulating the value of a thoughtful and well-executed community program is one of the hardest parts of their job. Sure - wrangling tough community members isn't a walk in the park, and no one likes a troll, but condensing the power of community … [Read more...]
Building your Community Approach
By Shannon DiGregorio, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable. Here on The Community Roundtable blog we've decided to try something new for 2014. Each month we'll pick an aspect of community management and tackle it from many angles, providing commentary, resources and expert opinions. … [Read more...]
Check Out Our New Look
We are very excited to introduce our new and improved website! While putting on a little make up and freshening up content is always a good idea, we wanted to rethink everything. Our goal with the new web site is to help visitors: Understand where they are on their journey to adopt social … [Read more...]
Community 101
One of the primary jobs of a community manager is to help coach, train, educate, convince, and prod others in the organization to understand what this online communications environment is all about and why it should matter to them. A large part of that training covers the different tools and online … [Read more...]
Developing The Social Executive
One of the hardest things that community leaders do is to help executives within their organization understand the value of communities and how to effectively participate themselves. It's not that executives can't learn but they are faced with unique challenges: Booked Solid: Executives have very … [Read more...]
Drupal Commons – Open Source Social Business?
Late last week we heard about a new offering from Acquia, an open source software company focused on the Drupal social publishing system and a partner of The Community Roundtable. The product is called Drupal Commons and it's focused on expanding the use of Drupal in business. This is an … [Read more...]
Engagement and Community Architecture
By Rachel Happe, Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable Most of us who drive cars stick to driving on roads. Why? They helps us get where we are going faster - even though the route is rarely a straight line between where we start and our destination. We could try and take a more direct route but … [Read more...]
Evaluating Google+ For Community
Toward the end of 2012 Google came out with a community feature on their Google+ tool. And it sparked a lot of interest. We're not sure about you but for a while we got many invitations to join new Google+ communities. With the holiday break that enthusiasm seemed to wane a bit but we're still … [Read more...]
Friday Roundup: January is in the Books
By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable. Another January in the books! The first month of 2014 flew by (personal note: I did get married and honeymoon this month, which probably helped the time move fast for me!) and our first experiment with themed content … [Read more...]
Good Resources for Helping Others
One of the primary jobs of a community manager is to help coach, train, educate, convince, and prod others in the organization to understand what this online communications environment is all about and why is should matter to them. A large part of that training covers the different tools and online … [Read more...]
Google+ for Community Managers
We've been messing about in Google+ for the last few weeks and, like many, trying to figure out where it fits in the social media ecosystem, how it is different, why we would use it vs. other platforms, and its implications for community management. There have been a lot of posts about Google+ so we … [Read more...]
Got Examples? @TheCR Quick Case
One of the consistent themes at the Enterprise 2.0 conference, like at many conferences in this space recently, was the need for more case studies and ROI examples. Both of those are big meaty things to develop and present - when companies are willing to share. It's partly why so few good examples … [Read more...]
Holiday Gift Guide: For the Community Manager in Your Life
By Shannon DiGregorio, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable It's that time of year! My inbox is full of (dangerous) sale emails and the mall is now a terrifying cross between Mad Max and my nightmares. In the spirit of getting into the spirit we've pulled together a list of items … [Read more...]
Industry Interview: Dennis Shiao, DNN
By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable. We were able to publish the State of Community Management 2014 through the generous support of our sponsors. We are lucky enough to work with a number of partners in the community space that are helping advance the … [Read more...]
Introducing The Community Score: How mature is your community?
Communities need different management at different stages Young communities can be pretty simple to manage. It can be as easy as inviting a few friends and asking questions. As they grow and mature, however, communities need more mature and sophisticated management. When a community has … [Read more...]
Jive Acquisition: The End of the Beginning
When I started IDC’s social software research practice in 2007, the entire market was about $50 million and Jive was one of 10 or more vendors. Needless to say, the market has come a long way in the last ten years, along with lots of twists and turns. Throughout it all, Jive has taken a … [Read more...]
Meet the TheCR Summit: Hacking Culture
Here at The Community Roundtable we love online connections: watching members swap war stories in TheCR Network, listening in as problems get discussed and resolved on a roundtable call or even the growing comments on a particularly provocative blog post create real and meaningful relationships. … [Read more...]
Shopping for an online community platform?
The first time I evaluated an online community platform was in 2011 for a large, customer-facing application. At the time there were only a handful of best-in-class providers. The good news for the community platform shopper today is there are more good options to choose from. The bad news is you’ll … [Read more...]
Show & Tell: How Community Managers Use Twitter
There are Twitter users and there are Twitter users. For those of us that have been on Twitter for a while, usage has evolved as the applications and the social norms have. In a recent member roundtable with Laura Fitton, it became clear how important the use of applications, hashtags, and search … [Read more...]
SOCM Fact #8 – Using a Content Management System in Your Community
By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable. One of the most daunting tasks for a community manager is choosing a community platform. There are lots of options out there (full disclosure - here at TheCR we celebrate and support all community platform vendors. Remaining … [Read more...]
Technology Changes, People Don’t … as Quickly
After 13 years in corporate America (and one very bad flight for this 1.5 million mile flyer), I realized that I needed to make some significant changes in my life and focus on what I am passionate about in my work: social business and online communities. Most recently, I was the chief strategist … [Read more...]
The Community Maturity Model
Community management is becoming a lot more common at all sorts of organizations - driven by adoption of people doing more and more online and the social media tools that allow for easy conversation and collaboration. As that happens, however, there is a lot of friction due to lack of standards - … [Read more...]
The Social Enterprise Service Market
Today, Altimeter Group announced its expansion and the addition of some prominent partners: Jeremiah Owyang, Ray Wang, & Deborah Schultz. While Charlene Li is a force to be reckoned with in her own right, this expansion will make the Altimeter group one of the bigger service firms to arise in … [Read more...]
The Social Executive Toolkit: Coaching Tools to Help Executives Use Social Media
Over the past year we have compiled The Social Executive research which has produced deep insights into why and how executives adopt social tools and management approaches.We pursued this research because executive support is an increasing barrier to move organizations forward to the next stage of … [Read more...]
TheCR Network Sneak Peek: July 2014 Wrap Up
By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable. Summer is just flying by inside TheCR Network. I exercised some work-life balance and took a fully unplugged vacation this month thanks to my supportive team who held down the fort while I was out of the office. And while we … [Read more...]
TheCR’s Community Platform Requirements Library & Vendor Comparison Tool
Do you need to evaluate community platforms? Are you being asked to justify your existing platform? Are you looking at platform gaps but are not sure you are thinking of everything? The Community Roundtable has collaborated with our members to develop two new tools to support this … [Read more...]
Tools for Community Management: Trello, Canva, Slack.
The recent Atlassian acquisition of Trello, got me thinking about some of my favorite community manager planning, design and communication tools. Turns out my top three go-to tools for community management were not designed specifically with community management work in mind. Nonetheless, I … [Read more...]
