february Archives

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

That blasted groundhog.

The first work week of February is almost over and that groundhog has doomed us to another six weeks of winter! In Boston that meant another foot or so of snow, with more on the way! Snow or not, we’re forging ahead with our focus on connecting through community and looking forward to an exciting guest post next week, a sneak peek at the State of Community Management survey and a little holiday love for all those community managers out there.

A quick reminder: if you haven’t yet taken the (very quick!) State of Community Management survey we would love your input. We are looking for communities of all sizes and types. You can take the survey here and it should only take 15-20 minutes. As a thank you, you till get a pretty nice discount on any new TheCR Network membership too.

This week some of our favorite links were centered around the idea of connecting through community – whether at a live event, through a job your passionate about or through inspiring leadership. Read on:

A short interview with our own Rachel Happe on two social business events – IBM Connect and the Enterprise 2.0 Summit – communities with which she loves connecting
A few great job opportunities were posted: Director of Community Engagement at Salesforce Online Communities Manager at Grantmakers for Education and a Social Media Editor at the WSJ
Some unconventional behaviors of inspiring leaders
What community managers can and should learn from each other
We rarely weigh in on fashion, but these are perfect for every unicorn-chasing community manager
Empowering employees with social media improves customer relationships and grows revenue
Lessons from Social Business in BASF
Content calendars aren’t evil – they’re just abused

Have a great weekend – we’ll see you on Monday when we’ll kick off a discussion focused on connecting with peers.

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TheCR Network is a membership network that provides strategic, tactical and professional development programming for community and social business leaders. The network enables members to connect and form lasting relationships with experts and peers as well as get access to vetted content.

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

Our 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!