On Friday, we had a great #TheCRLive at John Harvard's in Cambridge. The general topic for the conversation was content creation at live events but we also covered: Percentage of women speaking at events (interesting because the crowd was primarily male) Semantics The definition of a … [Read more...]
10 Best Practices for Gaming in Your Community
By Amy Turner, The Community Roundtable Incorporating gaming elements into communities not only adds value, but also enhances a member’s experience and gives them an enjoyable moment that would not have otherwise existed. Definitely, a key community must-have for staying ahead of the … [Read more...]
2011 State of Community Management Webinars
The 2011 State of Community Management report has received far reaching interest and support. Part of what makes the State of Community Management report so compelling is the aggregation of practitioner voices. Last week we were thrilled to have Dan Brostek, social business leader at Aetna, and … [Read more...]
2012 SOCM: What Struggles Will Your Community Face As It Matures?
Recently we had a call with TheCR Network members to go through the 2012 State of Community Management report. Not surprisingly with everything on their plates, many had not had time to digest it all the way through. So they were thrilled to have Rachel Happe go over the key findings in more … [Read more...]
4 Members of TheCR Network Honored in 2012 State of Online Branded Communities Report
This week ComBlu, one of our partners in the community management training program released their annual report on online branded communities. And we are thrilled to see 4 members of TheCR Network called out in this important study, yet we’re not surprised. People who are willing to share their … [Read more...]
A Big Old School IOU
We are thrilled to have a guest post today from Dawn Lacallade, a recognized thought leader in the social marketing and online community space. She is a long standing member of TheCR Network and has taken a lead role in helping to develop the community management training program we are delivering … [Read more...]
A Community Vacation
This morning when I peeked in at my Facebook stream, I saw this: [It's a grainy screen shot but reads: Dear Fan, it's summer time and also Nutella® fan page will be on vacation for the next weeks. Our wall will be closed until September 1st. You might want to come back in September to find … [Read more...]
A Merry Band
Growing our community has been a lot of fun. One thing that we are learning is that people in online community management have diverse backgrounds - no two career paths look similar. Some people come from marketing communications and PR, some from product marketing/management, some from IT, and … [Read more...]
A Path to Community Maturity
A few of years ago The Community Roundtable debuted our Community Maturity Model (CMM) in the hopes that it would help members of TheCR Network, our advisory clients and, well, everyone advance the business of their communities. It has been wonderfully received over the years, but we often get … [Read more...]
A Peek Inside
We've been working hard to get the technology, content, and business operations in place over the past few weeks and we are making a lot of progress. We have the community up, we are categorizing and combining content sources, and we are reaching out to a number of potential members to review our … [Read more...]
Alcoa Case Study – Social Business and Observable Work
One of the sessions at the Enterprise 2.0 conference was lead by Brian Tullis and Joe Crumpler of Alcoa Fastening Systems (yes, Alcoa uses social processes and tools which means you can too...) and they spoke about how social tools make work 'observable' and its implications. One direct implication … [Read more...]
Announcing The 2011 State of Community Management Report
We are excited to announce the publication of our 2011 State of Community Management report. The report is a compilation of what we learned with members of TheCR Network over the course of 2010 as well as survey results covering community management maturity. Key findings from the report … [Read more...]
Building and Sustaining Brand Communities
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, having a few wicked smart people take what we've done and elaborate on it is... amazing. We are always very impressed with the quality of thinking and communication done by the community management team at Radian6 - led by David Alston & Amber … [Read more...]
Cheeseheads
One of the leading best practices for community managers is to develop a core group of enthusiastic members that emerge over time as leaders. Microsoft even spun out their 'MVPs' as a separate community. SAP calls their group 'Mentors'. We like to think of these people as a community … [Read more...]
CMAD Wrapup – Links for Community Managers
Wow! Community Manager Appreciation Day sure has come a long way in 4 years! Of course so has the discipline and roles of community management. The amount of conversation, content and celebration from yesterday seemed to hit hyperdrive. It was very hard to keep up and not get knocked over by the … [Read more...]
Come Learn, Connect & Celebrate with TheCR
The Community Roundtable has a lot going on. So much for easing into the New Year. Instead we are starting it off with a bang and more. We held our first TheCRLive in Washington, DC on Tuesday night and from all accounts a great time and interesting, thought provoking conversation was had by all. … [Read more...]
Coming May 15th! Community Manager Online Training Course
The next module in our online WOMM-COM community manager certificate program starts next week. We're really excited to bring together such an amazing group of practitioners to teach this course. Check out the instructors and we're sure you'll agree. The community manager course is designed to … [Read more...]
Community Manager Appreciation Day #CMAD
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...]
Community Manager Burnout
When I saw the topic for yesterday's Twitter #cmgrchat, I thought it was a good one to discuss, particularly now. The holidays just ended where everyone feels stretched in too many directions. It's January so the business expectations for a New Year are fresh in everyone's mind and people are … [Read more...]
Community Manager Training Scholarship – Apply Today
We are humbled by the great reaction to the first module (Community Specialist) of the training program we launched in partnership with WOMMA and ComBlu. We saw participation from both companies that are actively looking to train their teams on the intricacies of community management and … [Read more...]
Community Managers Talk Resources, Analytics, and More at #TheCRLiveCHI
Today's guest post comes to us from Jenny Weigle, organizer of TheCR Live in Chicago and the community and social media manager at CareerBuilder and Jordan Sanders, the president of Social Media Solutions and head of community for KnowYourBank. During the October gathering of TheCRLive Chicago, … [Read more...]
Community Managers: Voice Concerns, Gather Data, Solve Challenges…Pass It Along
Today's post comes from Maria Ogneva, Head of Community at Yammer, Inc. As one of our Advisory Board members for this year's State of Community Management report, Maria is very interested in gathering data to help Yammer with their community efforts but also to help every organization who seeks … [Read more...]
Constructively, Positively Social
The online environment is filled with all sorts of people with all sorts of motives and influences. And, unfortunately what's true in real life is even more pronounced online: it's easier to tear things down than to build them up. Frank Eliason, SVP of Social Media for Citibank, is calling for a … [Read more...]
Conversations with Community Managers – Ray Gans
The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, "Conversations with Community Managers." In this series, TheCR's Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and … [Read more...]
Enterprise 2.0 – both social… and media
The Enterprise 2.0 conference, while a little more subdued than last year, was a great event. It gave Jim and I the opportunity to meet and catch up with a lot of people - as well as to hold a Crab Tweetup with guest of honor, Connie Bensen. Among my favorite quotes from the week were: Nate Nash … [Read more...]
Fellowship: My Career Leap With TheCR That Paid Off
Thank you all for reaching out to me about the exciting news that I have officially joined The Community Roundtable team. As we are looking for a research fellow, and as I have experience being a fellow with TheCR for the past year, many have asked about my journey from fellowship to hire. They … [Read more...]
Fighting the sophomore slump in your community planning
By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable Welcome to the second full week of 2015. Remember the vim and vigor with which you sat down at your desk last week? The whole year was ahead of you. A clean slate. You laid out a dozen priorities for the year and… haven’t started any of them. Last week … [Read more...]
Friday roundup: The Community Manager Handbook hits the streets
It's been a big week (again) at The Community Roundtable, with a brand new publication hitting the streets - The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes. The Handbook was a labor of love for us, because it gave us a chance to work closely with former and current members of … [Read more...]
Getting to the Meat & Potatoes of Community Management
Today’s post comes from TheCR Network member Jeff Esposito, Social Media Manager at Vistaprint. Jeff’s experience with and enthusiasm for community management has been apparent during our State of Community Management Report Advisory Board meetings. We are love having him on our team...here's … [Read more...]
Hierarchies and Pryamid Schemes
I was chatting with Robin Frey Carey last week and I mentioned that Jim & I will consider ourselves wildly successful if every one of our constituent groups - the market as a whole, our members, our expert facilitators, our market research customers, and ourselves & any employees - feel as … [Read more...]
How Community Management is Like Personal Finance
Would you invest your money without the support of someone who understands the current marketplace, knows where trends seem to be heading and what strategy will be best to maximize that investment? Many of us wouldn't. And yet companies are often throwing open the door to community initiatives … [Read more...]
How Did We Meet, Again?
Recently in TheCR Network we asked members to share how they first encountered and got to know The Community Roundtable and its founders Jim Storer and Rachel Happe. It was fun to see where people had come from. There were many ways people came to know The Community Roundtable. Past conferences … [Read more...]
How to Recognize Your Top Community Members
As we close out 2016 I wanted to share some best practices for recognizing and rewarding the top contributors in your community. Whether they are super users who take pride in answering others questions or super-star content creators, everyone likes to be acknowledged for their … [Read more...]
Lost in Translation: The Business of Community
We love our new tag line. We think it epitomizes what we do. But we also realize you may not get it. Thus our 2nd installment of Lost in Translation. When The Community Roundtable was started we had a theory that humanizing a business and making real relationships with people was a better way to … [Read more...]
Now Hiring: Virtual Assistant
Once again we are expanding our team, this time we are in the market for a Virtual Assistant. We have built The Community Roundtable by working with those in our greater community and we enjoy doing so. To that end we are hoping to find someone from our community to work with again and are hoping … [Read more...]
Ode to the Boston Community
For anyone who has spent time in Boston, last week's bombings were surreal. I grew up in Cambridge and have friends and family that permeate the area where the events of last week played out although I no longer live in the city. It felt weird to watch from what seemed to be so far away. Last night … [Read more...]
Online Community Success Takes Planning and Patience
There has been recent discussion in the blogosphere about how some companies are abandoning their blogs. And much of it sounds very familiar and is something we have heard in the online community sphere as well. And it's not surprising. Many companies aren't quite sure what they are getting into … [Read more...]
Preliminary Results: Social & Community Maturity by Use Case
We recently opened a survey to better understand how the market is maturing in the use of social and community practices. One of the big questions we wanted to understand is the adoption maturity of these methods for different business uses - i.e. were they researching, planning for, experimenting, … [Read more...]
Public Relations Tips for Community Managers
Community Managers wear many hats and are often asked to step into unfamiliar roles. Such is the case for, Judi Huck, community consultant and trainer, and member of TheCR Network. Instead of being daunted by the task at hand, she has taken the time to learn more about her new role in Public … [Read more...]
Roundtable Call: Tribalization of Business Study
A big part of what we're trying to build with The Community Roundtable is a peer network that shares what we learn with our broader community. To that end, we made the Community Maturity Model open source and shared our construct for TheCR Quick Case and continue to figure out new ways to give what … [Read more...]
