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The Community Roundtable

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

Celebrating #cmgr on Community Manager Appreciation Day 2023

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Fact: every day should be community manager appreciation day. I get that not how it works, but truly – the community professionals we know are amazing 365 days a year and deserve all the kudos (along with the salary and perks to match!)

But, since today (Monday, January 23, 2023) IS actually Community Manager Appreciation Day we won’t miss the opportunity to shout out to the incredible community professionals we know. From those of you just starting out in your community career (including our new, awesome community fellow, Erin!) to those of you have that have been working in community even longer than us (we know you’re out there!!) – we appreciate you.

We’ve made it our work to cultivate, support, and provide the resources global community professionals need to empower themselves. Getting a front-row seat to the innovative work they do is a bonus!

Cheers to everyone working in community today – we see you and appreciate the work it takes to build and manage your communities!

3 Community Trends We Noticed in 2022

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We won’t give you another version of Spotify wrapped, but this is the time of year where one can’t help but reflect on what occurred in yet another historic year. What we’d like to share with you today are three community trends that we most look forward to exploring more of next year.

Community trend 1: Critical characteristics for community management

Teams are shifting, as are Community professionals. This year felt like the year of the year of extremes. In some cases the pandemic has highlighted the importance of Community in an organization. With that we’ve seen more C-Suite support and growing budgets. However, we can’t ignore the large layoffs in tech earlier this year and how that has real downstream effects on Community folks. We’ve seen a lot of folks make some big pivots this year. In some cases they are suddenly becoming team builders and people managers. In others, they are having to scramble and switch to an entirely new organization. That said, Community continues to trend towards becoming its own vertical. We’ve anecdotally seen more members looking for support on building teams. Contrasted to the last decade of Community Managers working as primarily solo practitioners, we count that as progress. We noticed many of these trends in 2021. They’ve only continued in 2022. Check out the State of Community Management 2022 for more.

Looking to brush up any of your community skills? Visit TheCR Academy to see our entire course catalog. Remember, complete access to all the courses is now available to all members of TheCR Network.

Trend 2: Say goodbye to the “90-9-1” rule

Gone are the days of the 90-9-1 ruling community management and social media (a.k.a. Participation inequality: 90% of participants are unengaged/inactive, 9% engage a little, 1% make up the majority of the content creation and engagement), and we have the research to back it up: the State of Community Management 2022. Instead, we would like to introduce you to the 20-25-55 rule.

  • 20% of your members are actively creating content
  • 25% are validating and consuming content (you may have heard them referred to as “lurkers,” but we find the term “learners” to be much more accurate in this context)
  • 55% are inactive

Here in the Network, we have explored a model that dives into the strengths of digital fatigue; by breaking out less formal programming, we try to get members the value that most matters to them. Many of our peers expressed similar fatigue in their Communities- members want to connect and engage but also have competing needs for their attention. Even with digital fatigue, which we associate with the pandemic, we continue to see folks adopting remote opportunities to connect with their peers.

Community trend 3: The only consistent thing is change

The headline story this year in Community was about the unpredictability in the job market, with places like Meta and Twitter having record layoffs and restructuring. We saw this same trend across tech. A very illustrative visual courtesy of TrueUp.

Community is not immune to the changing landscape nor the continued whispers of a recession. No single post can encapsulate all that we can and want to say about those changes, however, we saw a number of our members pivot from unfavorable company dynamics and into better roles.

That shift and resulting uncertainty can be a trying time in anyone’s life. We recently hosted a panel about transitioning to new roles and the insights were invaluable.

Roundtable Call – When Growing Your Career Means Leaving your Community

A few gems from the call:

  • Look beyond a title, and think holistically about what you want in a role.
  • Another was around managing burnout. The panelists expressed how important it is to be analytical. And to be critical about what you actually want next rather than being in a reactionary state of being burned out.
  • Focus on what you are running towards rather than what you’re running from. Where are your skills best applied?

As an offer to any reader who may be impacted by an unexpected job shift, we are currently offering our community fundamentals course for free. To take advantage of the program and possibly add to your community skills toolbox, send us a message and we’ll be happy to help you get started.

2022 was another year for the books and the Network. We appreciate all of you that have shown up, shared your thoughts, and hopefully learned alongside us at TheCR. We hope you have a restful, peaceful break and will see you in 2023.

Kelly Munro on Content and Programs

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Community Conversations is a long-running podcast highlighting community success stories from a wide variety of online community management professionals.

Episode #87 of Community Conversations features Kelly Munro, Community Team Lead, Xero.

On this special State of Community Management 2022 episode, Kelly Munro and host Anne Mbugua discuss the trends in community content and programs. Kelly shares tips for designing effective content and programming for your online community and discusses topics including:

  • How thinking about content and programs affects her community work.
  • The importance of onboarding for communities.
  • Advice for community professionals starting to dig into content and programs for their organization

Listen to Kelly Munro on Community Content and Programs

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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About Kelly Munro

Kelly Munro is the Community lead within the Customer Success team at Xero, managing their product development & discussion forums. She has an interest in using technology to solve user and business friction with a human-centric & adaptive lens.

About Xero

Xero is a New Zealand-based technology company that provides cloud-based accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses. Their online accounting software connects small business owners with their numbers, their bank, and advisors anytime. Founded in 2006, Xero now has 3.5 million subscribers and is a leader in cloud accounting across New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Their team of over 4,500+ talented thinkers, creators, and educators helps make life better for small businesses globally.

About The State of Community Management

Now in its 13th year, our annual State of Community Management report provides strategic ideas and tactical benchmarks for global community management professionals.

The State of Community Management 2022 explores the state of the community management industry through the lens of the eight competencies in the Community Maturity Model™.

Each section includes data, ideas, and expert practitioner perspectives to give you new insight into the community management industry. 

Kelly Munro on Content and Programs
Download your free copy of the State of Community Management 2022.

The Community Roundtable Recognizes Excellence in Community Management with Community Leadership Awards 2022

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The Community Leadership Awards 2022 recognize Zapier, Progress, Analog Devices, Inc., Microsoft, and Bain and Company, and other global organizations as leaders of innovation in community management.

Community Leadership Awards 2022

BOSTON, MA – October 31, 2022

The winners of the seventh annual Community Leadership Awards were announced Tuesday, October 25th, and included community leaders from organizations like Udacity, Microsoft, Zapier, and more. The Community Roundtable, the leading global resource for the community management industry, presented the awards at their first in-person Connect event since the COVID-19 pandemic began. As the recognized leader in community management research, training, and thought leadership, The Community Roundtable is uniquely qualified to evaluate and reward individual and organizational contributions to the industry.

Community Leadership Awards recognize excellence in online community management across five categories: Outstanding Community Program, Outstanding Community Dashboard, Outstanding Community ROI, Outstanding Community Design Element, and Best Recognition & Reward Program. Members of TheCR Network – the world’s premier resource for community professionals – were recognized in six individual categories. An additional award, Community MVP, was awarded based on peer nominations. In total, 11 organizations and individuals were recognized for outstanding efforts in community management.

“2022 proved to be the first year of a ‘new normal’ in the community management space,” said Jim Storer, Co-Founder and COO at The Community Roundtable. “The esteemed community leaders recognized provided invaluable vision and guidance for their organizations during a year full of change.”

The winners of 2022 Community Leadership Awards

Outstanding Community Dashboard 2022: Progress

The “Outstanding Community Dashboard” award recognizes a community dashboard that exhibits the most impressive and engaging design, sharing metrics and measurement in an impactful way that contributes to the overall narrative of a community program.

Outstanding Community ROI 2022: Udacity

“Outstanding Community ROI” award recognizes a community that has best demonstrated significant ROI for their business/organization through innovative community management practices.

Outstanding Community Program 2022: Microsoft

The “Outstanding Community Program” recognizes an exceptional community program that supports new member onboarding, including communications, training, mentoring, and more.

Outstanding Community Design Element 2022: Zapier

The “Outstanding Community Program” award recognizes a design element in an online community program that demonstrates meaningful engagement through thoughtful design.

Best Recognition + Reward Program 2022: Analog Devices, Inc.

The “Best Recognition + Reward Program” award recognizes outstanding community recognition, reward, and gamification programs that increase engagement

Community MVP 2022: Kayla Koch, Sr. Marketing Manager, Customer Community Programs, Egencia

The “Community MVP” award recognizes excellence in community management – including outstanding efforts, willingness to share with peers, achievements, and excellent community results.

Community Detective 2022: Claire Richardson, Enterprise Community Manager, Thomson Reuters

“Community Detective” awards the member who helps source group knowledge and expertise by regularly asking thoughtful and meaningful questions in TheCR Network.

Community Explorer 2022: Dan Simon, Director, Bain

“Community Explorer” awards the member who charts new territory in the community management industry. They take best practices, research, and community models to experiment and advance the industry.

Community Pack Leader 2022: Melissa Hockenberry, Community Program Manager, Datto

“Community Pack Leader” awards the member who consistently leads the most discussions, online, in-person, and on virtual calls, and shows leadership around a topic or initiative in TheCR Network.

Community Journaler 2022: Sam Pirok, Community Moderator, Extreme Networks

“Community Journaler” awards the member who works out loud the most regularly and with the most depth.

Community Power User 2022: Rachael Silvano, Community Operations Manager, Zapier

“Community Power User” awards the most active member in TheCR Network who contributes on a regular basis in a wide variety of ways, from sharing their expertise to supporting and encouraging other members.

Community Rookie of the Year 2022: Vee VoPham, Community Programs Coordinator, Pantheon

“Rookie of the Year” awards a Network member who has fewer than three years of industry experience, is new to TheCR Network, and is a power user – regularly collaborating and contributing inside the Network.

About The Community Roundtable: The Community Roundtable is the leading, global resource for the community management industry. The Community Roundtable helps organizations from Fortune 500s to start-ups and associations recognize, define and leverage the power of their communities. Through the industry’s only comprehensive community management research, The Community Roundtable provides training, events, and consulting to help companies recognize real ROI from their community programs. TheCR Network – the world’s premier resource for community professionals, connects hundreds of community practitioners worldwide for networking, professional development and support.

(Roundtable) When Growing Your Career Means Leaving Your Community

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In light of recent layoffs in our industry, it’s hard to ignore how it impacts our communities and business outcomes.  How do you say goodbye to the community you’re leaving behind? How do you advance in your career? How do you navigate the job market? These are some questions we’d like to have a meaningful conversation about and learn from each other because they affect our meaningful work.

So come join us in a discussion panel-style roundtable call with Amanda Petersen, Shannon Emery, and Meghan Bates.

(Roundtable)Learning a New Organization

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How do you make a move to a new organization? What are some things to consider when making the move? Making the move from one organization to another can be tricky – especially if you’ve spent a significant amount of time at your old employer or if the business models are completely different.

 

In this roundtable call, we’ll explore:

    • Navigating new waters, new co-workers, and new leadership expectations
    • Setting yourself up for success – things you must do in order to ensure you have what you need to do your job well
    • Getting buy-in and support for your community strategy when you’re the new kid on the block

5 Tips for Launching an Online Community

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The idea of not planning for a grand launch day for your online community is hard to consider. You’ve spent months project managing and planning for the launch, so of course, you want to celebrate!

But, having a huge to-do to launch a new community can set up unrealistic expectations that tend to follow the hype of a grand online community launch. The hype and tunnel vision surrounding a grand launch can skew your metrics for a long time. This can cause the community’s maturity model to be locked in too early as it has not had the opportunity to evolve to see what kind of online community maturity model truly fits).

You don’t want to encourage short-term, campaign-style thinking vs. a long-term community engagement outlook.

You want to start as you plan to continue. And we recommend starting small, leaving room for incremental and sustainable gains.

1 – Know your timeline Despite the advice above to NOT have an online community launch day, you should…consider a launch day (if you need help, we have an entire resource bundle on how to launch an online community). Not a real “grand launch day”, but a launch process that has a concrete end date. Spend time defining a pre-launch checklist then you can focus energy on determining what tasks you need to get done and by when. Make sure you prioritize tasks and save enough time for each plus wiggle room. Surprises will come up!

Beta programs are your friend. You can roll out membership to a small group of members to seed the community with content and engaged comments. You can use your beta users to test the community, then invite the rest of the group for a more formal launch.

2 – Don’t be afraid to pre-seed content One path to easy pre-seeded content is to curate content from other areas of your business. This might include library documents/entries, resource threads, thought leadership questions, and existing user programs. Consider populating your community with “low hanging fruit” questions – this allows members to participate in a low-risk way and will help them become comfortable engaging with more dense conversations.

Mobilize your super users and key stakeholders to be the “life of your party”. Find the people who will get others excited about the space and support them in their participation. Offer them opportunities to collaborate with you and take a larger role in the community if they want it. This is a great way to lay the groundwork for an advocacy program down the line.

Whenever you are talking about your community or thinking about how to make your community critical to your organization, ask yourself, “How can I offer something here, that cannot be found elsewhere?” This is the motivation that drives people inside the community and keeps them coming back. Instead of sending an email or searching on for information, you want your members to come to the community first. Add content and create programs that give them a reason to do that.

3 – Create new member welcome programs Our research has shown that robust new online community member welcome programs have an outsized impact on long-term engagement. It makes sense – having someone welcome you, give you some ground rules on behaviors, give you a tour of the community, etc., makes new members more comfortable, and you’re more likely to dip a toe in a new community if you have ideas for how to do it.

One of the hardest things to remember is that while the new member process can seem boring and rote to the person conducting it, to the new member it’s all brand new. Luckily, automation has come a long way in the last few years, allowing even the smallest community team (we see you, lone wolves) to have a big impact on the way new members start their community journey with you. You can review five best practices for new member onboarding programs here.

4 – Designated a launch team – Make sure you know who will be helping you launch the community and make sure that team has the necessary skills. Do you need IT involved? What about customer success? At this point you’ve pre-seeded your community with a group of super users, so you’ll also want to include these advocates as a part of your launch team. Get their thoughts and feedback on how the community functions and engage them as things roll out. Make sure everyone involved is clear on timelines, their responsibilities, and what is expected of them.

5 – Communicate, Communicate, Communicate You cannot over-communicate your community launch. Create a communications plan so that you’re sure to spread out the activity over time. You’ll want to vary the mediums and tactics you use to reach your entire audience. It’s important to ensure you’re reaching all users consistently.

You can’t do this all yourself, so use your team, advocates, and stakeholders to help spread the word. Be flexible and open to the fact that this might take time. Everyone’s membership base is different and some things will work, others won’t. Remember that things won’t always work right away.

Be prepared to evangelize! You’ll be selling your community and the value of your community. Perfect your elevator pitch and what your community brings to the table and know how to present it to different kinds of people. Not everyone will “get” it right away and that’s okay, keep trying and sharing the message.

Community Role Profile: Community Specialist Role

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Woman Wearing Purple Shirt Holding Smartphone White Sitting on Chair

OVERVIEW OF ROLE

​ Community specialists are the experts and emerging experts on a community team. Unlike community manager roles, where generalists are prized, community specialists often have a focus in one of three disciplines: engagement, content, or technical initiatives.

​ RESPONSIBILITIES
Community Specialists focus on tactical initiatives and projects to support the community team in their area of expertise. On the job, Community Specialists tend to be “in the weeds” doing anything from providing training and support to members, curating and editing community content, or working with analytics, design, content management systems or other technical assets. For those interested in a community career who lack the general skill set required, joining a team as a Community Specialist is a great way to start with a specific focus, letting you expand your roles and responsibilities from there if interested.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE COMMUNITY

​Community Specialists drive the projects and initiatives that support community operations – maintain the systems and programs needed for the community to thrive. This results is a close relationship with the community and team members and provides a unique perspective on the challenges of members. Community Specialists can act as a bridge between members and the greater community team.

To learn more about the Community Specialist Role, and view Community Specialist Job Descriptions download our Community Careers and Compensation report – now available for free download.

Community Role Profile: Community Manager

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Photo of Man Holding a Book

OVERVIEW OF ROLE
​ Community managers often oversee more processes than people and are the generalists of the community field. Although some community managers manage moderators or specialists, many work with other teams as the voice of the community. A community manager can be an entry-level role in some companies but on average they are mid-level professionals with over a decade in the workforce and six+ years in community.

​ RESPONSIBILITIES
Community managers are the face and voice of the community. To make the community successful, they work with members to help them find value while ensuring organizational sponsors also receive value.
Community managers balance tactical engagement and programming activities with more strategic responsibilities like planning and reporting. In small organizations, they are likely responsible for everything related to the community, while at larger organizations they may have direct reports, work on a larger team, or have the support of outsourced resources.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE COMMUNITY

​ A community manager’s special gift is empathy – a knack for understanding members and their motivations, their needs and goals, then connecting them with other members, content, and programs that help them achieve their goals.

Community Manager Role

To learn more about the Community Manager Role, and view Community Specialist Job Descriptions download our Community Careers and Compensation report – now available for free download.

Institutionalizing Inclusion

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Institutionalizing Inclusion - Vertical Garden, Milan, Italy
Photo via Greenroofs.com

Inclusion is a critical focus for most organizations and has been particularly prominent over the past few months. Online communities are uniquely suited to promote wide-scale inclusion because of their collaborative rather than directive structure—they reward members for their unique contributions instead of forcing compliance to a standard. Communities are also generative, producing more value for every participant than is contributed by them—delivering a compelling ROI for every member. But the best communities don’t just assume that their existence will immediately foster widespread inclusion; instead, they prioritize investment in operations that will institutionalize inclusion.

When we asked members of TheCR Network for specific responses on how their community promotes inclusion, three methods stood out.

  • Validating Concerns – One community manager received concerns from members about a lack of female speakers in a large annual conference his organization holds. He investigated and found that 15 to 18 percent of speakers were female and that this number was in line with similar conferences in his industry, but he didn’t stop there. Looking deeper he discovered that the percentage of female speakers was not representative of female members in his community, so he reached out to his community and they created a five-step plan to make their conference more inclusive.
  • Making Inclusion Visible – One of our members noted that while they still have much to do, they created a code of conduct, which is accessible to the entire organization, and an inclusive holiday calendar that allows for community members to discuss inclusive movements like Pride. Her community also marks moderators and admins so members of the community have clear pathways to report concerns. She is also working to recruit a more diverse cohort of customer advocates, formalize welcoming procedures for new members, and even implement slackbot to combat the word “guys” in their Slack channels. All of these measures make the importance of inclusion visible, daily.
  • Providing Inclusion For Everyone – A member in a large organization brought up the importance of seeing inclusion everywhere. One of her community’s biggest diversity issues is age. Her community often feels curtailed for older generations, and it’s common for younger employees to feel their ideas are not important. While her organization is working towards BIPOC and LGBTQ+ inclusion, ageism was overlooked. Her community has since developed a multi-tiered incident response plan with a section dedicated to HR. They have also set up a number of filters to pick up word usage that might indicate exclusive behavior. Clubs that cater to a younger audience are being developed, even when there is push back from older committees; the community channels allow for discussion and eventual approval.

These sorts of solutions cannot exist without the inclusive culture that well-functioning communities bring. Institutionalizing inclusion requires public progression and admitting openly that there needs to be change. This sort of acknowledgement demonstrates to community members that their organization validates concerns and that inclusion is lived, not just communicated. Advanced communities show that this is achieved best when community governance is highly integrated across organizational leadership as well as across emergent community leadership. When more voices ask questions and provide answers, holes in inclusion practices can be identified and addressed faster.

Inclusion is the result of advanced strategies.

This year the State of Community Management research shows that communities are more effective when they engage with more constituencies. Communities that do this best are those with roadmaps, dedicated budgets, and advanced strategies. They can calculate value and report it, and they empower their members to be actively engaged and innovative.  None of this success could be achieved without inclusion, and all of the measures that lead to this success promote it. This generative nature changes culture, promoting a culture of equity in voice and experience.

Advanced Communities include a wide range of stakeholders in decision-making.
Download The State of Community Management 2020 Report