community engagement Archives

The Value of Community Management: Reviewing the SOCM 2013

February 16, 2016 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training, The Community Roundtable

The value of The State of Community Management in 2011 and 2012 was to give definition to the competencies and qualities of communities. By 2013, we were ready to shift the focus of the research to something different but equally game changing – quantifying what community management looks like.

The State of Community Management 2013 report was our landmark first effort to apply a quantitative lens to what had been considered the “art” of community. Our first survey and subsequent report explored community data in four general areas: community management, community program, community demographics and community profiles (use case, budge, management resources, etc.).

Community leaders in 2013 saw themselves at the vanguard of organizational change – 55% described their organizations as “innovators” and 43% said their organization was “fully networked.” But even taking into account the relatively advanced maturity of this group, the findings broke down some long-held myths about community.

Respondents outlined a community management role that was more complex, and required more experience in organizational communication and less technical acumen than traditionally assumed.

Respondents highlighted the inherent tension in a role that bridged internal and external audiences, and the stresses that created, especially in large communities with few resources.

Respondents began to define the standard elements of community and those more common in communities that could measure their value – highlighting for the first time the power of new member programs, advocate recognition programs and regular community member input in decisions affecting the community.

The responses also highlighted the key metrics of community – and the recognition that traditional social media metrics didn’t apply well to measuring community programs’ success.

And perhaps most notably – the report provided critical quantitative evidence that the “90-9-1” rule was a flawed model. Rather than 90% lurkers, 9% contributors and 1% content creators, the report found even average communities averaged 55% lurkers, 30% contributors and 15% creators.

The 2013 report set the standard for our ensuing research, which has continued to get beneath the surface of what community management looks like and the power of communities to drive behavior change.

This post is part of a series on the history and findings of the State of Community Management reports. The survey period for the State of Community Management 2016 is open now, at https://the.cr/socm2016survey. Participants receive their own community maturity report for their time – and your next coffee is on us!

New member programs matter

August 10, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research and Content, The Community Roundtable

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

I try not to take too many words of wisdom from old shampoo commercials, but that Head and Shoulders Shampoo tag line does resonate for me when we think about communities. Joining a community is a major step for a member. In external communities, it often means they have an issue about which they need to learn – or a resolution. In internal communities, it can mean something as basic as a new job or promotion that brings them into the community.

Regardless, joining the community marks the moment when they have to walk into the room and say hello.

How do you think they feel when no one even notices?

Bottom line – the research backs up what intuition tells us. Communities that create new member programs to get members settled, help them understand expected behaviors and navigate the community have higher levels of engagement than those that just leave the front door open for people to come in.

Another piece of this we should note – and will write about more later. When building out your new member program, think about making the most human connection possible. Program elements that feature real people having real conversations have a greater impact on engagement than handing out a new member guide or automated welcome message.

But if you’ve taken time to create a community – the research shows, it’s worth taking time to give new members the best possible first impression.

The most popular data types in the State of Community Management

June 8, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Having just enjoyed (survived?) my first season writing and editing for the State of Community Management 2015, one of the most interesting parts of the post-release followup is actually seeing what pieces resonate with people. They seem to fall into three categories.

The Key Indicators Data

No shockers here. It’s my first time at this rodeo, but there were data that I knew would generate interest in the research – and did, including our look at community engagement profiles. The engagement profile data is like the SAT for community managers. It’s an easy way to compare your community performance with others near and far – even though it’s a stat that can be prone to misinterpretation depending on how you use it.

One thing we worked on for this report was comparisons of how the data changed with different use cases. One piece of the SOCM I enjoyed writing was the discussion of what including inactive users does to the engagement profiles of internal and external communities. The shift in the numbers depending on whether you count inactives (those who don’t even log in) or not shifts numbers markedly, and depending on your community use case it can clarify or obfuscate your “real” engagement. Interestingly, with inactives excluded, the engagement profiles of internal and external communities differed less than you might think.

The Journey Data

The old saw “Where you stand depends on where you sit” might need an addendum – “…and how long you have been there!” There is a series of data in the SOCM that younger community managers may not fully appreciate, but those who have been working in the space for a long time love – data I think of as “journey data.” They’re things like the percentage of communities that have budgets approved by or report to the C-suite.

It’s data that newer community professionals can easily dismiss, but for some of our more seasoned colleagues, it’s a reminder of how far we have come in connecting communities to business objectives. Executives may not understand community in many cases, but awareness, responsibility and engagement are improving.

The Now Data

These are the correlations that can drive actionable ideas, and I don’t have a favorite in this group, because they vary for any community. Looking for things to get new members engaged? There are a lot of things you can do – and there is data to back up the ideas. Feel like you need to get a handle on your strategy, create a roadmap, build that crisis plan to get your community to the next level? There’s data there to back up that assertion.

There’s also data that demonstrate the work we need to do in the community space. Too many communities have a strategy, but no resourced roadmap to get there. That’s like saying you want to move to Mars, but have no idea where it is in the sky and/or no rocket to get there. We obsess about ROI but at the end of the day most of us haven’t figured out how to measure it for our communities. These aren’t easy problems to solve, but each year, we get more data with stories behind them that make us all a bit smarter about solutions. I love hearing people say we’ve given them data that helps them move forward. Research is at the core of what we do – it transforms good ideas into sensible strategies.

Every year, we are honored to have so many people say that SOCM release day is one of their favorite days of the year. We hope you’ll share the stories of the value it provides for your work, and take part in our research to help inform community programs, their members, their professionals and their stakeholders.

The State of Community Management 2015 is an indispensable resource for community professionals seeking to understand their communities, and the State of Community Management survey can provide you insights and scoring of your community maturity. Download the report and take the survey!

The Business Model of Engagement

April 8, 2015 By Rachel Happe

By Rachel Happe, Principal/Co-Founder, The Community Roundtable

Engagement is a hot topic. For those of you who have heard me speak, you know I don’t think all engagement is created equally and I think there is far too little focus put on the purpose behind the engagement. You can have high engagement and very little value – look no further than the comments on a general news site. The other common problem is you have no engagement at all, which happens far too frequently inside organizations where people feel like the only outcome of sticking their head up is becoming a good target.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published by Rachel on LinkedIn. Follow her there, too!

What’s interesting is that in most cases we diagnose the issue as a tactical one – we aren’t providing good enough tools or spaces for people to engage in a constructive way.

The more sophisticated organizations realize that tools alone won’t solve the problem and have started investing in the operational systems that include community managers to ensure that when people engage they get real value from it. This is where I spend a lot of my time – helping companies understand how to build systems of engagement. But it’s not a complete solution either.

Ultimately, to sustain engagement, the business model needs to generate more value for each one of its stakeholder groups than they contribute. People need to feel like investing and contributing to the ecosystem will return disproportionate rewards to them. If it does, they will return to engage again and again and again.

The implications to business models are quite radical, however, and in a way most organizations cannot accept given their current leadership. This type of business model requires the organizations themselves to recognize revenue and value only after it has ensured each stakeholder group has gotten more value than they have contributed. Typically, organizations work to recognize as much value as possible, as soon as possible; when’s the last time you heard a sales executive say ‘We don’t get paid until our customers feel like they have won’? This mentality leaves stakeholders feeling combative, not collaborative – whether they are customers or employees – and that does not lead to organic and frequent engagement because those stakeholders don’t see the organization’s success and their success as the same thing.

However, those organizations that do have the patience to be generative – making their stakeholders success a key part of their own business model – tend to reap far more in the end because every one of their stakeholder groups has a vested interest in their success. To me, that is a #winning strategy.

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Need community management resources? Check out our online training courses, our community benchmarks and TheCR Network – a private community for community pros.