The Community Roundtable

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

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Research

We believe community management is critical to the future of organizations and that community management is the future of all management.

Our shared purpose is to demonstrate the value of community and community management. We do that by collaborating with our market to publish industry-leading research and we rely specifically on members of The Network to help shape our research priorities and direction.

Today, we gather and utilize data from hundreds of online communities each year, giving us insights into both the qualitative and quantitative elements and artifacts of community success.

Starting with The State of Community Management™ in 2009, our research portfolio now includes The Social Executive™, The Community Manager Handbook™ and Community Careers and Compensation™ platforms. This research informs our advisory work and shapes the content and programs for The Network, ensuring that we provide relevant and current information for community management professionals.

The State of Community Management™

Now in its 14th year, our annual State of Community Management (SOCM) report provides strategic ideas and tactical benchmarks for global community management professionals.

The SOCM 2023 explores the state of the community management industry through the lens of the eight competencies in the Community Maturity Model.

Each section includes data, ideas, and practitioner perspectives to give you new insight into the community management industry.

Download the report. 

State of Community Management 2023
SOCM-2024-DownloadBanner

Community Careers and Compensation

Our Community Careers and Compensation research traces its roots to the Community Manager Salary Survey, which was first launched in 2014. In addition to questions about the salaries, roles, and titles of community practitioners, the CCC research expands our efforts to capture the skills that community practitioners a find most valuable, and added questions about where community sits within the organizational structures of businesses, non-profits, and other organizations.

Learn more about the research and learn how to get access to the full report by visiting the Community Careers and Compensation page.

Community Careers and Compensation 2024

The Community Manager Handbook

The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes combines research findings and advice from The Community Roundtable with short case studies and tips from some of the smartest community professionals in the space, for community managers looking to start, build and grow their communities. The superheroes include current and recent members of TheCR Network, sharing their tested approaches to address the challenges facing communities large and small, old and new.

Community manager handbook

The Social Executive™

One of the major challenges of the community and social business teams with whom we work is the education of their executives, who vary widely in expectations, priorities for and engagement with social tools and approaches. Because this is such a critical issue, we consider The Social Executive™ research platform to be key in helping our members and clients make progress in their own organizations.

The goal of The Social Executive research is to understand the following:

  1. How executives connect business strategy and social tools and approaches
  2. How executives use social tools and approaches for their personal goals
  3. The process and triggers that move executives to a more mature use of social tools and approaches

From this research we are publishing both aggregate findings as well as specific case studies of organizations where we’ve interviewed a number of executives. Additionally, we use this research for executive assessments and executive education sessions.

getting executives in community

Special Reports

We partner with community organizations to release special reports on relevant and topical themes to extend the reach of our research platforms, and help our partners dig deeper into their individual ecosystems. View recent special reports. 

Contact us to learn more about how you can partner with us on a special report.

Cover picture of the community brief
SOCM-2024-DownloadBanner

Download your free copy of our 15th annual State of Community Management research.

Community best practices

Resources for the people who build online communities.

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