The Community Roundtable

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

Introducing TheCR Champion Program

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager The Community Roundtable.

Turns out Fall 2014 is a pretty big season here at TheCR. (In case you missed it we announced a new service last week and announced our new partnership with #ESNchat the week before!) Today, I’m excited to share some news from inside TheCR Network.

ChampionsAfter months of work, we are launching a leadership program for TheCR Network called TheCR Champions. This program serves to:

  • Deepen conversations among special interest groups who share a common use case or characteristic 
  • Enhance our content and programming by having community leaders, who have deep expertise in their domain, lead conversations
  • Connect you more closely with similar peers and industry experts

We’ve sought out Champions who are experts in the space and who can add depth to the conversation in their respective domains, introduce members to the others within their personal networks, and facilitate a special interest group within TheCR Network.

We have launched three special interest groups to start:

  • Associations & NFP/Non-Profits: exploring issues related to associations and non-profit organizations in the social and community space
  • The Social Executive: to explore and curate best practices for gaining executive support and coaching executives to get started and succeed in their communities
  • Business Model Innovation: to explore the critical role of community elements in the development of new business models at enterprises large and small

We have groups on social support and governance launching soon, with groups on ESN/collaboration and social media in the works.

What does this mean for our members? They’ve seen (and will continue to see) more content and programming (available to the entire network but tailored to specific groups) with a variety of quality facilitators and guest experts that address special interests. 

For me, it’s the culmination of months of work below the visible surface of the community – the iceberg effect of community management – and over the next few weeks, I’ll be introducing our first TheCR Champions on the blog. We are honored to work with them and excited to have them invest their time and expertise inside the network, and we want to give you an idea of the special work they are doing.

Thanks for reading along. I love sharing the cool stuff that happens inside the Network, and I’d love to chat with you if you think membership might be a good fit for you and your community journey. Drop me a line!
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Want to take advantage of programs like TheCR Champions? Join the Network today!

Guest Post: The Anatomy of an Enterprise Community Manager

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luke sinclair, Enterprise Community ManagerNote: This is a guest post by community professional and TheCR Network member Luke Sinclair. 

Last week I hosted a Sitrion TALKS session with a panel of awesome community managers. The basis was one of my favorite infographics, Inside the Mind of a Community Manager. We had a great conversation on internal and external community management and some of the synergies and differences between the two.

Afterwards, I got thinking. Is there a graphic to represent the make-up of an Enterprise Community Manager? Not that I’m aware of. Since then, I’ve been busily whipping up my latest creation: “Anatomy of an Enterprise Community Manager.”

I’d love to hear your thoughts, comments and feedback! Does this sum up your role as an Enterprise Community Manager? Are you thinking about hiring one and now feel clearer about the role?

Enterprise Community Manager

 

 

Note this post originally appeared on the Sitrion blog, where Luke blogs regularly about community management challenges.

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Interested in how TheCR Network can connect you with like-minded community management professionals like Luke? Learn more or drop us a line.

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: September 2014 Wrap-Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

September is a big month inside TheCR Network, and as the community manager of this fine community I have been feeling the burn! We launch a robust programming schedule for the Network every September and members took full advantage of the live, interactive sessions offered to them as part of their membership. Here are a few samplings of what was discussed:

  • Undeniable Story: The Science & Intuition of Engagement (Roundtable/Skillbuilder): I considered this session the opening keynote of fall programming. Michael Margolis, CEO of Get Storied, and friend of TheCR came in to share his expertise of storytelling in business. Some folks came to learn how to better tell the story of their community and its value internally and others were focused on how to create great stories about their organization and its products and/or services to facilitate engagement in external customer facing communities. No matter the use case, Michael held us captivated and offered a number of strategies and exercises to help us become master storytellers. In the words on one community leader, “I felt like he was holding the missing puzzle piece I have been seeking for some time now :-).”
  • A Tale of Community, Intranet Integration & the Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow (Roundtable/Case Study): One of the things our members find consistently helpful is to hear the stories of community programs that are more mature and well established. It helps give perspective and they have a chance to ask important questions to fellow practitioners (How did you gain executive support for that? What were the triggers that preceded the need for that program? How did the team restructure as a result of this initiative?). On this call we learned first hand from an EMC practitioner what it took to undergo a community and intranet integration and the ROI it brought the company.
  • Introduction to The Community Performance Benchmark (Webinar): We’ve been putting the finishing touches on a new service offering. I can’t go into too much detail here, because it’s still in top secret mode, but membership has its perks and we like to make sure our members have first access. And since this new service is built upon the State of Community Management research we’ve worked on collaboratively with our members it was created with them in mind. On this webinar, Rachel shares with members and their special guests more about this new service and an offer for special member pricing.

If you want to get a full idea of what membership is like you can take a look at this extensive overview which shares our general programming opportunities and resources made available to members.

Want to access our fall programming for the benefit of your community work? Reach out and ask us about membership.

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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.

 

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: May 2014 Wrap-Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

TheCR team up to no good at LiNC 14 in San Francisco.

TheCR team up to no good at LiNC 14 in San Francisco.

May was another great month inside TheCR Network! As Shannon mentioned earlier this month, our team was busy traveling and had the opportunity to meet up with many of our members face-to-face at various industry events. I work virtually with all of our members and it was so nice to meet folks, share a real (vs virtual) happy hour, and learn more about the challenges they face so we can better provide programming and resources to address them.

Even with all of our travel there was still plenty going on in the Network. Here are a few highlights from this month inside TheCR Network:

  • Building community by addressing behavior change (Roundtable). We were fascinated by the presentation Nir Eyal gave inside TheCR earlier this month on building habit forming communities. What made this call a winner? The content was stellar, but members were able to take advantage of casual format of a Roundtable call and interact directly with Nir. We had some great questions and conversation. Tons of applicable insights for community managers (and here I was worrying it would be too product focused). I have already been adapting some of his insights and applying them to my own community work.
  • Building a community from scratch (Roundtable). We have a number of veteran members who have recently taken on the challenge of building community from scratch. We heard two case studies: one from the B2C side (Sidecar) and another from the B2B perspective (Limelight Networks) and took a deep dive into how the practitioners approached and managed the three months it took them to get from zero to pilot. Best part of this call? We’ll be checking back in at the six month and the one year mark to learn about their progress. I’m very excited to capture this info for our members in our archives.
  • Adventures in coaching the C-suite (Roundtable). Always a popular topic because it’s so very integral to the success of community initiatives. On this call we had two members share their experiences of coaching executives. This call was facilitated by Maggie, one of my teammates who works here at TheCR and worked closely on The Social Executive research we released last year.

If you want to get a full idea of what membership is like you can take a look at this extensive overview which shares our general programming opportunities and resources made available to members.

I hope you had a great month, too! I’m looking forward to all the great conversations we have planned for June including metrics, enterprise collaboration, and user design for community managers. I hope you will join us!

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Did you know members of TheCR Network have unlimited access to our Library, which includes:

  • Research: TheCR’s State of Community Management and Social Executive research (including downloadable reports exclusive to members)
  • Resource bundles: Curated content from TheCR and beyond to help you with specific topics
  • Quick Cases: Short case studies from TheCR Network members on specific community projects
  • Conference Resources: Links to the network’s collaborative Community Conference Guide and a collection of Conference Trip Report Podcasts featuring TheCR Network members’ takeaways from community related conferences
  • Roundtable Reports: Over 200 summaries of our weekly Roundtable calls

Learn how you can access TheCR Network Library and more with a membership.

Sneak Peek Inside TheCR Network: February 2014 Wrap-Up

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Hello. My name is Hillary Boucher and I am the community manager of TheCR Network – our private peer network of the smartest social business and community professionals. And I kid you not — every day I am honored to work with the intelligent, savvy and experienced community professionals in our network.

I know there are many people who want to know what membership is like, and so every month I’m going to be giving a sneak peek into what we’ve been up to inside the network. Ready? Here we go!

Nerdy Valentine's Day card by Stephanie Evergreen

Nerdy Valentine’s Day card by Stephanie Evergreen

 

Last month in TheCR Network…

February is for lovers. Community lovers that is.

It might have been a cold and snowy month for most of our team, but with 95+ companies represented and globally located we were able to live vicariously through our members located in warmer climates.

Member Questions & Discussions

Inside TheCR Network members have access to groups and forums based on their work and priorities. Here, they can ask questions for other members to answer or report on their own insights and experiences. Some of the hot topics this month were:

  • How do you get members over the “it’s a stupid question so I won’t ask” hump?
  • What are some best practices around community approvals?
  • Do you have different tiers for your MVP/super user program?

New Resources

TheCR Network members have access to TheCR Library, which includes an archive of Roundtable Reports, TheCR Research, Resource Bundles organized by use case, member case studies and more.

  • Community Maturity Model Resource Bundle. This month we revamped and re-released our Community Maturity Model Resource Bundle to include new resources our members co-created with our team.
  • New crowdsourced conference guide. It’s a common challenge to keep track of industry appropriate events so we decided to take the challenge on as a network. The collaborative document is filling up fast with helpful info and insights about various conferences and events that might be helpful to members.
  • Advocacy Program Quick Case. Every week we host two virtual Happy Hour chats for our team to connect with other members around work and personal interests. It was one of those beautiful community moments. Two members bumped into each other in Happy Hour chat. After some casual introductions, one member mentioned she was researching how to launch an advocacy program and another member replied that she had just been there and launched a program last year. A case study was shared right there in Happy Hour and with their permission we grabbed the most helpful parts of their conversation, reformatted it and released it as a quick case so other members could benefit from the information exchange.
  • Four new Roundtable reports. We create reports from every single Roundtable call. In February we released four new reports filled with best practices and lessons learned on a variety of topics including: 2014 trends for social business, State of Community Management research overview, how to manage up in a networked world, and how gamification can drive business objectives in your community.

Roundtable Calls and Member Events

Roundtable calls are the heartbeat of our programming. Every week we host a live, interactive call with expert facilitators covering various topics and case studies that are important and supportive to our members’ work. Here are the discussions we hosted this month:

Social Business and Transparency
This was a well attended Roundtable call hosted by one of our members from a large, financial institution. She shared an inspiring case study and best practices on transparency and engagement in enterprise social networks.

Community Maturity Workshop
As you know we’ve been collecting survey data for our 2014 State of Community Management Research both inside the network and with our extended network of friends. (Have you taken the survey yet? It closes Friday and we would love to have you included!) What you might not know is that inside the network we have an active Community Maturity Assessment Working Group who has been collaborating with our team and building maturity assessment tools. Their work informed our survey creation and this month we gathered for a workshop, facilitated by Maggie Tunning, to take a peek at the early results and discuss insights.

How Do you Measure the Success of Community Managers?
This is a hot topic for members and the second time in six months we’ve gathered to discuss. We heard from experienced team leaders on how they assess the success of the community managers on their teams, and we also heard from individual community professionals on how they measure their own success.

Crowdsourcing and Collaborating with Consumers: Understanding the Difference
For this discussion we brought in an external expert, Julie Wittes Schlack who is the VP of Innovation at Communispace, to take a detailed look at best practices for collaborating and crowdsourcing with consumers.

Book Club: The Circle by Dave Eggers
Is sharing really caring? Are you spooked by the public’s disregard for privacy? No? Then you haven’t read The Circle by Dave Eggers yet. It’s a novel that takes a very interesting look at where society could be heading with its technology and the slippery slope of privacy and transparency. It’s not as far fetched as you might think and it’s particularly interesting to discuss with others who work is the social and community space. Our team gathered with members for a book club chat and decided that the book affirms that the conversation at hand is not just about technology — but the intent of the people who yield it.

Alumni Series: 20 Questions w/ Claire Flanagan
We gathered for a small and intimate discussion with longtime TheCR member, Claire Flanagan to discuss her career journey in the community space. Along with Claire’s perspectives, members weighed in with their own thoughts on what they’ve learned over the past five years, where the career path of a community manager can lead, and the current trends that are affecting and shaping the way they approach their community work.

Want to join the conversation?

What do you think? Enough for one month? I’ve only just highlighted some of our more prevalent discussions. There have been many more questions and discussions, high quality content curated and archived for future research needs, and many peer-to-peer introductions made by our team as part of our concierge service we provide members. If you are interested in being a part of TheCR Network you can learn more about membership here. I’d love to help you get started!

See you next month!

 

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Do you manage a community? Take the 15 minute State of Community Management survey and save $500 on individual membership through Friday, February 28th.

Friday Roundup – The News You Can Use Edition

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By Shannon DiGregorio, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable

It was a big news week here at The Community Roundtable. We announced our newest toolkit offering and discussed changes in TheCR Network for 2014. If you missed the news you’ll find those links below as well as links to some of our favorite stories from around the web this week.

Our Holiday Gift Guide: For the Community Manager in Your Life was one part silly, two parts serious – but 100% built to help you shop!

The WestJet Christmas Miracle ad went viral and brought a lot of smiles (and maybe some tears) to our team.

Our co-founder Jim Storer shared some upcoming changes in TheCR Network for 2014.

This “The Twelve Days of Community Management Christmas” series (Part One & Part Two) is funny and spot on.

2014: The Year of Earned Social Marketing is an interesting look at how social marketing might change in the new year.

We launched our newest toolkit with newly released and archived research from our State of Community Management survey.

I can’t believe there are only three weeks left this year! I hope you have a lovely, warm and cozy, restful weekend – whether you are celebrating the holidays, braving the snow on the East Coast or decking your palm trees with lights!

Become a Part of the Network You Need… Before You Need It

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By Jim Storer, Co-Founder and Principal at The Community Roundtable

2013 has been an amazing, busy and productive year here at The Community Roundtable. Membership grew by 34% and we now reach members in thirty-one US states and seven countries around the world. I am personally thrilled with the collaboration and camaraderie that the Network fosters – watching members help each other with real issues and solve problems together is gratifying and brings us one step closer to realizing our vision for a truly interactive hub for advancing community strategy and management. The best reward for us is that our progress also makes our members proud.

To support this growth we’ve made significant changes this past year, including doubling the size of our team. 2014 will also bring changes to what membership in TheCR Network looks like. First, we’ll begin bundling our Toolkits with membership starting in 2014 and our research library will continue to grow to support our additional members. After a lot of discussion Rachel and I have decided to increase the fee for TheCR Network membership. In order to provide quality content and programs, access to industry-leading research and our signature professional concierge service, we feel this is essential. As of January 1, 2014, TheCR Network membership fee will increase from $995 to $1,499/person/year and will include your choice of one toolkit along with your membership seat. Contact us for special team pricing for three or more people.

Current members will be grandfathered at the current membership rate, meaning if you join by December 31st you can lock in the $995 price. In other words, if you have been thinking of joining, now is a great time to do so!

Members of TheCR Network enjoy:

  • Weekly member-only roundtable calls with industry leaders like Jeremiah Owyang, Richard Millington, Maria Ogneva, Bill Johnston and more
  • Access to over 200 case studies and reports in our research library highlighting best practices from Fortune 500 companies
  • Our professional concierge service, matching you with a member or expert that has experience with your specific issue
  • Downloads of all TheCR Research in pdf format
  • Exclusive discounts on training, events, research and Toolkits
  • The opportunity to define TheCR roadmap and research priorities

We know it’s not always easy to convince your boss to allocate budget for your professional development. We are happy to help you with cost justification and referrals. We’ve drafted a justification letter for you to use and we are also happy to speak directly with you and your team. Contact us to learn more.

As 2013 draws to a close I want to thank you for being a loyal friend of The Community Roundtable. TheCR Network members are a vibrant part of our world, but we also appreciate your continued support. We will continue to invest in curated content and research for our wider community of friends and followers (including our curated Twitter stream, Pinterest boards, Slideshare presentations, favorites and blog). Over the last two years we’ve added services and content for those of you just starting out – including training and toolkits that can be purchased a la carte.

Join TheCR Network now!

Here’s to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2014. We can’t wait to see what the new year brings!