It may not seem like summer is very productive, especially since community engagement can drop off quite a bit. But it often is a period where we have the space to think more strategically about what’s needed to ‘level up’ and increase productivity or quality when the fall schedule bears down on us. For those of you managing community programs, The Community Roundtable offers critical resources for leveling up for a number of different stakeholders involved in your social business program. Here are some ways to get your team ready for September:
Assess Your Performance
Where are you in your maturity curve? Where do you want to be? How do you get there? Now is the perfect time to ask these questions, assess your performance, update your goals and research how to get there. The Community Roundtable has some tools and research to help:
Community Maturity Model – Helps you assess where you are and define where you want to be.
The 2012 State of Community Management Report – Provides a specific set of guidelines and initiatives, based on industry practices, to help you get from where you are to where you want to be.
The 2011 State of Community Management Report – Provides an exhaustive set of management practices and patterns, by competency, used by leading organizations in their community programs.
Get Your Team Up to Speed
It is likely that not everyone on your team is at the same level of experience and knowledge. Some may just be beginning their involvement in community management. Some may be experienced but feeling like they are relied on too much and are getting burnt out but don’t know how to scale their expertise to others. Some may be tasked with really hard tasks like educating executives. No matter where the individual members of your team may be, we have resources and services that can help:
Community Management Fundamentals – a presentation for those on your team new to community management responsibilities
The Power and Peril of Online Communities – A good presentation for those who have some social or community experience but may not know what needs to change in their community management approach as a community matures.
TheCR Focus – A monthly report subscription containing case studies, relevant articles, discussions and trends in community and social business. It’s perfect for key executive stakeholders that need to better understand the topics being discussed in the industry but who do not have time to participate regularly themselves.
TheCR Network – A membership network that provides strategic, tactical and professional development programming for community and social business leaders. The network enables members to connect and form lasting relationships with experts and peers where they can learn from each other, ask questions of each other and have access to more than 135 case studies and in depth discussions. Members represent companies such as SAP, Google, Aetna, CSC, Johnson Controls, Boston Children’s Hospital, Rackspace, Walgreens, H&R Block and many more. [Team pricing is available]
Help Your Team Educate Others
One of the tasks that we hear frustrating many community and social business leaders is educating others at their company on what they are doing, how they are doing it and why it is important to business strategy and the bottom line. Whether you are trying to educate stakeholders and executives or trying to get more participation internally, these resources can help:
Getting Your Feet Wet in Social Media and Community Management – a list and links to resources that cover why people should care, how to get started and where to go next. This is a good 101 introduction.
Community Management Fundamentals – a presentation explaining the basics of community management, how it works and why it is good for businesses.
Six Risks of Not Having Community Management – a post that covers what can happen to/in communities that are not managed well.
The Social Executive – a presentation that connects high level market trends to how those trends are changing organizations and the benefits to executives of participating personally.
Formal Training
Community Management Online Training – Throughout the year we teach online training courses in conjunction with WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) and ComBlu. Our next training course begins in early September and will focus on the Community Strategist role, a senior position that focuses on establishing the vision, building the business case and championing a community approach across multiple business units. This session will expose attendees to real world examples through a series of in-depth case studies from industry experts.
We hope you find these resources useful. As always we are here to help, so should you have a question you don’t see a resource for it here, don’t hesitate to shout.
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The Community Roundtable’s core service offering is TheCR Network, a membership network that provides strategic, tactical and professional development programming for community and social business leaders. The network enables members to connect and form lasting relationships with experts and peers as well as get access to vetted content.
TheCR Network is the place to learn from industry leaders. Join today
