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5 Ways to Build Engagement with Padraic Ryan

July 21, 2022 By Jim Storer

5 Ways to Build Engagement

Lessons from The NEW Community Manager Handbook is a limited-run podcast series, featuring the 21 community leaders showcased in the Handbook in conversation with Anne Mbugua.

Episode Six, 5 Ways to Build Engagement, features Padraic Ryan, Community Manager at eCommerceFuel.

Padraic and Anne Mbugua discuss 5 ways to build engagement that the eCommerceFuel team use within their private community. Padriac shares best practices for onboarding, creating community value for members, and how to get members’ attention in an increasingly noisy world.

Listen to 5 Ways to Build Engagement with Padraic Ryan

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About Padraic Ryan

In Padriac’s words…

I wanted to be an Architect since I was a little kid thanks to watching way too many episodes of the Brady Bunch. I took drafting classes in High School and even drafted up some plans for a new house for one of my teachers. I managed to somehow get into the prestigious University of Miami School of Architecture and where I learned from some of the world’s best Architects. Miami also taught me a LOT about the world which was even more valuable than the education.

I managed to score a great job, moved to Connecticut (not my first choice), and became a licensed Architect. Sadly, the profession wasn’t all that Mike Brady made it out to be, and I quickly realized it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing with my life. I learned a bit about website design in school and started building sites for friends and family on the side. It quickly turned into a lucrative practice, and in 2003 I founded Ryan Design Studio. In 17 years my team and I built over 500 sites for eCommerce businesses all over the world.

I’d been a member of eCommerceFuel.com for years, and when the opportunity presented itself in 2019 to become the Community Manager, I jumped at the chance. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

On the personal side of things, my wife and I live in a small, rural town in New Hampshire close to where I grew up. I enjoy travel (when there isn’t a pandemic), growing my own food, brewing my own beer, spending time in the woods/mountains, home improvement and I’m still as addicted to video games as I was when I was a kid (and can afford a MUCH better gaming rig now!).

About eCommerceFuel

eCommerceFuel is a private, 1000+ member community for experienced 7-figure+ store owners. Our average member owns a business doing $2.6 million in revenue and has been in the eCommerce world for more than 7.5 years. Members get real-time help with just about any problem they can imagine, access over 20,000 archived discussions, access to a proprietary review directory with10,000+ member-submitted software and service provider reviews, and invitations to exclusive members-only events and meetups, including our popular ECF Live annual conference.

You can learn more at: https://www.ecommercefuel.com

About The NEW Community Manager Handbook

The NEW Community Manager Handbook features 21 profiles of community leaders sharing advice and ideas on everything from accessibility, hiring, strategy, gamification, defining the digital workplace, technology, and more. Each profile is paired with research from the State of Community Management reports and includes tactical advice for implementing what you’ve learned.

Learn from community management experts at Easterseals, Glencore, Microsoft, UKG, the World Bank Group, Analog Devices, Inc., AAMC, Zapier, Doctors Without Borders, and more.

5 Ways to Build Engagement

Want more than 5 ways to build engagement?

You can find more resources for building community engagement programs here.

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Sarah Rapp on Ambassador Programs

July 14, 2022 By Jim Storer

Sarah Rapp on Ambassador Programs

Episode Six features Sarah Rapp, Director, Alumni & People Engagement at JA Worldwide.

She and Anne discuss JA Worldwide uses ambassador programs to drive long-term engagement. Sarah shares best practices for starting an ambassador program, how JA Worldwide identifies super-passionate “fire-starters” in all their global locations, and the power of mentorship in community advocacy programs.

If you haven’t downloaded your free copy of The NEW Community Manager Handbook you can get it here.

Listen to Sarah Rapp on Ambassador Programs

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About Sarah Rapp

Sarah is based in Vienna, Austria where she is the Director of Alumni and People Engagement at JA Worldwide. Sarah is a JA Worldwide alumni, having actually participated herself in the program while she was in school. She has been part of the JA Worldwide community for 13 years in various positions, She volunteered, heading up the European alumni network and for the last 4.5 years it has been her full-time job. Sarah leads JA Worldwide’s global alumni networks around the world.

About JA Worldwide

As one of the world’s largest and most impactful youth-serving NGOs, JA delivers hands-on, immersive learning in work readiness, financial health, entrepreneurship, sustainability, STEM, economics, and more. Reaching more than 10 million young people each year, JA Worldwide is one of few organizations with the scale, experience, and passion to build a brighter future for the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

About The NEW Community Manager Handbook

The NEW Community Manager Handbook features 21 profiles of community leaders sharing advice and ideas on everything from accessibility, hiring, strategy, gamification, defining the digital workplace, technology, and more. Each profile is paired with research from the State of Community Management reports and includes tactical advice for implementing what you’ve learned.

Learn from community management experts at Easterseals, Glencore, Microsoft, UKG, the World Bank Group, Analog Devices, Inc., AAMC, Zapier, Doctors Without Borders, and more.

Download the New Community Manager Handbook

Want more resources about ambassador programs?

You can find more resources for building community advocacy programs here.

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Community Gamification with April Uzarski

June 2, 2022 By Jim Storer

Community Gamification with April Uzarski

Lessons from The NEW Community Manager Handbook is a limited-run podcast series, featuring the 21 community leaders showcased in the Handbook in conversation with Anne Mbugua.

Episode Two features April Uzarski, Associate Director, Tech Community at Xandr on community gamification. She and Anne discuss how the Girl Scouts got gamification right, how even a simple gamification and rewards program can make a big impact, and how they reward their community members.

If you haven’t downloaded your free copy of The NEW Community Manager Handbook you can get it here.

Listen to Community Gamification with April Uzarski

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About April Uzarski

April is a results-oriented community professional. She has a history of delivering engaging and inclusive programming to drive community adoption and retention. A passionate people manager, April is focused on career growth and optimizing team operations. She is equipped with solid communication skills that successfully span the C-Suite to junior employees. April has comprehensive experience working across departments to deliver key business results, and growing the team’s ROI YoY. She is enthusiastic, creative, and eager to learn. April has previously shared her community expertise at events like TheCR Connect, and with peers in TheCR Network.

About The NEW Community Manager Handbook

The NEW Community Manager Handbook features 21 profiles of community leaders sharing advice and ideas on everything from accessibility, hiring, strategy, gamification, engagement, technology, and more. Each profile is paired with research from the State of Community Management reports and includes tactical advice for implementing what you’ve learned.

Download the New Community Manager Handbook

You can find more resources for developing and managing a community gamification program here.

CM-Handbook-Transcript-AprilUzarskiDownload

Our Community Superheroes Share Their Superheroes, Part 2

April 1, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Last week, we shared with you a little added information from The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes. In the back of the handbook, we list the people that the 20 community professionals we interviewed for the handbook would cite as their superheroes. It’s a diverse group, but what we left out of the Handbook were the reasons why our heroes named theirs!

Image from imgur.com via Reddit user resgestae

Image from imgur.com via Reddit user resgestae

Last week – Superheroes Alex Blanton,  Matt Brown, Charissa (Carnall) Cowart, Eileen Foran, Jerry Green and Patrick Hellen named Allison Michels, Erica Kuhl, Gary Vaynerchuk, Rachel Happe/Caty Kobe, Lauren Vargas and Hillary Boucher/William Gibson as their superheroes.

This week, we look at 6 more of our heroes’ heroes.

Superhero: Ted Hopton, McGraw-Hill Education

His Superhero: Claire Flanagan (Jive): “I have more of a pantheon of heroes, but one who comes to mind is Claire Flanagan – she has a quality for seeing how amazing other people are – and I think she is so organized. I only wish I could be as organized as she is.”

Superhero: Bill Johnston, Structure3C

His Superhero: Randy Farmer (communities.com): “Many people – but for me, the person who has meant the most and been a mentor is Randy Farmer.” (Bill also referred to Randy as “one of the smartest, most pragmatic, and most helpful voices in the online community industry” on his blog.)

Superhero: James LaCorte, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina

His Superhero: Doug Patton (formerly koz.com, now Family Health Network): “He was a big advocate of communities before we called them communities – he had a passion for connecting with people online and for transparency.”

Superhero: Kirsten Laaspere, Fidelity

Her Superhero: The 2020 version of Kirsten Laaspere: “On a day-to-day basis, I always keep things in the context of ‘Where do I want to be in five years,’ and how the work I am doing now is reflecting that and how that’s going to get me (to where I want to be).”

Superhero: J.J. Lovett, CA Technologies

His Superhero: Sam Creek (CA Technologies): “He’s been the wind beneath my wings. He’s been the one who has been able to (boost the community understanding of) some of our executives. He has a different way of explaining things, and has a great ability to get executives to think differently.”

Superhero: Lesley Lykins, Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA)

Her Superheroes: “Kurt Vanderah (socialmedia.org) has an open personality and a great way of building relationships and making people feel valued. And Peter Shankman – the things he talks about and how he engages people are powerful models for community managers.”

All 20 of our Community Superheroes (and many of theirs) are current and former members of TheCR Network, our community for community professionals. Learn more about the network and how it can advance your community skills by clicking here.

Friday Roundup: New faces, improving community metrics and heroes of heroes

March 27, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Photo from Thomas Wolf via Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Photo from Thomas Wolf via Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but Q1 of 2015 is basically over. It’s that time when community managers look at their strategic plan for the year, utter something that shouldn’t be typed in a blog post, and say to themselves, “Wow, I really need to dig in on those priorities!” But hey – no more snow, right? (Please?)

Here at TheCR, we are heading into the spring with some new and familiar faces back in then fold. Shannon Abram is returning, bringing her energy, positive attitude and strategic smarts back into our mix. We also welcome a new face onto our team. Georgina Cannie is joining us as our Community Management Fellow, working with Hillary Boucher to bolster TheCR Network and help us execute on a couple of major strategic priorities for the rest of the year.

Great conversation this week in TheCR Network with TheCR Champion Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter, the authors of “When Millennials Take Over,” about the book and the expectations of the new generation in the workplace. Savvy community professionals will recognize how well community approaches fit with this new generation. If you missed it, it won’t be the last you hear from them – they’ll be joining us for #ESNChat at 2pm on May 14, if you want a taste of their insight.

The end of the quarter is always a good time to raise the topic of metrics – this week, Shannon laid out three things you should be keeping in mind as you improve your community metrics and measurement strategy. We also put together the first of three posts planned on our Community Superheroes’ Superheroes. If you look on the back page of The Community Manager Handbook, you’ll see the list of the “superheroes” we worked with to develop the lessons in the Handbook, and who they had drawn from in their careers. In the posts, we’ll give you more on why our heroes have found these folks so valuable. If nothing else, our heroes’ heroes are another set of thought leaders and practitioners to follow to expand your community knowledge base.

Things We Are Reading This Week

Convincing Skeptical Employees to Adopt New Technology – “Bringing new technology and tools into your organization can increase productivity, boost sales, and help you make better, faster decisions. But getting every employee on board is often a challenge. What can you do to increase early and rapid adoption? How can you incentivize and reward employees who use it? And should you reprimand those who don’t?”

Gamification Is Thriving Inside the Enterprise – “Opinions may vary, but there is no denying that the use of gamification inside the enterprise is becoming an effective way to engage staff with their organisations. “If you want employees to share knowledge and collaborate, you need to have not only a platform but motivated people,” says Mario Herger, CEO and founder of Enterprise Gamification Consultancy LLC.”

Beware Red Herrings: Intranet vs. ESN is a Sham – “Internal communications departments have debated this question, as have ESN teams and intranet teams. Maybe they saw higher adoption and engagement on their ESN platform, or read success stories from their peers. Or maybe their tired intranet publishing platform is in desperate need of replacing. Oscar Berg nailed it when he wrote that choosing between an intranet and ESN is the wrong question to ask — it displays technology-centric thinking. Instead of thinking about platforms, the starting point needs to focus on organizational and user needs.”

What Millennials’ News Consumption Habits Mean for Associations – “A new report found that millennials are not willing to pay for news and that while they don’t actively seek news through social media, they often get their information through Facebook and YouTube anyway. How does these findings affect associations? Though they don’t use social media primarily as a source for seeking out news and information, a majority of millennials end up getting most of the news they absorb from their social networks, according to a report released last week by the Media Insight Project. MIP, a collaboration between the American Press Institute and Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, also found that they’d be very unlikely to pay for news.”

New Social Media and Community Jobs

Community Manager – Beachbody, Santa Monica, CA

Community Manager – Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Cambridge, MA

Community Manager – Manulife/John Hancock, Toronto, ON/Boston, MA

Community Manager – The Onion, Chicago, IL

Enterprise Community Manager – First American Financial, Santa Ana, CA

Community Manager, Local Guides – Google, New York, NY

Community Manager – Williams-Sonoma, San Francisco, CA

Digital Community Engagement Manager –  Hillshire Brands, Chicago, IL

Marketing and Community Manager – Van Andel Education Institute, Grand Rapids, MI

Community Marketing Manager – Sumo Logic, Redwood City, CA

Community Manager, Niche – Twitter, San Francisco, CA

Community Support Manager, ShopSense by Shopstyle – Popsugar, San Francisco, CA

Online Community Associate – SolarCity, Las Vegas, NV

Stakeholder engagement, governance and preschool

March 16, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

TeeterTotter

Narrowing the options can help your still developing governance efforts move forward more safely

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

“What do you want for breakfast?” you ask your 4-year-old.

Answer A: “I don’t know.

Answer B: “Pie.” (Not a great answer at 7 a.m. – also “Candy.” Or “Mac and cheese.”)

Answer C: (Silence.)

Do that once and you realize that in order to get results, you need to limit choices.

“Do you want oatmeal or cereal for breakfast?”

Answer A: “Oatmeal.”

Answer B: “Cereal.”

Answer C: (Silence. I mean, hey, you’re still talking with a 4–year-old.)

There are lots of times in life when leaving the door too open with a question means you’re less likely to get a workable or appropriate answer – and all too often, no answer at all. One of those times is when you are engaging stakeholders in developing governance strategies for your community efforts.

Lauren Vargas, Head of Social Media and Community at Aetna knows this all too well, having made a career of developing governance systems for community efforts at a number of businesses. She has a number of recommendations for anyone taking on the challenge of engaging key stakeholders in developing community governance, not the least is to treat people like you would a 4-year-old – by smartly framing their options to give them the best opportunity to succeed.

“I’ve never had legal, compliance or HR tell me no because I have given them things they can easily adapt to,” she told us in interviews for The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes. “They lend their expertise to that area and control it, but we manage their options.”

Framing good options, however, requires thorough preparation to understand stakeholders’ needs and their unique perspective on community before you draw up the possibilities. Lauren does informational sessions before beginning the community conversation, but still comes with an open mind and a determination to create a safe space for an honest exchange. Just as someone from legal or compliance may not understand your community approach, you may not fully appreciate their needs and concerns, either.

Another key – if you think these are one-and-done conversations, you’re making a big mistake. Regular contact keeps stakeholders engaged and builds trusting relationships that are critical in times of crisis. Make governance a regular part of the discussion, and work to create policies that are based on roles, not personalities.

But remember you are conversing with people, not robots, Lauren notes. “Don’t think it doesn’t help to bring cookies or ice cream into your legal or compliance team—they’re human, too.”

Want more insights into common community challenges from Lauren Vargas and 20 other experienced community professionals? Download the Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes now from The Community Roundtable.

Friday roundup: Connecting with executives

March 13, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Executive engagement is always a popular topic in community – and sometimes divisive. “You must get the CEO involved,” says one camp. “Don’t waste your time with hesitant executives,” suggests another. Of course, the research demonstrates it’s not as simple as that – but there is no doubt that a socially-engaged C-suite is helpful for growing your community effort.

We took a look at one strategy for increasing stakeholder support in your community efforts in the Community Manager Handbook. What we found was that the best strategy for getting executives on board doesn’t just include the executives, but also includes others throughout the organization. The Handbook is a great resource – and expect to hear more about executive engagement in our State of Community Management research and some other products we are working on that we will get to tell you about later.

We also threw the topic doors open for #ESNChat, the weekly Twitter chat we host on Tuesdays at 2pm. If you have been a past visitor to #ESNChat, or haven’t but work on internal community, we’d love to hear from you about the topics you’d like to cover in the coming weeks. We have Storified a number of recent chats, too, providing resources and insights for internal community professionals.

Now on to other items from the week.

What we are reading this week

Solving the Inception Paradox – Communities are made of passion, energy, relationships and knowledge. Human beings are the main ingredient. Their inner dynamics are not deterministic, nonlinear and very hard to predict. They are often invisible to organizations as they don’t fit into the neat, hierarchical and transactional mechanisms that have been designed to get work done. Even worse, crucial cultivation, engagement, measurement and change management skills are clearly missing in most large corporations today on the market. Without such competencies and sensitivity, organizations are simply not equipped to recognize communities, to understand them or to see their amazing role in business outcomes.

How the Millennial Workforce is Changing Business – Millennials are entering young adulthood at a unique point in our history, where society is poised for a tectonic shift, particularly around business, leadership, and management. There is a “perfect storm” of trends converging in a way that will generate an actual revolution in business, affecting organizations of all shapes and sizes. Yes, a revolution.

How Smart CEOs Use Social Tools to Their Advantage – Empowerment—in whatever form—requires alignment around purpose, strategic intent and the boundaries within which decisions can be made. Otherwise, it could result in confusion, contradictory behaviors and chaos. Savvy CEOs use fire to fight fire, effectively employing digital media inside their organizations to create the kind of alignment and shared purpose they need.

Are We Asking the Right Questions of the Digital Workplace? – Questions like “where do intranets fit with ESN platforms” serve as yet one more reminder of how deeply stuck we are in technology-centric thinking. The conversation needs to turn to what digital services do people need to get their work done, and how do we design these tools to fit people’s work styles and working conditions. If we start with the employee in mind, we get a clearer view of how the capabilities both intranets and ESN platforms bring can help people work smarter together. People usually need a mix of both.

When Your Intranet and Enterprise Social Network Get Married – Pop the champagne and get ready to celebrate: your Intranet and Enterprise Social Network are getting married! As we prepare to toast this joyous integration, remember that the Intranet and the ESN are strong, independent entities with many individual merits. As in any marriage, each partner must remain unique with its own purpose. By tying the knot, however, the Intranet and the ESN will complement each other’s strengths (and minimize their weaknesses), improving the overall employee communication experience.

Jobs in community and social media this week:

Community and Growth Manager, Project Ignite – Autodesk, San Francisco, CA

Community Associate – Sidecar, San Francisco, CA

Senior Producer, Social Publishing – CNN, Atlanta, GA or New York, NY

Social Media Specialist – Mariano’s, Chicago, IL

Social Media Community Manager – ITR, Knoxville, TN

Community Manager – Shapeways, New York, NY

Community Manager – Amazon Game Studios, Seattle, WA

Senior Manager, Real-Time Content and Community Management – Capital One, McLean, VA

Community Manager – ChAIR/Epic Games, Salt Lake City, UT

Community Manager – Toca Boca, San Francisco, CA

Seven Qualities of Community Manager Superheroes

February 10, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

superheroLast week, The Community Roundtable released The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes. The Handbook takes a closer look at twenty challenges community managers face in starting, building and growing online communities, highlighting examples from experienced community managers.  As we talked to these current and former members of TheCR Network, we started to see common qualities that make them so well-suited for building effective communities. Want to be a community superhero? Here are the seven common traits we heard repeatedly in our conversations.

1. Community superheroes have a pulse.

OK, we are being a little tongue in cheek here (although in fact we can confirm that all of our community superheroes do have a pulse). What makes a community superhero special is their ability to understand and embrace the life force of their community – and just as important, to be able to explain what makes the community tick to those on the outside of it.

If you can’t explain what matters to your community, and why your community matters to the business, you need to come up with that explanation before someone creates one for you.

2. Community superheroes are connectors.

This isn’t a surprise. We asked our 20 superheroes about their “community superpowers” (see p. 4-5 of the Handbook), and nearly half picked something relating to connecting and finding common interests between and among people. They introduce. They connect. They link – and not just the organization to the community. They link members to each other – and in doing so scale their management capabilities exponentially by encouraging positive behaviors in member-to-member interactions.

3. Community superheroes are passionate.

I challenge you to have a conversation with any of the community superheroes and not come away without the feeling that they have a passion for community. They aren’t necessarily cheerleaders – although many of them have an infectious enthusiasm – but they all see the value that community can bring and have a strong belief in the value community provides to members and organization.

4. Community superheroes take the long view.

While they believe in the power of community, a community superhero knows that it won’t happen overnight. Great communities start small to grow fast. They set goals with rational timelines, and dig in their heels to explain that community is an investment, not a silver bullet.

5. Community superheroes keep it in perspective.

The flip side of passion is that the stronger your passions, the greater your tendency to burnout. While the most common superpower our heroes mentioned were connection-related, the second most common superpower theme was humor. And third was patience. Community superheroes remember that rarely are the highs as high nor the lows as low as they seem.

6. Community superheroes are lifelong learners.

A striking element of our conversations with the community superheroes was their eagerness to learn. While they have achieved a level of success, they realize they are part of a continually evolving field where today’s strategies may not fit tomorrow’s reality.

7. Community superheroes are humble.

For all their success, our superheroes were a remarkably humble group. One of the hardest things to get from the superheroes as a group were their photos. They are comfortable behind the scenes, making the community hum.

Not every one of our superheroes had every one of these traits, and our superheroes don’t have a monopoly on these seven traits. But if you’re looking to be a stronger community professional (or looking to find and grow someone in a community role), these seven qualities are a great place to start.

—

Want to see what our “superheroes” had to say about 20 of the key strategic challenges as you start, build and grow your community? Check out The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes – available now from Higher Logic at www.higherlogic.com/CMHandbook

The Community Manager Handbook hits the streets

February 6, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

CR Handbook Cover Thumbnail1It’s been a big week (again) at The Community Roundtable, with a brand new publication hitting the streets – The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes. The Handbook was a labor of love for us, because it gave us a chance to work closely with former and current members of TheCR Network, gather their wisdom and turn it into what we think is an inspiring and fun compilation of strategic lessons and research for communities at all levels of maturity.

This is a publication with themes we will be regularly revisiting, and we hope you’ll head over to download the full report from our friends at Higher Logic and check it out.

In conjunction with the release of the Handbook (and the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl XLIX win), we held our long-overdue CMAD Happy Hour Wednesday evening as well, at the Asgard in Cambridge, Mass. Thanks to all those who attended, and again thanks to all those TheCR Network members who helped make all of our CMAD events happen – those who championed the live events and those who joined us in our CMAD webinar last week.

Elsewhere on the blog, we released another of our posters from the Community Manager Salary Survey, this time a closer examination of the Director of Community role. And Shannon shared some insights on developing advocacy programs from two people who know the subject as well as anyone, Erica Kuhl and Matt Brown of Salesforce. Matt, by the way, discusses the same issue in his case study within The Community Manager Handbook. You can see the full list of profiles here – and did I mention you can get the Handbook now from Higher Logic?

And an important reminder: We need you to fill out the State of Community Management 2015 survey! In exchange for 20 minutes of your time, you get a free report of where your answers put you on the Community Maturity Model, and you contribute to research that gets “under the hood” of community management and provides insights you won’t find anywhere else.

Just do it.

Some Other Interesting Readings This Week:

The Strategic Value of Social Business: What We’ve Learned – Recently, I had the need to gather our latest research from research, clients, and case studies on the established performance of social business for the Future of Work master class I delivered in Paris at Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT 2015 this week. The intent was to answer this question: What specifically is the business value in social-based ways of working today and tomorrow?

This is the Content and Community Strategy OurCrowd Used to Get 7,000 People to Invest over $100 Million – According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, our trust in the financial sector reached an all-time low in 2014. Of course, our lack of trust in longstanding financial institutions does not inspire us to delve deeper. The OurCrowd team in Jerusalem is working to fight that erosion of trust. In less than two years, the OurCrowd community has grown from a nascent idea to over 7,000 investing global members. How have they accomplished such a feat? Content and community. In the simplest of terms, their model for success looks like this: Content creates trust. Trust creates community.

Innovation or Creativity – Working with a client late last year, I finally zeroed-in on why the senior leadership team of a B2B solution provider to the oil and gas industry was struggling to foster innovation. They were misapplying the label of “innovation” when what they really wanted was the appearance of “creativity”. It seemed that they did not have the patience or commitment to building the processes and systems to support innovation in the enterprise, especially as what they really wanted to see was new, unique and surprising outputs in and around existing parts of the business.

Announcing Structure3C – Strategies for the Collaborative Economy – It is becoming clear that a new wave of activity, the Collaborative Economy, is poised to have a large impact on global markets. Many organizations are not prepared for the coming shift, and given my experience with and passion for online community, crowdsourcing and collaboration, I see a huge opportunity to help.

New Community and Social Media Jobs

Online Content and Community Manager, The Library of America, New York, NY

Community Mgmt and Social Engagement Associate, Capital One, McLean, VA

Director of Multimedia, Angie’s List, Indianapolis, IN

Community Manager – EA Mobile, Electronic Arts, Salt Lake City, UT

Associate Community Manager, SEP Media (SABEResPODER), Los Angeles, CA

Social Content Editor, Electronic Arts, Redwood City, CA

Social Media Community Manager, IHE, San Juan, PR

Social Media Manager, Hershey Entertainment and Resorts, Hershey, PA

Community Manager, Marketwired, Toronto, ON

Social Community Manager, Visit Florida, Tallahassee, FL

Community Manager, Codeacademy, New York, NY

Community Manager, Latergramme, Vancouver, BC

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