The Community Roundtable

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

Facebook Pages and How Social Networks Lost Their Way

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

I have long thought that Facebook has been on a slippery path, because while it revolutionized the communications and engagement model from a linear transaction to a networked flow, Facebook’s founders built a traditional, transactional business model (advertising based) on top of it. Those two things are in fundamental conflict because they way value is created does not match the way revenue is generated.

That conflict is starting to come to a head – Facebook Pages no longer generate much organic reach through engagement and the latest changes to the Facebook news feed algorithm make it even worse. You have to pay to play. The irony in all of this is that it all stems from the fact that they made engagement too easy.

Let me use BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model to explain. Facebook wanted people to connect with brands, so they made liking a page super easy and gave people lots of triggers to do so – requiring little motivation of people. So people liked a lot of pages, which seemed initially to demonstrate value. Now that is biting them in the backside because people have liked hundreds of pages, many of which they actually care very little about – and don’t want them bumping their friends’ posts from their news feeds. Facebook’s solution? To keep diminishing the percentage of Page activity that shows up in peoples’ newsfeeds and prioritize based on who pays. The new problem? That solution doesn’t align well with what people really want to see, or the way they prioritize pages that have value to them. It’s solely driven by which page owners are willing to pay.

 

So what are organizations to do? Well, we think owning your own social experience by creating communities is the only way to really protect yourself from the vicissitudes of social networks – and it will feel a lot more like social media did before the big players had to figure out a business model.

Want to be a part of the community for the best community managers? We’d love to have you join TheCR Network! Learn more on TheCR Network page of communityroundtable.com.

Connecting Through Community

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

connecting through communityOur great content experiment continues in February (read more about Janaury here) with a month-long focus on connecting through community. At first glance the idea of connecting through community is obvious – as a community manager one of your main goals might be to connect with members, connect members to each other or connect member to information or resources that they need. And indeed, each of those activities can be a full time job in its own right. Over the next four weeks we’ll take a look at each of those ways of connecting, but we’re going to dig deeper as well.

For many community managers there is more “connecting the dots” than an outsider would ever imagine. Many of you struggle to connect the value of community management to tangible ROI and business results. Others wish for a way to connect with like-minded peers who share their purpose.  So often a community manager is an island in an organization that might not believe in the power of good community management or worse yet, struggle against a divided executive team – one that wants a successful community or social program without understanding the real work that goes into making it thrive.

Over the next month we’ll share content focused on all aspects of “connecting”  in the community world from member case studies to best practices and resources. We’re focusing on connecting people, ideas, and  resources – with expert advice and some fun surprises thrown in. If you have any great resources that help you “connect,” please reach out – we’d love to hear from you!

Finally, in the spirit of connectedness, I want to share some of the online places you can catch up with us. Many people share with us that they are on the community journey, but don’t yet have the resources to be a member of the Network – and we understand. Here are a few places you can connect with us and our content:

Pinterest – We have several boards focused on different aspects of community, including a Reading List, Research, Infographics and our ever-growing list of TheCR Network Experts.

Slideshare – On our slideshare page you can find both full length and excerpts of popular presentations as well as selected research and related community documents.

Twitter – Twitter is definitely our most active channel online – we tweet all day, every (week) day and it’s the best place to follow along for news, information and commentary on what’s happening in the community world.

Facebook – Our Facebook page is a great place to connect with us if you’re looking for news, calls for participation in events and research and for more general stories at the intersection of community and human interest.

LinkedIn – Looking for great discussions, alerts about available community jobs and lots of like-minded community peers? You can connect with us – and other community leaders here.

Of course, this blog is a great way to stay connected to the happenings at TheCR. In the coming months we’ll continue to connect you to new research, news and even more content centered around community managers themselves, including new Faces of Community Management profiles and a monthly Community Manager Spotlight webinar. We’d love to connect with you – please find us at in the places above, or share the best way to connect in the comments below!

Jeff Esposito on Shaping Social Media Efforts with Community

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management. Our series continues with episode #20, featuring Jeff Esposito, PR Manager with Vistaprint. Highlights include:
  • Birth of a program– getting hit (literally) with a magazine and being asked to “figure this Twitter thing out”
  • Getting the community to help shape social media efforts rather than dictating the strategy to the audience
  • Backing up the “No Customer Left Behind” philosophy through personal interaction over mass messaging
  • Weighing short term fixes (marketing gimmicks) vs a long-term strategy
  • Creating customer service expectations; when you are online, from posting duty hours to managing the lack of presence around a weather emergency

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.