The Community Roundtable

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

The Value of Community Management: Reviewing the SOCM 2013

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

value of community management - socm 2013The 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.

value of community management - socm 2013 infographicRespondents 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.

SOCM2016_GetStarted_BadgeThe 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!

5 Things I Thought I Knew About Community Management…But Didn’t

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By Georgina Cannie, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable

community management January marks the 10th month of my work in community management. While it feels like no time at all, I have come to realize that it is an eternity in terms of knowledge acquisition in this space. As I closed the door on 2015, I couldn’t help but notice how incorrect my initial ideas on community management were. Here are the top 5 things I thought I knew about community, but didn’t.

Everyone Knows What Community Is

When I first learned the term “community management” I thought it was just me who had never heard of it. Turns out, I am not the oddball – most people have no idea what I’m talking about when I throw the term into the mix at cocktail parties. Sometimes I’ll get lucky and someone in marketing will recognize it as a buzz word. Ironically, community work can get a little lonely. Luckily, there is a blooming subset of those in-the-know who recognize community as the legitimate area of study that it is. While community management does not have the name recognition that say, Human Resources does, it’s a discipline with a growing following. Google “community management research” and see what I mean.

Community Management Sits in The HR or Marketing Department

…. well technically it does. Sometimes. But it also sits in the communications, customer service and management departments. So where does it actually belong? As it happens, there are a number of debates on this topic. In the end, community can wind up sitting in every possible department. But this inconsistency isn’t a point of strife among community managers – it’s an indication that community is multi-facetted, with dynamic applications and broad-reaching effectiveness. Talk about a chameleon! You can launch an equally valuable community for your hiring managers, as you can for your product developers – I double dare you.

Community Management Means Commenting on Chat Boards All Day

True and false. Some time inevitably needs to be spent commenting and posting in the community platform, but it’s a small fraction of a community manager’s time. The majority of work is poured into things like designing editorial calendars, establishing detailed playbooks, or organizing community-wide behavior change. TheCR’s annual research (SOCM2015) has shown that more and more community managers are focusing their resources on strategic planning. This means that rather than chit-chatting in forums, community managers throw their resources into creating initiatives that help achieve the high-level business goals of their organization. Ask your community manager how their network can help increase your bottom line, and I guarantee they will have a few ideas you hadn’t thought of.

Facebook is a Community

Same goes for Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and (insert your favorite social site here).

Social media channels are not communities, they are networks can enable community conversations, maybe. They are tools that allow an organization to get their message out to a broad group of people – which is not a bad thing. However, this disqualifies them as pure communities because they only constitute one-sided conversations, from the organization to the user. Social media fails to allow for a shared value between the organization and the users themselves. By comparison, a community platform is a space where the organization and user can contribute to a common goal. When setting up a space to communicate with your users, ask yourself what they get from participation. If your answer is “notifications about new products”, you don’t have a community.

Community Manager is the Top Position Available

When I started my journey into community work, I looked at the community manager job title as a light on a hill. I quickly realized there is much more space to grow beyond that. There are countless opportunities to graduate into Community Strategist or even Director of Community positions. (not to mention, the average salaries of these positions are nothing to turn your nose up at. Take a look at our Community Careers and Compensation research for more on that). There are community management consultants, folks working in internal communities, external communities – anything you can think of, there is a community manager doing it and getting paid to be there. You can easily make a career path (and a mortgage payment) out of community.

Did you have initial impressions of community that were disproven over time? Share them! I’d love to hear how the idea of community management has grown for you!

Digging in to 2016 at TheCR

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2016 Community Management ResolutionsBy Rachel Happe, The Community Roundtable.

Wow. 2016. A fresh Moleskine for me and a blank canvas for all of us.

While I am not big on resolutions I do use the new year as an opportunity to take stock of the previous year and declare my intentions for the new year. In particular this year, I am thinking a lot about routines and how to ensure that how I spend my days aligns with the things I value. I’ve made a lot of progress on this in past years so this year it’s working to incorporate a few last pieces of the puzzle and create more stability in the routines that work, now that my daughter is in elementary school and her routines are more predictable.

The Community Roundtable is in a similar place – over the past six years we have developed a set of services and offerings that help our clients grow professionally and scale in way that works for their organizations – critical to an emerging space where budgets need to be justified and different organizations adopt new approaches in different ways.

Looking back at last year, TheCR team accomplished some amazing things:

Our portfolio now serves a range of roles with a variety of research, training and advisory solutions

TheCR Product Portfolio

More importantly, our biggest measure of success – the growth and success of clients’ programs – is telling us we are on to something. As in my personal life, we are poised to take what we’ve learned and make those services more routine – and scaling them to serve more clients.

I am fired up about 2016.

For TheCR, that will mean:

  • More listening to understand how we can help our clients where they need it most
  • More collaboration with partners to deliver unique services to different industry verticals and to support more specific community use cases
  • Larger client projects to help deliver comprehensive solutions that deliver community management maturity efficiently
  • Extending our solutions to more of the individuals involved in community programs

For the market, I think 2016 will bring the following, based on both our research and client work:

  • Bigger budgets – and with them more scrutiny of strategic metrics & objectives
  • Expansion and integration of community conversations into more business processes – this is happening already but typically in very specific areas
  • Some large organizations will begin to train all managers and leaders on the principals of community engagement and management
  • More research and experiments in applying community management in specific industries
  • Growing demand for training – but not necessarily traditional training

Most of these trends are not new but rather a deepening of impact within organizations. What is new, is the investment we are seeing from industry groups, foundations, and B2B service organizations in applying community approaches in their domains. For me, that is a big marker of progress and impact – we have moved beyond both the hype and the following ambivalence and are now seeing a commitment to execute.

Time to roll up our sleeves.

Here’s to a productive and engaged 2016!

Three Different Kinds of Things to Be Thankful For – #thankitforward 2015

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By Georgina Cannie, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Thank you to Shannon for highlighting the #thankitforward series again this year!

My three picks:

1.) A Discipline to be Thankful for: Community Management#thankitforward
Before coming to work with the Community Roundtable, I spent what felt like eons studying academic pursuits. I truly adored going to school and I am grateful for the degrees I earned. But there is a funny thing that happens to you when you spend 6+ years in Liberal Arts and Social Science programs – rather than discovering precisely where you want to build your career, you get even more wrapped around the axle. My academic passions did not seem to add up to a pre-defined work role. The part-time jobs that paid my tuition did not fulfill me. It was a very frustrating feeling. Then almost by accident, I happened to trip across the field of community management. Although I was still learning all that community management entailed, I was in awe of the discipline that would utilize my strengths, inspire my interests and make a tangible difference in my world. I was hooked. I remember feeling overwhelming fortune and gratitude for having stumbled across this growing world of work.

2.) A Person to be Thankful for: Hillary
I’ll be frank – I am obsessed with Hillary. If you have not met her already, make it your New Year’s resolution to do so. When I joined the Community Roundtable, it was as Hillary’s Community Management Fellow. From my first day, she began teaching me how to be the best community manager possible. Her strategy to onboard me into the space was thoughtful and flawless. Her teaching approach was constructive yet kind. Her member interactions were honed and tactful. As I watched and learned from her, she simultaneously created spaces for me to take ownership of projects, voice my opinion and test my strengths. Although she was my direct leader, she empowered me to work with her (and the rest of the Community Roundtable) as a member of a team, rather than simply as an employee of a company. I have never before understood what a mentor relationship entails, but I am grateful to know it now.

3.) A Technology to be Thankful for: Slack
Slack is our team’s virtual office. As we all work remotely, we use the Slack app to check in with each other each day and stay connected. ….And I love it. Ok, ok, so it is not just Slack that I love – I love the team attitude that it reflects and supports. TheCR Team’s internal work is completely open and transparent. This means we all work on things together, constantly seek feedback and troubleshoot issues collectively. Sure it was a bit nerve wracking for the first few weeks, but I quickly grew incredibly grateful for the benefits. Some perks? It is very common for team members, who work in very different capacities than me, to weigh in on my work and offer me a unique insight; My work output is consistently at a higher value than when I work alone; I never spend more than an hour working in the wrong direction – there is always someone there to help reorient me if I ver off the road…. And you should see how small my daily email inbox is! It’s magic!

Succeeding at Complexity Is Deceptively Simple

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

Note: This post was originally posted on Rachel’s Linkedin page. 

Training for a marathon is complex. What makes you successful is simple. Establishing the behavior that makes you successful is hard.

While it wasn’t a marathon, over the long weekend I ran my first 10K. The run itself was anti-climatic. I felt good, I ran fine but not great and, most importantly, I finished. There was nothing notable in my performance. Except….

… except it represented four years of persistence, experimenting, starting, stopping, restarting and putting one foot in front of the other. Again and again.

Becoming a runner who can run 5+ miles is a complex behavior change. It’s not easy. But it’s also not complicated. It requires doing one simple thing frequently – putting one foot in front of the other. Establishing that behavior – finding the time to do it, making it a regular habit and sorting out an optimal pace, clothing, routes and apps that support/reward the behavior is hard. You have to become an expert at expiramenting, re-starting and re-committing. But the actual mechanics of running are simple.

Communities are complex. What generates community value is simple. Establishing behaviors that generate value is hard.

Running and establishing successful communities have a lot in common – it’s partially why I tackled the running, so that I had first-hand experience with establishing a complex behavior change.

Healthy communities are incredibly complex – full of different people with different agendas; packed with content, discussions and events; and constantly rotating leadership as the situation demands. They are complex adaptive systems. However, what generates community value is simple; value is generated when people share their experiences, ask good questions and respond to others’ questions.

In both cases, with running and communities, it took a lot of time understanding their complexity to understand their simplicity – and to understand what behaviors were the keystone behaviors off of which everything else depends. This insight – born of years of experience – makes it easy to measure community progress, ROI and success.

I’m excited to share these insights and more at the Higher Logic Super Forumnext week and the FeverBee Sprint conference in November. Join me!

Community Starts with P

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By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research at The Community Roundtable.

That’s P as in people. Anyone with a history in community can tell you that investing in people can have a major impact on your community performance. But when you look at the data from the State of Community Management 2015 survey, it’s a message that hasn’t been universally received.

The top level numbers are promising, though. 88% of out best-in-class communities, and 72% of respondents overall have a full-time community manager. And of the remaining 28%, only a handful had no one managing the community at all (the rest had part-time staff). That does mean a not insignificant number of communities are still paying tens of thousands of dollars for community platforms and then not investing in getting people who run them – but it is a sign that we are getting past the “if you build it, they will come” stage of community investment.

SOCM2015 Community Staffing

But there’s a second level to investing in those who run your community – and that’s investing in training and development of your community professionals. Again, a wide majority of communities invest in training for their community teams, but a quarter of communities with full-time community managers said they paid for no community manager training in the past year. That number was surprisingly consistent for communities across platforms, use cases, community sizes and industry, meaning massive customer communities on expensive, powerful platforms were about as likely to go through the year without training as those in smaller, less platform intensive communities.

There were two notable exceptions. Communities with formal advocacy programs were also more likely to provide training for the community team. And Stage 3 communities were far more likely to invest in training their community team than Stage 1 communities – 85% to 48%. Want to get your community to grow and mature? The research suggests investing in your community team is a powerful way to go.

Want to invest in your community’s potential? TheCR Network provides professional development opportunities for hundreds of community professionals year-round. Learn more at https://communityroundtable.com/TheCRNetwork.

Community Engagement Framework

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The Work Out Loud framework is now the Community Engagement framework. Same great ideas, new community-focused title 

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

This week is ‘International Working Out Loud Week‘ or #wolweek – a week to highlight the growing practice of creating better organizations by sharing not just our work products, but our work processes. It’s fitting that this year #wolweek coincides with the release of John Stepper’s new book – Working Out Loud: For a better career and life, as John has been instrumental in applying the concept and documenting both how to do it well and its value.

At The Community Roundtable, where we focus on how to create healthy and productive communities, we see working out loud as a key behavior community managers can encourage and reward to establish connections and build trusting relationships. Depending on the context, working out loud can either be relatively easy to establish or it can be incredibly complex.

So what kinds of things make working out loud challenging?

  • No appreciation of why working out loud is valuable
  • Critical cultures
  • Cultures where knowledge is protected because it is the primary currency of power
  • Individuals’ perspectives and agency
  • Poor online communication skills
  • Lack of understanding of how to work out loud

Taken together, those barriers can be significant, especially inside organizations, and simply modeling behavior often isn’t enough. Because of that, we have deconstructed working out loud into four categories:

  1. Validate Out Loud
  2. Share Out loud
  3. Ask & Answer Out Loud
  4. Explore Out Loud

We believe that each of these pieces of working out loud is important to focus on independently because they incrementally create a more collaborative environment. Too often, community managers and their stakeholders try to jump straight to robust exchanges before a new or immature community might be ready for it. The Community Roundtable’s Community Engagement Framework gives structure to the process and provides community managers with the goals and metrics they should focus on as their communities evolve.

Community Engagement Framework

In each step, there are community management techniques to trigger, establish and reward the behaviors. For example, Sharing Out Loud can be triggered by having a regular thread where people share their priories for the week, like we do in TheCR Network. That helps community members understand the social environment, get comfortable with how people respond to each other and engage without fear of demonstrating a lack of knowledge – making the community a comfortable place for members to share.

Once created, the sense of comfort in the community makes it easier for members to ask other questions without fear of criticism or judgment, and those questions are typically effective social triggers for getting responses – and with them, hopefully, solutions. By measuring how the community is behaving in each of these areas, community managers can get a good sense of how programming should be prioritized and how much value is being generated.

Download the Community Engagement Framework here. 

Looking for more ideas about how to generate community value? Join TheCR Network or contact us.

Community Teams Build Success

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By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

The State of Community Management 2015 is out in the wild. Odds are that you are aware of that, if you are a regular reader of this blog and a friend of The Community Roundtable. But if not, or if you haven’t had a chance to pull up a chair, kick back and dive into research and analysis in this year’s report, today is your lucky day.

Today, we begin a regular SOCM Monday Facts series – giving you a glimpse inside the report and directions for ways to dig into some of the important findings of this year’s survey. This week, we take a look at community teams. It might not surprise you to know the largest communities (1,000,000+ members) are more likely than others to have community teams. After all, you figure, with that many members, you need all the help you can get to moderate and manage the community.

That’s true, but as it turned out, having a team didn’t necessarily improve response times and other tactical elements of their communities. Instead, the power of community teams was more evident for strategic reasons.

Fact #1:

SOCM2015_FunFact_TakesaTeam

 

Community teams correlated strongly with the likelihood a community had a roadmap and/or a playbook, had invested in a strong advocacy program and had done a better job integrating the community and business strategies. That’s because a community team not only provides more resources for moderation and day-to-day operations of the community, it also allows for community professionals to step back and look strategically at the community, rather than focusing solely on tactics.

Here’s an example – communities with a single community manager were just as likely as those with teams to be able to express the value of community to the organization and to the members. But the team-led communities were more likely to have a measurable strategy and resourced roadmap to deliver that value to the organization and members.

Where else did team-led communities shine? Download the report – and turn to page 29. Investing in a community team might make your moderators more nimble – but its real power is far more strategic.

Want to learn more? Download the State of Community Management 2015 here and check back here each Monday this summer for more Monday Facts from The State of Community Management.

5 Things Kickboxing Class Has Taught Me About Community Management

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By Georgina Cannie, The Community Roundtable

I never told my fourth grade teacher that I wanted to manage an online network of professionals when I grew up. I stumbled into the community space quite accidentally. Academically, my background is in traditional face-to-face communities and I had always envisioned myself building sustainable neighborhoods for a living. But the thing is, physical and online communities are both just groups of people collaborating to improve the way they accomplish goals. It doesn’t matter if a group is working to establish a local dog park, share enterprise knowledge, or organize a potluck block party – online and physical communities are governed by the same principles of human behavior.

Today I find myself seeing insights into community management everywhere I look – even my weekly kickboxing class.

Every Tuesday I go to class and try to follow along with the instructor’s kick-punch-jab combinations. I noticed that within a few short weeks, the class had established its own community of attendees. Participants who didn’t know each other at the beginning of the class are sharing goals, offering tips and giving each other reviews of other fitness classes.  I can’t say I am surprised, the conditions for this are ripe: A regular program at the same time each week, members with a common interest, and the opportunity to support personal health goals. But along with uppercuts and grapevines, this small community is teaching me valuable lessons in community management. Here are a few of my top takeaways:

Members find value in sync. 

There is something intrinsically pleasing about doing jumping jacks in perfect synchronization with a dozen other humans. Every foot hits the ground at the exact same moment, every hand slaps a thigh in unison. It feels good to be perfectly in time with the group. Online community members don’t do jumping jacks, but they do benefit from the chance to be part of the group routine. As a community manager, creating public Rules of Engagement is one way of offering that opportunity. By defining guidelines and boundaries, a good community manager builds an action-positive roadmap to guide those who want to engage – and opens up the opportunity for members to get in sync.  It is the member’s job to participate, but it is the community manager’s job to give them specific ways in which to do so. 

Working publicly improves work quality. 

When I try to exercise alone in my living room, I will often skip a few squats and let my form fall to pieces. However, when I am in a class full of people who will know if I give up on myself, I am far more motivated to push through and accomplish more than I thought I could. Working publicly encourages me to raise the bar on my own performance. Maybe it’s pride, maybe it’s competition – regardless of motivation, the quality of my work improves. The same is undoubtably true in online communities. Working Out Loud in your social network extends your commitment to yourself, to a commitment to the group. Working publicly allows you to take greater responsibility for your projects and creates a space for others to help you accomplish them.

Acknowledging success creates a second wind.

Last week in class the group was doing a series of high-kicks. It was towards the end of class and I was seriously concerned that I was about to fall over with exhaustion. Right as I was about to quit, the instructor pointed to me and said “Oh yeah! Look how high she is kicking! Way to go!” Immediately I found a whole new wave of energy. I thought, “You think that was high?! Check this one out!” and found myself giving a whole new level of effort when moments earlier I was about to give up. The compliment had power because I knew I had earned it. Championing your advocates and super-users in an online community serves the same purpose. Recognizing and encouraging ideal behaviors – by acknowledging excellent questions, establishing “honor rolls,” or otherwise highlighting model behavior both rewards your top performers and supports the kinds of activity you want to encourage in your community.

Model behaviors, but don’t create sheep. 

I am no fight-master ninja. I need to watch the kickboxing instructor’s body movements to stay on track and follow along. The teacher knows this and makes sure to model proper technique for her students. However, while chatting with my teacher after class one day, she told me that often times her students will follow her example so strictly, that they forget to listen to their own body’s needs. She told me that a majority of her students will only get a drink of water when she drinks water, rather than when they are thirsty. As I manage a community of community managers, I am constantly modeling behavior – but while a network that blindly follows the community manager might be easy to manage, it has limited potential. The best community managers model not only their direct behaviors, but also how they adapt what they learn to their individual needs, by modeling an openness to alternative interpretations and applications of the same knowledge.

Member cliques look like superusers, but function like Mean Girls. 

There is a group of three “kickboxing queens” in my class. They are fitness junkies and give more effort than the rest of the class combined. Upon first glance, they look like ideal participants – they always work hard, they do every move perfectly and they seem to really enjoy themselves. The problem is, they won’t share their secrets to success with anyone outside their clique. In fact, they won’t even talk to anyone outside their clique. When I first joined the group (in all my inexperienced and unskilled glory), I was so intimidated by them that I was terrified to engage in the learning process, for fear of making a mistake in front of them. Community managers need to be carful about handling member cliques in their networks. A core group of seasoned members is great – but those members can actually hurt the community if they are unwilling or unable to accommodate beginners. The best community managers take time to recognize and challenge these cliques, establish a comfortable learning environment and coach key community members on how to welcome newbies into the community culture. 

Georgina Cannie is TheCR Network’s Community Management Fellow. Want to connect with hundreds of the best community professionals every day? Join TheCR Network!

Looking for a Few Great Community Fellows

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By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

help wantedI’ve already mentioned that we’re excited for all the new content, programming and research that 2015 will bring. Now, I’m extra excited to announce that to support all the new community initiatives we are undertaking we are also expanding TheCR team.

In the past we’ve hired Community Fellows specifically for our research and community management teams, and this time we’re expanding both the scope and size of our search – we are currently seeking community fellows for our Research, Community Management and Sales/Marketing teams.

TheCR Fellowship program is designed to help the right candidate immerse themselves in the community management discipline and accumulate the expertise to qualify for community management roles after their time with us.

At a high level, each Fellowship will provide:

•    Formal community management training
•    Hands-on experience in community management, with a lens toward research, engagement or sales/marketing.
•    Access to leading community management practitioners
•    Direct access to potential employers
•    The opportunity to work with a variety of organizations and brands
•    Community management and business mentorship from TheCR team.
•    A monthly stipend

While you can visit each job description above for more details for each position, the Fellow’s roles would generally include:

•    Commitment of 35+ hours a week for at least 6 months and no more than 12 months
•    Day-to-day tasks related to their role
•    Special projects which, depending on the person’s skill set and interests, could be research, content, business development, marketing, or events projects

Why a fellowship and not a permanent hire?

As a small organization there are large risks for someone in deciding to work with us and there are risks for us in making a permanent hire. By providing training, access to market leaders, and a stipend to a fellow, we can ensure that she or he is very well positioned to find a great position with a larger organization at the end of the fellowship. To us, this creates a win-win-win for potential candidates, employers, and for us. It also serves our mission by enabling us to develop trained, experienced professionals for the market. We liked our last two fellows so much we hired them both into permanent roles, which is also a potential outcome of the fellowship.

Why a Fellowship at TheCR?

The Community Roundtable has been championing the discipline of community management for over five years. In that time we have built up frameworks, training and research that demonstrates the value of community and community management. We work with over 100+ leading brands and organizations and understand more about how communities are used and managed in business environments than any other organization. Because of our network and relationships, this is a great opportunity for the right person to meet and collaborate with our clients and members.

Learn More About Each Role

Do you have what it takes? Check out the open positions now:

While not a requirement for the right candidate, preference will be given to people within commuting distance from Boston.