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Throwback Thursday – Getting a Community Management Job

October 20, 2016 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, The Community RoundtableCommunity Skills Framework TheCR

Job hunting can always be stressful. Add to that the stress of finding a job in an emerging field like community management and your stress can double. No fear! We’ve compiled best practices for finding and getting a community job. We’re also highlighting the Community Skills Framework. The Community Skills Framework showcases the 50 skills essential to community management. You can use the Framework to access your strengths and identify places for growth!

This week’s #throwbackthursday focuses on the best practices for getting a community management job.

  • How Do I Find a Community Manager Job? – Community management is a profession of relationships – use your network to discover your next role. Most community jobs are not currently found through traditional job listings.
  • 50 Skills of Community Management – The Community Skills Framework represents the five skill families and top 50 skills that are required to build a successful community program.
  • How To Win That Community Manager Job – As organizations begin to increasingly recognize and reward the value of good community management the market for jobs has begun to heat up. While at any given moment there are literally dozens of interesting community jobs open around the country (and truly, the world) the competition for these roles is getting stiffer. How can you set yourself apart?
  • For TheCR Network Eyes Only: Community Careers and Development Group – Are you a member of TheCR Network? Check out this group inside TheCR Network where members share job postings, hiring advice and best practices for landing the community jobs of your dreams!

Want even more #throwbackthursday action? Check out all our throwback posts!

Advisory_Banner_July2016_5

Three Reasons You Should Register for Community Program Essentials

April 12, 2016 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, The Community RoundtableCCC_FunFact3_2015.png

As community management emerges as a true discipline and not just a job, community pros can start to think about their career path – and how to get from where they are to where they want to be. Our research has shown that investing in your community skill set is a surefire way to advance your career.

Ready to increase your skill set? Here are three reasons you should register for our Community Program Essentials course!

REASON #1 – YOU’LL GROW YOUR SKILLS

Our Community Program Essentials course will help you grow your community program management skills, and focuses on creating the strategic, operational and technical elements to make communities succeed within the larger organizational context. Our Essentials training explores the elements of making community a more powerful part of an organization and helps you learn to think strategically about your community.

REASON #2 – YOU CAN WORK AT YOUR OWN PACE

Our Spring Session of Community Program Essentials course is the best of both traditional and online learning. The training sessions will be a social learning experience that takes place in a private setting where participants will progress through the modules as a group. We’ll provide prompts and light facilitation in the group forums and host weekly office hours to help participants block time on their calendar to participate.

REASON #3 – BUSINESS, STRATEGIC AND TECHNICAL SKILLS ARE REWARDED – KA-CHING!

Community professionals who place high value on business, strategic and technical skills make more money than their peers. Strong business and strategic skills were more likely to be found among community strategists and directors – but technical skills were scattered across roles, suggesting a technical specialty is a way to increase earning without taking on managerial responsibilities. Improving your community programs skills is a great step toward achieving your community career goals.

The Spring Session of Community Program Essentials kicks off on April 26th and runs for eight weeks. Enrollment is limited for an intimate learning experience. Learn more or register now to get started!

register_now_button

 

 

CMGRs are Entry-Level? Not Anymore.

February 8, 2016 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, The Community Roundtable.

With the SOCM 2016 survey fully launched we have just one CCC fun fact left for you – and it’s probably something you’ve known for a while. CCC Fun Fact #8: Community management isn’t “entry-level” – the average community manager has more than 12 years of work experience including nearly five in community roles alone. 

I bet you’re reading this, shaking your head. Of course great community management takes experience, but so often we see community jobs advertised as “entry-level” for laughably little money. The 2014 Community Manager Salary Survey demonstrated clearly that community managers are hardly entry-level employees in their skills or their experience, and this year’s CCC research confirms that. The average community manager has more than a decade of work experience, with much of that in community management. Most of the community managers in this year’s survey aren’t in their first job — but they may be in a new one. Half of the respondents have held their current job for less than 2 years.

CCC Fun Fact #8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re looking to level up your community career the Community Skills Framework is a great place to start. SOCM2016_GetStarted_BadgeYou can identify your strengths and find growth opportunities that will help you advance your career – and maybe even get a raise!

Download the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 summary report now, or take the survey and get free access to the full report! 

If you love research like the CCC we’d love your help with our current research initiative – The State of Community Management. Take the survey now and you’ll get free access to the full report in May! 

CMAD 2016 – Unleash Your Inner Community Management Superhero

January 25, 2016 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Director of Marketing at The Community Roundtable

It’s no secret that we love community managers. We’ve sort of built our entire business around it! The truth is we not-so-secretly believe that every community professional has the ability to be a community management superhero. From defeating evil trolls to proving the strategic ROI of your community program you might as well be wearing a cape to work.

In honor of all the community professionals we love we put together a little look at some of the top skills that make a community pro, well – a pro. Happy CMAD (Community Manager Appreciation Day!) to all the community superheroes out there!

community management superhero

Looking for ways to boost your skill set? TheCR Network is an amazing training and education resource for community management professionals at every level.

50 Essential Skills in Community Management

December 21, 2015 By Jim Storer

community manager skillsWe’re going to take a break from our weekly series of facts from the Community Careers and Compensation report to review the 50 essential community manager skills from the Community Skills Framework™.

We updated the Community Skills Framework™ as a means to explore the value of 50 essential skills of community management. This is the second iteration of the framework, which was launched in 2014 as a set of 37 skills in 4 skill families. Reviewing the data from 2014 with members of TheCR Network, we recognized that we hadn’t tapped into the full family of business and strategic skills — which we separated into two families, and added a number of other skills that we noted were absent from the first edition of the framework.

In the Community Careers and Compensation Survey — we asked community management professionals to rank the skills that are most valuable to their role and surface those skills which carry the greatest value across all community roles, as well as those that are most critical within individual community roles and use cases.

We also see an opportunity to use the framework as:

• A structure for strategic planning

• A tool for online community manager training and professional development

The Community Skills Framework™ gives community leaders a way to better identify and understand skill gaps and opportunities for creating stronger teams

The 50 Essential Community Manager Skills

—ENGAGEMENT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS—

  • Listening & Analyzing
  • Response & Escalation
  • Moderation & Conflict Facilitation
  • Promoting Productive Behaviors
  • Empathy & Member Support
  • Facilitating Connections
  • New Member Recruitment
  • New Member Welcoming
  • Member Advocacy
  • Behavior Change & Gamification

—STRATEGIC COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS—

  • Community Strategy Development
  • Roadmap Development
  • Policy & Guideline Development
  • Needs & Competitive Analysis
  • Measurement, Benchmarking & Reporting
  • Trendspotting & Synthesizing
  • Consulting
  • Executive Coaching
  • Content Strategy Development
  • Evaluating Engagement Techniques

—BUSINESS COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS—

  • Program Management
  • Business Model Development
  • Budget & Financial Management
  • Team Hiring & Management
  • Contractor Hiring & Management
  • Selling, Influencing & Evangelizing
  • Community Advocacy & Promotion
  • Training Development & Delivery
  • Vendor Management
  • Governance Management

—CONTENT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS—

  • Communication Planning
  • Writing
  • Graphics & Design
  • Multimedia Production
  • Narrative Development
  • Editing
  • Curation
  • Program & Event Planning
  • Taxonomy & Tagging Management
  • SEO &/or Internal Search Optimization

—TECHNICAL COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT SKILLS—

  • Systems Administration & Configuration
  • Data Collection & Analysis
  • Tool Evaluation & Recommendation
  • Technical Support
  • Member Database Management
  • Platform Architecture & Integration
  • Technology Issue Resolution
  • Software & Application Programming
  • UX & Design
  • Algorithm Design & Data Manipulation

How do your community skills stack up against the list of essential community manager skills? Any areas you’d like to focus on for your personal growth as a community manager? What is your list of essential community manager skills?

Want to dig deeper into the essential community manager skills?

Check out our free Community 101: Models and Frameworks course to walk through the Community Skills Framework™. Use the worksheet included with the free course to document where you are and how you can level up your essential community manager skills.

Community Management Models and Frameworks Free Online Course

CCC Fun Fact #5: The demise of the lone wolf community manager?

December 15, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research, The Community Roundtable

It’s one of the unfortunate clichés of the history of community management – the image of an overworked, isolated, solo practitioner, a lone wolf community manager, working to keep the community moving forward while the rest of the organization spins unknowingly around him (or her).

But there are signs that times are changing.

Just 1-in-7 of those community professionals who completed the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 survey identified themselves as “lone wolves,” the only resource in their community program. And more than half of the respondents said there were 2 or more full-time community managers on staff in their organization.

It’s a remarkable statistic, and it deserves a couple of small asterisks. First, there is likely some self-selection here, as busy “lone wolves” might not have taken the time to complete the survey. Second, it should be pointed out that even if lone wolves are becoming less common in organizations, the idea of one community manager per community is still prevalent. The State of Community Management report, which looked at individual communities, as opposed to community programs, found that 7-in-10 communities had one full- or part-time community manager in charge.

 

 Lone Wolf Community Manager

What should you make of this? That more and more organizations are seeing the opportunity in having the community team in place to ensure communities can take an important role in the organization. There’s still work to be done – but it’s a promising sign. And for now it looks like maybe the lone wolf community manager is going extinct.

See the community staffing data now by visiting communityroundtable.com/ccc2015 to download the Executive Summary, or contribute your data to the ongoing research and get the full report for free. Visit the.cr/ccc2015survey now!

Four key takeaways from The Community Careers and Compensation 2015 report

November 12, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

CCC2015_Cover_ShadowTiltWhat are the most valuable skills for a community manager? What is the career path? And how much can one make? Those are among the key questions being answered in the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 report, which we released today at The Community Roundtable.

It’s the second year we have done the survey –called the Community Manager Salary Survey in 2014 – and more than just the name changed for this year. We expanded the skills in the Community Skills Framework, introduced questions about where community and community professionals sit in the organization, and looked more closely at the training needs of community professionals.

So what did we find?

Key finding #1: Strategy is everyone’s job.

Community strategy development was the most valued skill of the 50 we asked about in the CCC survey, for each of the three job roles we examined in detail – community manager, community strategist and Director of Community. It was also the highest-value skill among the full survey population.

What it means: Your team sees the value in being a part of the strategic plan. You should, too. Treating strategy as a thing handed down to your managers makes them less effective – and cripples your community management.

Key finding #2: Business, strategic and technical skills are rewarded.

We split up business and strategic skills in this year’s survey, and added – and it shed some new light. Community professionals who placed high value on business, strategic and technical skills made more money than their peers. Strong business and strategic skills were more likely to be found among community strategists and directors – but technical skills were scattered across roles, suggesting a technical specialty is a way to increase earning without taking on managerial responsibilities.

What it means: Three possible growth routes for community managers – up the ladder to Director, out to a wider audience as a Strategist, or deeper into a skillset in any number of specialized roles like community architect, community data specialist or UX expert.

Key finding #3: Community pros are “movers and shakers.”

Community professionals are taking advantage of new opportunities to improve their salary and role. While 60% had four or more years of community experience, nearly ¾ had worked in their current role for three years or less. And more than half of those we surveyed with over five years community experience were able to make more than $100,000 per year.

What it means: Successful community professionals get rewarded for their efforts – and networks play an important role in building bridges to new opportunities.

Key finding #4: Communities are everywhere. Communities can be found throughout organizations to serve a wide variety of goals. One sign of their growing credibility – more than 80% of Directors of Community report to vice presidents or C-suite executives. But communities’ flexibility can be a challenge – because they fit everywhere, they can be marginalized or misunderstood because they don’t fit neatly into a department or org chart.

What it means: Communication is critical – those outside the community ecosystem may have limited or incorrect information about what you do, and there’s no textbook definition of where communities fit.

Salaries are strong – and positive signs for teams.

Salaries for community professionals are again strong – ranging from an average of about $55,000 for community specialists to $70,000 for community managers, $100,000 for community strategists and $113,000 for Directors of Community. Years of experience and the number of direct reports correlated with higher salaries, and external communities tended to pay less.

And there was another striking thing about this year’s sample. Few of them worked alone. Only about 1-in-7 said they were truly “lone wolf” community managers – working as the only person in their organization on community. Community team size averages ranged from four full-timers for internal communities to five for external and seven for communities with both internal and external facets – and overall, 56 percent of those surveyed said there were two or more full-time people in their community team.

These numbers just scratch the surface of the report, which is being released in two forms – as a 20-page summary for the general public, and a full report that looks in depth at the roles and skills of community for TheCR Network members and those who contributed their data to the survey.

To get the summary report – click here!

To get the full report, you can complete the 10-minute survey now at https://the.cr/ccc2015survey. (If you took the survey this year check your inbox for the download link!)

We’ll also be digging into the data in blog posts over the coming weeks. Watch this space for that – and download the report for further exploration.

 

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