If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, having a few wicked smart people take what we’ve done and elaborate on it is… amazing. We are always very impressed with the quality of thinking and communication done by the community management team at Radian6 – led by David Alston & Amber Naslund – now with additional strength from Lauren Vargas, Teresa Basich, and Katie Morse. They have done a tremendous job of advocating on behalf of community management and share our passion for its growth as a discipline.

A lot of people are just exploring what community management means and Radian6 has put together a fantastic eBook on the topic – Building and Sustaining Brand Communities.  It covers a lot of ground, including:

• Understanding what communities are
• Making a business case for community initiatives
• How to think about resource needs and what kind of people to hire
• Best practices of community management
• Measuring communities
• The future of community management

In an easy to read and absorb format, they’ve combined the principals of community with the fundamental tenants of good business to create a playbook for companies who want to start engaging more proactively with their communities. I particularly appreciate their emphasis on the resources required to implement a community initiative – it’s not free, even if using public social networks.  Developing a realistic strategy and budget that accommodates one’s goals is a really important initial step.  I also appreciate the importance they place throughout their book on cross-functional collaboration, whether it is with IT to ensure the systems are in place and effective or it is around early discussions with legal teams regarding the risks and boundaries that might exist.  Lastly, predictably, I love how they have interpreted and extended the definition of the Community Maturity Model that we developed.

This is a great eBook to share with colleagues, executives, and customers who may not be very familiar with what community or community management means.

An additional resource that we put together for people to share “Getting your Feet Wet in Social Media & Communities” is geared to be a bit more basic than Building and Sustaining Brand Communities if you want to provide an overview to people just starting to wonder about all the hype around social media.

If you are a community manager or a functional leader working on socializing your processes and looking for more in-depth discussions and best practices, The Community Roundtable is a peer network for that purpose.  More about membership can be found here. We’d love to speak with you if you are interested!