The Community Roundtable

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

TheCR Network Year In Review 2017 Infographic

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It’s the most wonderful time of year. 

The candles, and the lights and the festive drinks and tasty food. And celebrating your traditions with loved ones. That is all very wonderful.

Also pretty wonderful? Getting to look back at the amazing year we had inside TheCR Network. Our members are incredibly engaged (no outdated 90-9-1 rule here!) and have collaborated on some pretty cool projects this year.

I’m excited to share our annual Year in Review infographic for 2017. I couldn’t be happier to be heading into 2018 with the dedicated community leaders in TheCR Network.

TheCRnetwork YearEnd Infographic 2017

 

Want to leverage the resources, tools and experts in TheCR Network in the new year? Join now!

Three Reasons You Should Attend TheCR Connect

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Our annual community management workshop – TheCR Connect –  is coming up soon. TheCR team is busy planning another amazing event – and time is running out for you to join us.

We know you have lots of ways to spend your budget – and that your time is at a premium. If you’re still on the fence about attending Connect here are three reasons why it’s a great decision.

  1. The Agenda

    Unlike some events you will not be just sitting in a seat listening to “experts” talk at you. From interactive panels on fixing trust and community careers to small group roundtables covering launching advocacy programs, choosing a community platform, community migration, using social learning concepts to onboard new employees and more you’ll be an active participant in the action. Add in lighting talks from community practitioners on cracking the engagement code and telling your community story, deep dives into the Future of Community with Rachel Happe and plenty of time for networking and you’ll walk away enthusiastic and inspired.

  2. The People

    At Connect you’ll never struggle to make small talk, or walk into a room and think “Ugh, who will I talk to?!” From thoughtful cohort groups to intended participant collisions we make sure that you find the people that can help you – and that your expertise is highlighted. We want you to come to Connect with real community challenges to solve – and we’ll help you meet the people that have faced down those problems already and can offer advice, strategies and solutions. Plus we’ve got two great parties planned (signature cocktails, anyone!?)

  3. The Take-Aways

    If you’re interested in maybe taking some notes and going back to your team and saying, “Eh, it was fine…” Connect is NOT the event for you. Our goal is to have you walk away with new community connections, big ideas for ways to improve your work and real, tactical plans for immediate implementation.  Our deep dive community workshops include sessions on Community ROI, Community Strategy and Rewards & Recognition (Gamification) that will not only get you thinking, but help you plan for the future of your community.

Registration closes on September 8th – don’t miss your chance to attend TheCR Connect 2017. 

Learn more or register now. 

 

Do you have an award-worthy community program?

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TheCR Connect Awards Community Management

Seeing the work of hundreds of innovative and creative community professionals is one of the biggest perks of my job here at TheCR. Not a day goes by when I don’t say, “Wow – that’s awesome!” in response to something a member tells me.

Last year we launched a recognition program to acknowledge and reward the outstanding community work we see every day. I was delighted to present nine members of TheCR Network with awards that recognized their unique strengths and contributions to community management.

THECR AWARDS 2016_BANNER

 

This year TheCR Connect awards are evolving into a more formal recognition process. Since there is no way we can stay on top of all the amazing work that our members do, we’re opening up the process and encouraging members to submit award-worthy community work in four categories: Best Design Element, Winning Welcome Wagon, Best Reward and Recognition Program and Outstanding Community ROI. An additional award – The Community MVP will be awarded by nominations from community peers.

You can learn more about each award – and more about the recognition process here. Submissions and nominations are being accepted from April 25, 201717 until June 30th, 2017 at midnight PT.

I can’t wait to see what innovative community work our members submit – and to see the peer nominations for Community MVP!

Community Management Limericks

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I’m just going to say it: The State of Community Management 2017 survey closes this Friday. By the time you read this there will be less than 72 hours to contribute to the industry’s leading community research. If you sleep eight hours a night, that’s only 56 hours! Subtract time for eating, hitting the gym, working, tweeting, being stuck in traffic, and feeding your cat/dog/fish/iguana and there are really only a few hours left! To say ‘thank you’, our team has written these very serious community management poems for your enjoyment:

Assess your Community Management Maturity

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Eight years. The Community Roundtable has been doing its annual research on the landscape of community management for close to a decade.

We have learned a lot in that time and this research has contributed to the discipline by:

  • Consolidating and determining standard practices within community management, making it less of a mystery and more predictable
  • Documenting the complexity of doing community management well, while at the same time providing a structure that helps people understand it
  • Emphasizing the need to take a strategic, intentional and proactive approach to efficiently build communities
  • Highlighting the practices that correlate with success; practices like building roadmaps, advocacy programs, welcome processes and more
  • Defining the strategic value of community, culminating in a standard community ROI model

Just in the last year, we’ve made huge strides in adding financial and analytic rigor to the discipline – and just in time, because executives are paying attention. With strategic attention comes more scrutiny and the need to prove that communities return meaningful results while at the same time requiring education about how to make these programs successful – and the investment required to do so.

There has never been a better time to participate in our State of Community Management research.

By simply participating you will get three important benefits:

  1. Ideas about what is important to successful community management
  2. Scores for each competency in the Community Maturity Model that will help you prioritize projects and compare your progress against the research
  3. Your current community ROI

We’ll also throw in a gift card for coffee to thank you for your time, as it is more than your average online survey and will take you about 30 minutes.

Please consider helping us make this year the best year yet for our research.

Also, please consider sharing the survey with your peers who run communities or community programs: https://the.cr/socm2017survey

Announcing TheCR’s 2017 Member Advisory Board

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TheCR Member Advisory aBoardAt The Community Roundtable, we try to practice what we preach and lead by example. Our business model relies heavily on building relationships, which in financial terms means we are constantly focused on generating more value for our stakeholders – friends, guest experts, members, clients, team members – than they contribute. We believe this is how generative and compounding business models work.

Because of this approach to running a business, we’ve always been customer- and value-focused first and revenue-focused second, although we also believe in a sound, sustainable financial model.

Eight years in, we’ve benefited enormously from this approach. One of the outcomes of a relationship-first approach is that we’ve had very few contentious conversations with any of our constituents. Building great relationships is wonderful from a personal perspective, but it also returns amazing value to the business.

A reflection of that approach is our 2017 Member Advisory Board. We worked to create a board that is diverse, both personally and professionally. They come from different sectors and include an ex-Marine, a former English professor and people from consulting, client and vendor organizations. They represent manufacturing, professional services, and software companies and all have storied community careers. Perhaps most importantly, they are all friends and supportive critics – helping us see more sharply what we have to offer and challenging us to do better.

We are incredibly honored to have these members of TheCR Network step up to advise us as we make choices about where to spend our resources and focus our efforts. They have already done so much to help us understand their needs and challenges by being open and honest with us.

2017 is already flying by and we look forward to flying even higher because Amy from EY, Carrie from Talk Social to Me, Chris from ESRI, Christopher from Knowledge Architecture, Claire from Jive, J.J. from CA Technologies, Lori from Steelcase, and Monique from Oracle are in our corner.

member advisory board

Championing Community Management at SXSW 2017

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By friend of TheCR Kate Baucherel, Co-Founder, ambix.io

sxswAt the 2016 South by South West Interactive Festival’s Community Management meetup, professionals from across the world agreed that our discipline needs greater prominence at SXSW 2017. Sessions tagged as “community” in 2016 were often a heartwarming part of SXgood, not showcases of best practice and cutting edge application for business success. Frustrated Community Management professionals vowed to change this for next year.

Following discussions with the SXSW organisers themselves, we are appealing for all community professionals who are submitting an idea to the Panel Picker to do one simple thing:

Tag your proposal with Community Management.

There are Community Management panel ideas emerging from thought leaders, community professionals, and household name enterprises. The Community Roundtable is also helping its members with submissions to deliver wide-ranging Community Management case studies, best practice, research and, thought leadership.

The Panel Picker process

The Panel Picker opens on 28th June, so this is the time to start planning! Visit the SXSW website to familiarise yourself with the Panel Picker process and requirements. When submitting a panel proposal you will select the stream that your panel submission applies to (branding, content etc), and have the option of adding three tags to give greater context to your talk. Make one of these Community Management, with uppercase C and M. No variations, no substitutions! By using a consistent tag across all panels proposed by community professionals, we can give delegates a clear picture of the breadth of material available when Interactive rolls around next March.

How SxSW handles duplicate content

Where a number of panels are proposed with similar content, the organisers will either select the strongest, or ask several proposers to work together. To deliver a strong Community Management program, talk to your fellow managers: see who else is submitting, what topics are being covered, and whether you can collaborate, or develop a different panel. We have a wealth of experience between us, and it would be a shame to waste any of it.

Food for thought

Could you showcase your expertise in any of the following areas?

  • Delivering business goals effectively
  • Innovation through collaboration
  • How Community Managers influence strategy
  • Community is the responsive front line of your brand
  • Return on Investment
  • Managing customer sentiment: controlling the conversation
  • Branding: Active community management builds loyalty
  • Content distribution and feedback – reconstructed
  • Lessons from consumer communities
  • Planning your intranet
  • Starting out on the right foot: community creation
  • Developing and leading a maturing community.
  • How Community management can fix your social strategy
  • Delivering Community Return on Investment
  • SXgood: community for nonprofits
  • Convergence: film promotion via community
  • Convergence: music fan community management

How to get involved

If you think you’d like to contribute to Community Management programming at SXSW 2017, get in touch as soon as possible. We are trying to reduce the risk of panel duplication, cover a wide range of topics, and put professionals together to share their expertise. Members of The Community Roundtable should email Amy Turner and independent Community professionals email Kate Baucherel.