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Community Manager Spotlight: Ask Me Anything with Hillary Boucher

July 30, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Last week we hosted our first AMA (ask me anything) webinar with Hillary Boucher – like your typical AMA we asked Hillary questions that our audience sent in (either ahead of time, or in the stream), but unlike a typical AMA this was not just a chat – we held a live webinar so Hillary could provide a little more color on some of the questions that were meatier. As usual we’ve archived the event here in case you missed it (or loved it so much you’d like to relive it again!)

In addition to the questions Hillary tackles in this webinar (including “What fun or creative ideas have you used to drive member engagement?” and “What do you do when your community goes “quiet?”) we had a handful of questions that we ran out of time and didn’t get to answer. I chatted with Hillary after the event and have her answers to these extra questions included below the archive:

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And now the bonus questions!

Q: What’s one lesson/aha you’ve learned from a member in the past year?

A: Be prepared for anything on a live virtual event with your community. I was facilitating a call and we lost our presenter. Poof! She was gone. I did my best try to stir up some conversation while we waited, but it was rough. One of the participants is an expert facilitator and she jumped in and requested that we go around the call and answer a question having to do with the topic at hand. Obvious to me in hindsight, but harder to implement without having thought it through head of time. I have now added “what will I do if I lose my presenter” to my list of preparations for calls!

Q: Who is one famous non-cmgr person (celebrity/historical figure/fictional character) you’d love to have as a member of the network or as a roundtable facilitator? 

A: Rosa Parks. I’ve always known her story, but was recently re-engaged with it while reading The Power of Habit for a book club inside the network. The author is talking about how to initiate large scale behavior change and points to her as an example because she wasn’t the first person to refuse to move seats in that place and time, but she was a well-networked person providing the optimal connections needed to trigger large wide scale behavior change. I’d love to have her in to discuss how she built and managed relationships with such a large network with so many diverse stakeholders because as community managers that’s exactly what we need to be doing.

Q: How do you see the future of community management?

A: The role is becoming more operationalized. We don’t need to play guessing games any more but can build off each others’ work and the research we are doing at TheCR. As we have a more experienced pool of community professionals moving into leadership roles we will see a more community minded approach coming from the C-suite which will allow community programs to be better funded, more successful, with bigger, built out teams. As a result I think the role will become more specialized based on the needs of the team.

Q: What features are current social media tools missing that could be useful for community managers?

A: I don’t manage social media tools professionally so I’m not the best person to ask that question though I imagine if we asked this one on Twitter we might get an earful. As far as community platforms: I would personally love to see a tool that was user friendly enough for a non-techie community manager to be able to customize with a built-in crm for member management and built-in customizable email notification system.

Q: What vendor/platform do you use for weekly “newsletter” – is it automated or is this manual via email?

A: Right now we use Constant Contact and it is a manual email I spend 2-3 hours on weekly. It’s also the main trigger we use to reach out members on a weekly basis.

A big thanks to Hillary for being our first AMA guinea pig! Stayed tuned for more AMAs in the future.

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Did you know that TheCR Network members work with all kinds of communities? In fact, about 25% work in either internal or external communities and 50% work with both! No matter what kind of community you work with membership in TheCR Network will save you time and improve the quality of your work by connecting you with peers, experts and curated information. Learn how joining TheCR Network can improve the work you do.

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Webinar Recap: Community Manager Spotlight with Maggie McGary

May 14, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Last month we were lucky enough to sit down with Maggie McGary, Web & Social Media Administrator at AOTA. Maggie is a community veteran – and has been an active member of The Community Roundtable since our inception in 2009.  Maggie is a writer and digital strategist with over five years of hands-on experience managing websites, online communities and social media for associations. She has deep experience in all facets of content marketing including blogging, social media marketing, community management and web content development. A well-respected subject matter expert, Maggie presents frequently at ASAE and other industry events, and blogs about social media both on her blog, Mizz Information, and Socialfish.

In addition to over 10 years experience in the association world, Maggie is a blogger whose guest posts have been featured on numerous blogs including The Washington Post, SocialFishing and Social Media Today. Maggie blogs about social media at https://MaggieMcGary.com, and you can find her on Twitter @maggielmcg.

Below you’ll find the complete Community Manager Spotlight webinar featuring Maggie. She provides a fantastic framework for supporting and encouraging engagement and provide great advice to any community professional – not just those in the association space.

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Don’t miss our next Community Manager Spotlight webinar featuring Ian White from Rackspace. Ian will be sharing best practices for community-based customer support. Register now!

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Did you know that 95% of The Network members agree that the content and peer input improves the quality of their work? It’s true! Membership in The Network saves community and social business leaders time and improves the quality of their work by connecting them quickly with peers, experts and curated information. Learn how joining The Network can improve the work you do.

https://media.blubrry.com/608862/communityroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Instant-meeting-2014-04-30.webm

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Recap: Community Manager Spotlight Webinar with Heather Ausmus

April 3, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

In March, Jim chatted with Heather Ausmus as part of our ongoing Community Manager Spotlight webinar series. Heather has used the Community Maturity Model in her community work and shared how she has developed a plan through FY18 using the model as a framework.

 Heather Ausmus is the Online Community Manager at Johnson Controls Building Efficiency where she manages the Connected Community, an external community for customers, partners and prospective customers. She recently also started managing Johnson Controls Building Efficiency social media programs. Prior to Johnson Controls Building Efficiency, she helped consumer brands develop and implement social media programs and was the Marketing Manager for a global consumer brand.

Watch the video below to learn more about Heather and her team’s use of the Community Maturity Model in their work, and hear her answers to great questions, including:

  • How she has proven the worth of the community internally
  • How she was able to scale her effort with such a small team
  • What tools she uses to run reports, capture the data and methods of distribution
  • How her community team engages with product management teams

Have a question for Heather? You can connect with her on Twitter or leave them in the comments below.

This content has moved inside The Network.

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Did you know that 95% of The Network members agree that the content and peer input improves the quality of their work? It’s true! Membership in The Network saves community and social business leaders time and improves the quality of their work by connecting them quickly with peers, experts and curated information. Learn how joining The Network can improve the work you do.

https://media.blubrry.com/608862/communityroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/heatherausmus_webinar.webm

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

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