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Connecting Through Community

February 3, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Our great content experiment continues in February (read more about Janaury here) with a month-long focus on connecting through community. At first glance the idea of connecting through community is obvious – as a community manager one of your main goals might be to connect with members, connect members to each other or connect member to information or resources that they need. And indeed, each of those activities can be a full time job in its own right. Over the next four weeks we’ll take a look at each of those ways of connecting, but we’re going to dig deeper as well.

For many community managers there is more “connecting the dots” than an outsider would ever imagine. Many of you struggle to connect the value of community management to tangible ROI and business results. Others wish for a way to connect with like-minded peers who share their purpose. So often a community manager is an island in an organization that might not believe in the power of good community management or worse yet, struggle against a divided executive team – one that wants a successful community or social program without understanding the real work that goes into making it thrive.

Over the next month we’ll share content focused on all aspects of “connecting” in the community world from member case studies to best practices and resources. We’re focusing on connecting people, ideas, and resources – with expert advice and some fun surprises thrown in. If you have any great resources that help you “connect,” please reach out – we’d love to hear from you!

Finally, in the spirit of connectedness, I want to share some of the online places you can catch up with us. Many people share with us that they are on the community journey, but don’t yet have the resources to be a member of the Network – and we understand. Here are a few places you can connect with us and our content:

Pinterest – We have several boards focused on different aspects of community, including a Reading List, Research, Infographics and our ever-growing list of TheCR Network Experts.

Slideshare – On our slideshare page you can find both full length and excerpts of popular presentations as well as selected research and related community documents.

Twitter – Twitter is definitely our most active channel online – we tweet all day, every (week) day and it’s the best place to follow along for news, information and commentary on what’s happening in the community world.

Facebook – Our Facebook page is a great place to connect with us if you’re looking for news, calls for participation in events and research and for more general stories at the intersection of community and human interest.

LinkedIn – Looking for great discussions, alerts about available community jobs and lots of like-minded community peers? You can connect with us – and other community leaders here.

Of course, this blog is a great way to stay connected to the happenings at TheCR. In the coming months we’ll continue to connect you to new research, news and even more content centered around community managers themselves, including new Faces of Community Management profiles and a monthly Community Manager Spotlight webinar. We’d love to connect with you – please find us at in the places above, or share the best way to connect in the comments below!

What We’re Up To

April 9, 2009 By Rachel Happe

sir-robin Eager to join us and be dubbed Sir Robin? While that might be a dubious distinction, we are looking for founding members who care deeply about pushing their community efforts forward, but also like to have a little fun along the way.

We’re looking for a few good members… but what’s in it for you?

Regular roundtable conversations. Join us, your peers in community management and social media strategy and select experts in thought-provoking roundtable sessions. We’re in the midst of building a schedule of calls and online chat sessions. We’ll kick off The Community Roundtable with calls every other week and build in more interactions as we grow.
Direct access. We’re committed to creating a robust and valuable community that’s also small enough to allow members to build solid relationships with one other. From an in-depth welcome interview to regular check ins with you to uncover current challenges, we will stay connected as you grow in community and social media.
One stop shop. Whether it’s a question you have or our top picks from the hundreds of blog posts we read, The Community Roundtable will be your hub of information and peer guidance on community management and social media strategy. We’ll also transcribe and summarize the roundtable calls so you can stay on top of what is discussed even if you can’t make every call.

The Offer. We’re currently offering fifty 2009 Founding Membership spots in The Community Roundtable for $750 per seat (or three seats for $2,000). Following our Founding Membership drive, membership will be $1,000 per seat (or three seats for $2,500).

Members in The Community Roundtable will have access to the following:

Online community. Discussion boards; content library with interviews, call recordings, case studies, and examples; profiles and networking; expert directory and reviews; vendor directory and reviews; reading list; and aggregation of the best blog content
In-depth welcome interview
Monthly programming themes
Two roundtables per month. A combination of experts, members, and solution providers (based on your requests)
Two expert online ‘office hours’ per month
Transcripts and summaries for all events
Peer matching. Based on similar industries, environments, needs, challenges, or experience
Quarterly reports. Highlighting hot topics, new content, and programming summaries
Annual report. state of the community, community survey findings, annual hot topics, and plans for the next year
Discounts on associated products, services, events, and content

If you’d like a seat at table, please sign up here and we’ll contact you to discuss your credentials.

Calling All Knights

April 9, 2009 By Rachel Happe

690px-king_arthur_and_the_knights_of_the_round_table-300x260 Social media and community are getting a lot of play these days. Depending on the day of the week, the person you are talking to and the phase of the moon, the term ‘community’ can mean any number of things.

Being a community professional can be a tough and an often isolated role. Just try explaining to a senior executive what Twitter is, right? It seems so powerful and yet the best of us have not figured out how to describe it succinctly. Try to that twenty times in one week and you might just feel a little crazy.

All the vendors, consultants and agencies are eager to help and offer great services, but the more hyped the space gets, the more options there are to evaluate. Sometimes you just have trouble convincing your boss that apologizing to a major customer publicly is a good idea, but what are the right words to use?

To that end, we are creating a peer network just for those of you managing communities and social media efforts. We believe your success depends on:

Your ability to share with your challenges in a private setting with other experienced professionals
Access to content focused on all of the issues you are facing
Regular interactions with a small group of specialists

The Community Roundtable will focus on monthly themes aligned with the eight operational elements we believe need to be managed in order to run successful communities and social media programs:

Strategy
Leadership
Culture
Community Management
Content & Programming
Policy & Governance
Tools
Measurement

We are passionate about helping people, making connections, and telling stories…and we both have a long history of managing communities, both on and offline. We love creating compelling content, bringing untold stories forward, drawing people out, and creating connections.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in joining, please sign up to learn more about membership. We are looking forward to a great adventure and want to invite you to join us at the table.

Jim & Rachel