The Community Roundtable

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

  • About Us
    • Our Values
    • Our Team
    • Our Clients
      • Client Success Stories
    • Community Leadership Awards
      • Community Leadership Awards 2024
      • Community Leadership Awards 2023
      • Community Leadership Awards 2022
      • Community Leadership Awards 2021
  • Services
    • Benchmarking and Audits
      • Community Performance Benchmark
      • Community Readiness Audits
      • Community ROI Calculator
      • The Community Score
    • Models and Frameworks
      • Community Maturity Model™
      • Community Engagement Framework™
      • Community Skills Framework™
      • Community Technology Framework™
      • The Social Executive
  • Research
    • The State of Community Management
      • SOCM 2024
      • SOCM 2023
      • SOCM 2022
      • SOCM 2021
      • SOCM 2020
    • Community Careers and Compensation
    • The Community Manager Handbook
      • 2022 Edition
      • 2015 Edition
    • The Social Executive
    • Special Reports
    • Case Studies
  • Events
    • Connect
      • Connect 2024
      • Connect 2023
      • Connect 2022
    • Community Technology Summit
    • Professional Development
    • Resource Bundles
    • Upcoming Events
    • Community Manager Appreciation Day
      • Community Manager Appreciation Day 2025
      • Community Manager Appreciation Day 2024
  • I’m looking for…
    • Community Engagement Resources
    • Executive Support Resources
    • Community Reporting Resources
    • Platform and Technology Resources
    • Community Strategy Resources
    • Community Programming Resources
    • Community Career Resources
    • Something Else
      • Vendor Resource Center
      • Community FAQs
      • Community Management Podcasts
        • Community Conversations
        • Lessons From The NEW Community Manager Handbook
      • Community 101
        • Community Management Glossary
        • Community Management FAQs
      • Case Studies
      • Community Webinars
  • Community
    • The Network
      • Member Login
      • Join The Network
      • Roundtable Call Library
    • The Library
      • Subscriber Login
      • Subscribe to The Library
  • Blog

Gaps in Strategy Contribute to Community Professionals’ Burnout

June 18, 2018 By Kelly Schott

If you work in community management, chances are that you’ve felt burnt out recently – according to the State of Community Management 2018 Report, 45% of community professionals have felt that way in the past year alone. Do you ever think about why that is?burnout

To put that 45% in perspective, almost 60% of emergency medicine physicians experience burnout, according to the Medscape Lifestyle Report 2017 by the American Medical Association. That means that the most stressful physician position is feeling only slightly more burnout than community professionals; that’s astounding.

While community professionals aren’t working in emergency rooms and dealing with critical patients, they are similarly being overworked.

Strategy is at the Root of the Problem

Community professionals face internal struggles like unrealistic expectations, a lack of executive understanding, and not enough resources, but a large reason why community professionals are overwhelmingly feeling burnt out is more focused: a lack of a clear strategy. 

If you’ve worked in community management (or have read past State of Community Management reports), you know that strategy is important, so why is having a clear strategy still a problem for community teams?

  • Why do only 17% of community programs have an approved and resourced community roadmap?
  • Why do 70% of community programs lack operational and measurable strategies?
  • Why do less than half of the existing strategies include a business problem statement?

We can cite the aforementioned frustrations as causes for the above strategic problems – a lack of resources is definitely a problem when looking to fund a roadmap – but where should we focus if we’re looking to improve these numbers?

 

 burnout

What’s Causing the Burnout?

If we’re looking at funding, then we should look to executives; that’s a logical step.

But what about focusing on community professionals? It’s on them to give executives a reason to better fund their programs and, if these frustrations ultimately stem from a lack of strategy, then it is also the responsibility of community professionals to improve their strategies. That, in turn, will allow them to better prove the value of their community programs so that they can receive the funding they need. 

A Complete Community Strategy Can Address Burnout

There are many layers to the cause of this burnout and there are at least two actors involved. So how do we remedy this?

There is no easy answer, but one place to start is to make sure that your community strategy has all of the elements that you need to be able to communicate resource need to executives.

You should make sure that your community strategy includes important pieces:

  • Communicating key business needs through a problem statement
  • Identifying key behaviors and use cases
  • Recognize and measure key metrics

To find out more about what your community strategy should include, download the State of Community Management 2018 here: https://the.cr/socm2018.

About Kelly Schott

comments powered by Disqus
Community best practices

Resources for the people who build online communities.

ABOUT US
Our Values
Our Team
Our Clients
Careers

RESOURCES
Vendor Resource Center
Podcasts 
Community 101
Case Studies
Webinars

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Benchmarking and Audits
Models and Frameworks
Research
Professional Development

QUICK LINKS
Blog
Newsletter
About The Network
About The Library
About The Academy

LOGIN
The Network
The Library
The Academy

Contact
Support
Partnership
Inquiries
Subscribe to
Our Newsletter