This year, we moved the State of Community Management to a quantitative research platform to help answer questions about trends and performance in online communities and community management. The data that is coming in is fascinating – both because some things are becoming standard practices and other characteristics are unique to each context. We wanted to share a sneak peek at some data about what we are learning.
The great news is that although hard ROI numbers are still elusive to many, the number of organizations that are seeing real change in the way people work is encouraging – and higher than we were expecting.
Preliminary results show that 48 percent of respondents are seeing a significant change in how employees work since the implementation of a community program. 37 percent are beginning to see a change. Time will tell what that means in terms of organizational performance, but it does validate the important role of communities in affecting behavior change.
These results are being seen over a broad spectrum of communities, run across a broad range of platforms.
Social software usage stats:
Social network usage stats:
Social media management usage stats:
This data is just the tip of the iceberg – we’re collecting data on the size of community programs, community management salaries, community growth rates and more.
Note: There’s still time to complete the online survey. Steps to participate:
1. Download and print this survey workbook to use as you gather the required data
2. When you’ve completed the workbook, complete the online survey by this Friday, March 29 to be eligible to win one of three custom benchmark reports (although the survey will remain open as we plan to continue to report on this data over time)
If you are interested in sponsoring this research or in custom analysis, please contact us at research (at) community-roundtable (dot) com.
