community teams Archives

Community Teams are Growing

September 12, 2022 By Jim Storer

The Community Management competency of the Community Maturity Model™ involves everything that ensures communities are productive. While community managers come from all walks of life and approach their role differently, they have the same goal: Build healthy, engaged communities where members learn from one another and collaborate on ideas, issues, or challenges.

After seeing a dip in the size of community management teams in 2021, they’re growing dramatically in 2022! This can likely be attributed to organizations in 2021 dealing with the uncertainty of COVID-19 and increased mobility. 2022’s increase is an effort to rebalance. There will likely be a modest rise in the coming year as community teams continue to grow with their programs.

With this growth, defining community roles is critical.

Linking community programs to operations should top every community team’s to-do list. While defining community roles and responsibilities — and getting them approved by human resources — is critical when developing community programs, 65% of respondents indicated they don’t have defined and HR-approved community roles. This is a huge gap to be addressed as an industry and individually by community teams.

In 2014, we documented the skills necessary for community building, which resulted in the Community Skills Framework™. Built around five skill “families” — each with ten unique skills — and providing a comprehensive look at the role, the Community Skills Framework™ is perfect for anyone who works in the community space and wants to understand the depth and breadth of skills needed on their team.

Recommendation: Definitions are your friend.

Develop defined roles and responsibilities for your community team and review with HR for alignment. Use the Community, Careers, and Compensation research to jump-start this effort.

Get more community ideas and advice in our 2022 State of Community Management report:

Community Conversations – Episode #79: Chris Catania

March 9, 2022 By Jim Storer

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

Episode #79 of Community Conversations features Chris Catania, Head of Community at Esri. Esri is an international supplier of geographic information system software, web GIS and geodatabase management applications, headquartered in Redlands, California.

Chris is an award-winning community and collaboration leader, who always thinks “people first, technology next.”For more than 20 years, he has helped organizations build relationships with their audiences through strategic communication, community management, content development, and global business strategy.

He believes in the proven power of community to deepen trust, increase loyalty, lower costs and grow revenue. And that power comes when you align community with real business goals to design meaningful online experiences and deliver measurable business results.

He is driven by a passion to empower companies to leverage the power of community as a strategic asset and competitive advantage in the marketplace.

We chat about how the community redesign of their long-term community program, their award-winning community design elements, and how Esri leveraged member feedback to design a community that serves the members and the organization.

Listen Now

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Discussed in the conversation:

Community Jobs

Team Bearded Dragon:

Trends in Community Management Staffing

July 29, 2019 By Jim Storer

34% of community professionals surveyed in the State of Community Management 2019 are still on teams of one, with the average community team now at six individuals, four of whom are full-time.

Surprisingly, the size of a team currently does not show consistent correlation to use case, the number of members in a community, the ROI of the community, or the sophistication of community strategy. This indicates there is little rationale in staffing to fit the needs or value of the community and suggests that staffing still relies on ad hoc support, that may just be one enlightened executive who believes in the promise of building community.

This disconnect further reinforces that community roles are not well rationalized – and justifying new headcount relies more on persuasion or vision than on responsibilities and results. This implication is further reinforced by looking at the disconnect between growth in value and the resulting increase in staffing and resources. 67% of community programs saw an increase in value and 70% of professionals report that the perception of their credibility and value has increased, yet only 34% of community programs saw any increase in staffing.

Additionally, only 49% of community professionals have been promoted, despite that increase in value and credibility. Not surprising then, when asked about their biggest frustration, community leaders identified lack of resources. Community value is growing significantly, but resources and compensation is lagging behind and often never materializes. This incongruity needs to be addressed by organizational leaders.

Note: This post contains content originally published in the State of Community Management 2019 report. Download your free copy here.

J.J. Lovett, CA Technologies

November 1, 2016 By Jim Storer

Welcome to the latest episode in our community management podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers” featuring J.J. Lovett, Director, Communities at CA Technologies.

Join TheCR’s founder and principal, Jim Storer and director of marketing, Shannon Abram as they chat with community managers from a variety of industries about a variety of community topics, including:

What’s your best advice for someone just starting out in Community Management?
What are your best practices for increasing community engagement?
How can you survive the zombie apocalypse? (Ok – they might not ALL be community questions…)

Episode #46 features J.J. Lovett, Director, Communities at CA Technologies. Join us as J.J. quotes “Glengarry Glen Ross” and we chat about his 10-year community journey at CA Technologies, best practices for building a dynamic community team, and his upcoming summer roadtrip!

Check out episode #46 featuring J.J. Lovett here:

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Did you know you can subscribe to “Conversations with Community Managers” iTunes? You can!

Community Teams Build Success

June 15, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

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:

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.