The Community Roundtable

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CCC Fun Fact #6: Where’s the money? Managing a community team or a large community?

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By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research, The Community Roundtable

Want to make more money as a community professional? It’s the size of the team you lead, not the community you manage, that seems to make the biggest difference in community manager compensation.

The data from the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 report show that the number of direct reports a community professional has correlates with his or her salary. Growing the size of the community, however, showed no such sign. Community managers in large communities were no more likely to be paid handsomely than those in smaller communities, even when you take use case into account.

There are some logical explanations for this – first, those who manage staff are far more likely to be a Director of Community or Community Strategist, and thus can expect higher pay. It may also be true that working for a large community can mean working as one of a number of community professionals on staff – which reduces your community responsibility.

But ultimately, it may come down to traditional human resources values. Managing people in an organization is historically rewarded in organizations. Managing large communities is less common, relatively new, and has few parallels elsewhere in the organization.

CCC 2015 Fun Fact - Fact #6

Looking at taking a job managing a large community? It’s worth keeping in mind that in order to get the money you deserve, you may have to educate those doing the hiring. Download our summary report here or take the Community Careers and Compensation survey and get the full report for free!

Want to build your management skills in community? TheCR Network is the go-to place for professional development – a peer network of hundreds of top community professionals, exclusive programs and personalized service to help you grow your community and career. Join today!

 

CCC 2015 Fun Fact #4: Community strategy is YOUR job

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By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research, The Community Roundtable

Want to send your boss through the roof in under five seconds? Tell them these four words.

“It’s not my job.”

Want to send your top talent out the door as fast as their resume can carry them? That might take five.

“It’s not up to you.”

Legend has it that in the old hierarchical world of the workplace, bosses decided, workers implemented and the world spun quietly on its axis. Whether you believe that or not, in 2015-2016, it doesn’t hold true in community. Data from the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 report shows that from the lowest rung to the highest on the community career ladder, community professionals value their skills in setting and implementing community strategy.

Our survey found that community strategy development was the most valued skill in every community-related role we examined in the survey. And not by a small margin.

This has powerful implications for leaders of community programs. Directors of community should expect that their community specialists, managers and strategists want and need to have a say in defining and implementing community strategy. Hiring managers need to seek out people they think can couple that desire for strategic input with the skills to develop, implement and review. For community managers, the shared power comes with shared responsibility. New hires should expect that they will  be held accountable for their participation in community strategy development.

Hierarchical chains of command still exist in workplaces, but they are shrinking in number. And in communities, having your entire team on board with your strategy is a critical precursor to community success.

community strategy

Want to learn more about the salaries, roles and career opportunities for community management professionals? The Community Careers and Compensation 2015 summary report is available now – and to get the full report, take the CCC 2015 survey at https://the.cr/ccc2015survey or join TheCR Network, our practitioners’ network for community professionals.

The three career paths of the community professional

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By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research, The Community Roundtable

One of the target goals that we had for the Community Careers and Compensation survey in 2015 was to be able to shed more light on the skills of community. That’s why we undertook a significant review and revision of the Community Skills Framework, growing it from 37 to 50 skills overall. We also changed the lens for how we looked at those skills. In 2014, we wanted to know if you had a skill and/or responsibility for that skill in your role. This year, we asked how much value each skill had to you.

The difference is subtle but significant. You may have a skill. You may even be responsible for using it. But you may think it’s not really valuable for your community role. For example, a Director of Community may know how to moderate. They may even have titular responsibility for moderation in the community (because they oversee moderators). But the ability to moderate is not something they might use on a daily basis.

Looking at the skills framework in this way, we saw something interesting happen. We started to see a connection between some of the skills people valued most and their compensation.

Take business skills. Those who said business skills had the greatest value for them in their role earned an average of over $97,000 per year, compared with our overall average of just under $85,000. Those who scored strategic skills highly benefitted, too. They earned an average of about $91,000 – a slight but noticeable bump over the overall average. Both of those results fall into the “noteworthy but not surprising” category: those who most highly valued business skills were more likely to be Directors of Community, and those who valued strategy were more likely to be community strategists (and make higher salaries in those roles.)

But a third set of skills also generated value. Those who valued technical skills in their jobs earned a premium over the average as well, but they weren’t any more likely to be higher up the org chart. Our tech specialists parlayed their skills to an average salary of over $92,000.*

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What does it all mean? It highlights three types of career paths for community professionals.

  • An upward path – where a community manager sharpens their business skills and moves into a Director of Community role overseeing a community program, for example.
  • An outward path – where a community manager focuses on a specialty and builds that out across a number of communities as a community strategist, for example.
  • A skill-based path – where a community manager parlays an interest in a specific (often technical) skill into a more important role, whether or not they move up the organizational chart.

One reason this technical path exists is the nature of technical skills. Unlike content skills, which are more-or-less universally beneficial to community team members, you don’t need everyone on your team to be understand data manipulation, API creation or UX design. But having one team member with those skills is a huge benefit, and not always easy to find or keep.

Needed + in demand = more highly paid.

That’s great news for community professionals. We don’t just see a single way up the career ladder, we see three possible options that allow people with different strengths to grow and succeed.

And that can pay great dividends for communities in the long run, giving them opportunities to retain a wider range of talent.

*-These numbers have been updated with new data we have received since the data deadline for the CCC report. The original numbers were $96,000 for business skills, $90,000 for strategic and $89,000 for technical skills. 

Want to learn more about the skills that matter for community professionals and the career opportunities that await. The full Community Careers and Compensation report is only available to survey participants and members of TheCR Network, our network of community professionals. Take the survey at https://the.cr/ccc2015survey, or learn more about the exclusive programming and benefits of TheCR Network!

Taking your next steps in a community career

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By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research, The Community Roundtable

In D.C., there is something known as “the Washington Read.” When a new book comes out, you flip straight to the index and see if you were mentioned (for good or bad). The closest equivalent in TheCR world is in the Community Careers and Compensation report, where people flip to the salary chart and say, “How do I stack up?” Then they look at the upper tiers and add, “…And how do I get there???”

There’s no magic bullet – but the good news is there is evidence that you can get there.

The average community professional in the CCC 2015 survey has a dozen or more years of work experience and more than five years of community management work – but just a bit over two years in their current job. For Community Strategists and Directors of Community, the experience numbers grow, but the time in current role doesn’t change much. What’s that mean? That most community professionals are on their second or third role – and improving their salaries as they gain experience.

CCC_FunFact2_2015

How are they finding these jobs? Generally, not through external ads. Turns out only about 13 percent of Directors of Community got their jobs from an external ad. Two-thirds said they either defined their own director role or were approached by the hiring manager directly. So make those connections, work those networks, and be entrepreneurial about your opportunities.

It’s worth it – and turns out it’s possible, too.

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Want to get started enriching your community career? Check out the training options for community professionals in TheCR Academy!

CCC 2015 Fun fact #1: Online communities are everywhere – a (mostly) good thing!

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By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research, The Community Roundtable

Online communities are sort of like chameleons. When they are fully integrated, they can blend into whatever scene they’re in. It’s perhaps the greatest strength of community approaches – they can work in any part of an organization, serve any of a number of purposes, and work with members at any level.

Labord's_chameleon_1And the numbers from the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 report back it up.

Community programs reside in departments from HR to IT to marketing, with 1-in-7 communities serving as their own department. Ideally, that means that community programs are fitting in where it is most appropriate for the organization. In about a quarter of cases, they sit in other areas – departments such as innovation and business advancement that focus on the future of the organization.

In general, we see this as a very good thing, with a couple of caveats. First is a structural one. Because communities are relatively new in many organizations, there may not be clear best practices and lines of communication established for them with the rest of the business. But because they can fit anywhere in an organization, best practices for establishing and connecting community programs with the rest of the organization are not necessarily easy to come by.

Second, there is the risk that communities are vulnerable to changes in leadership. Reporting to a marketing VP who understands community can be a great opportunity. If that VP is replaced by someone without community in their background, the program may be vulnerable and it falls to the community team leadership to make the case upward when there aren’t always a lot of comparable programs to highlight. That’s why community practitioners need to have an eye out always for resources that can be used to educate stakeholders. We hope our research is on your short list.

While communities’ home bases may be scattered throughout organizations, though, there are more signs than ever that communities are seen as integral to company strategies. One piece of evidence is in reporting structures. We asked Directors of Community to whom they reported, and more than 80 percent of them reported to VPs, Senior VPs, or C-level executives. Just under half reported straight to the C-suite. Data like this, and the growing number of communities that have their budgets approved by upper management, demonstrate that in many organizations, communities have the attention of top-level executives, a powerful force for moving communities forward and improving engagement.
CCC_FunFact1_2015

Where should your community department fit in your organization? It depends on your goals – but ensuring the community and its value are understood across the organization is a critical – and unending – need for any community team.

Get more data on the roles, skills and salaries of community professionals by downloading the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 Summary. better yet, take the survey and receive the full report for free – with more details about the roles and skills of community professionals that can make a difference for your community – and your own career.

Sweating the details: TheCR community research process

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By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research, The Community Roundtable

What goes into the community research that The Community Roundtable does in the field of community management? Data, collaboration and experience.

It’s an exciting day for me. Today I shipped out the first draft of the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 reports (yes, there are two versions) to the graphic designer to get the layout done. That will be followed by more edits, more layout tweaks and more edits after that, leading up to the final report release in the middle of next month.

I’ve written before about the cooperative effort that goes into creating the questions for each of our core research offerings. But for those of you who took the time to complete the survey, it may seem like things get awfully quiet between the survey period and the release. And you’re right. It gets quiet – like library or research lab quiet.

Once the data is in and the survey period closes, we have a lot of data to go through. For the CCC, as an example, we end up with about 65,000 individual data points to review, and formulas to write off those bits of information. For the State of Community Management, the number is even higher. Data is entered, formulas are written, and then we do through the painful process of cleaning. That means the members of the research team begin going through line by line looking for red herrings, typos, misinterpreted replies, and data in improper formats. These range from respondents who may feel that all 20,000 members of their external community should be counted as volunteers, to cultural differences, like using 1,5 versus 1.5 for headcount in a community team.

Jillian Bejtlich from our team is our spreadsheet wiz, and we go through the data, the myriad ways we can parse it to test hypotheses, find patterns and answer questions. Rachel Happe, of course, joins the fray as we go through, and depending on the project, other members of the team take a look as well. We evaluate, look for those “Aha!” moments, and over a period of days and weeks, discussions and debates, settle on tentative key findings for the report.

The data supporting those key findings – and every finding has supporting data – are checked and rechecked, and the findings and their supporting evidence are presented to the team for approval. I love and hate this part, because already a lot of work has gone into it, and the challenging and wordsmithing are both valuable and a discussion of how ugly my baby is.

Key findings in place, we bring in additional data (if there is any), clean and recheck the data to make sure nothing new and weird has developed, and we begin to build the major graphics for the report. Each report has a handful of graphics we know will be central to the document – in the SOCM, it’s engagement profiles and variations on the Community Maturity Model. In the CCC, it’s the salary table and the Community Skills Framework. The design for these graphics begins even before we have data in place, and continues as data comes in, to make sure that the end graphics tell an effective story.

From there, we build out the boilerplate data sections – those we know we are going to have in each SOCM or CCC. It’s the same process. Examine, analyze, compare, lay out, write copy, and it gets repeated for each element. While we go through this, we are continuing to build two lists – one of data points that deserve further exploration and one of data points that can be used in other projects – since after all, not every piece of data and every observation can fit in a single report. We also make sure the information we gather is making it into other aspects of our work – questions we can answer on TheCR blog in the upcoming months, webinars and calls we can plan, and elements we can add to our online training and other assets. We also use this information in less formal ways – when you ask us a question on Facebook or Twitter, we are drawing from our experience and knowledge of the data – not just hypothesizing based on anecdote. Members of TheCR Network, too, are able to take advantage of our insights and those of their peers as they dig into the thorny issues of community.

From there, we fall into a more traditional editorial process. Write. Edit. Rewrite. Approve graphics. Rewrite. Edit. And so on. In the end, we end up with reports full of data and analysis that can answer your questions and help you plan your community or career strategy. And a whole lot more.

It’s a lot of work, but it’s a joy to do. And none of it would be possible without the input of hundreds of community management professionals like you – who take the time, share their data and help us create a whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Communities are complex organisms, and there are no magic formulas – many of us have learned that through experience.  There’s also no one piece of research that will answer every question. But bit by bit, together we’ve created a body of work that can guide communities new and old, large and small, on the road to success.

Oh – and keep an eye out for the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 summary report next month. I can’t wait for you to meet our newest baby.

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The 11 Most Valuable Community Management Skills

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Looking broadly, it’s exciting to see that community professionals are an experienced, mobile group that have had the opportunities to move up the community career ladder. Community professionals in the survey have an average of 15 years of experience, with five of them specifically in community. Also striking, though, is that almost ¾ of those surveyed so far have been in their current roles for three years or less.

We’re also getting insights into where community professionals sit in their organizations – where they report and who reports to them. And we are seeing trends in compensation – whether those reporting patterns and responsibilities are translating as you might expect into higher pay and better opportunities.

And this year, we have asked people to rank the skills most valuable for their current jobs from the 50 skills in the Community Skills Framework. Think community folks have a lot on their plate? So far, survey participants have ranked 42 of the 50 skills over 3.0 in importance on a scale of 1 to 5. And 11 community management skills have scored over 4.0. In no particular order, they are:

• Listening and Analyzing
• Promoting Productive Behaviors
• Empathy and Member Support
• Member Advocacy
• Community Strategy Development
• Measurement, Benchmarking and Reporting
• Evaluating Engagement Techniques
• Community Advocacy and Promotion
• Communication Planning
• Writing
• Data Collection and Analysis

Full definitions of these skills are included in the CCC survey.

There are variations, certainly, in skill rankings among roles and use cases, and there are a few 3.9’s I didn’t include here. But even just this set of 11 demonstrates the broad challenges of being a community professional. Not surprisingly, almost all of the 11 also rank highest as the skills in which community professionals most want training.

This data is a good start and provides a great base for the research. But we still want as many people as possible to complete the survey – which can allow us to really get into industries, use cases and more in unprecedented ways. Are media or nonprofit communities different from business and retail? Do they emphasize different skills? What’s the pay gap?

We can’t answer these questions without you. We won’t share your personal data with anyone, and if you’ve got particular concerns, we can work with you. (See the survey and this blog post for more on our data pledge.)

The Community Skills Framework 2015

Want to improve your own skill set? TheCR Academy offers online courses in Internal and External Community Management Fundamental and Community Program Essentials. Learn more at training.communityroundtable.com