research Archives

Sweating the details: TheCR community research process

October 26, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, Head of Research, The Community Roundtable

What goes into the community research that The Community Roundtable does in the field of community management? Data, collaboration and experience.

It’s an exciting day for me. Today I shipped out the first draft of the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 reports (yes, there are two versions) to the graphic designer to get the layout done. That will be followed by more edits, more layout tweaks and more edits after that, leading up to the final report release in the middle of next month.

I’ve written before about the cooperative effort that goes into creating the questions for each of our core research offerings. But for those of you who took the time to complete the survey, it may seem like things get awfully quiet between the survey period and the release. And you’re right. It gets quiet – like library or research lab quiet.

Once the data is in and the survey period closes, we have a lot of data to go through. For the CCC, as an example, we end up with about 65,000 individual data points to review, and formulas to write off those bits of information. For the State of Community Management, the number is even higher. Data is entered, formulas are written, and then we do through the painful process of cleaning. That means the members of the research team begin going through line by line looking for red herrings, typos, misinterpreted replies, and data in improper formats. These range from respondents who may feel that all 20,000 members of their external community should be counted as volunteers, to cultural differences, like using 1,5 versus 1.5 for headcount in a community team.

Jillian Bejtlich from our team is our spreadsheet wiz, and we go through the data, the myriad ways we can parse it to test hypotheses, find patterns and answer questions. Rachel Happe, of course, joins the fray as we go through, and depending on the project, other members of the team take a look as well. We evaluate, look for those “Aha!” moments, and over a period of days and weeks, discussions and debates, settle on tentative key findings for the report.

The data supporting those key findings – and every finding has supporting data – are checked and rechecked, and the findings and their supporting evidence are presented to the team for approval. I love and hate this part, because already a lot of work has gone into it, and the challenging and wordsmithing are both valuable and a discussion of how ugly my baby is.

Key findings in place, we bring in additional data (if there is any), clean and recheck the data to make sure nothing new and weird has developed, and we begin to build the major graphics for the report. Each report has a handful of graphics we know will be central to the document – in the SOCM, it’s engagement profiles and variations on the Community Maturity Model. In the CCC, it’s the salary table and the Community Skills Framework. The design for these graphics begins even before we have data in place, and continues as data comes in, to make sure that the end graphics tell an effective story.

From there, we build out the boilerplate data sections – those we know we are going to have in each SOCM or CCC. It’s the same process. Examine, analyze, compare, lay out, write copy, and it gets repeated for each element. While we go through this, we are continuing to build two lists – one of data points that deserve further exploration and one of data points that can be used in other projects – since after all, not every piece of data and every observation can fit in a single report. We also make sure the information we gather is making it into other aspects of our work – questions we can answer on TheCR blog in the upcoming months, webinars and calls we can plan, and elements we can add to our online training and other assets. We also use this information in less formal ways – when you ask us a question on Facebook or Twitter, we are drawing from our experience and knowledge of the data – not just hypothesizing based on anecdote. Members of TheCR Network, too, are able to take advantage of our insights and those of their peers as they dig into the thorny issues of community.

From there, we fall into a more traditional editorial process. Write. Edit. Rewrite. Approve graphics. Rewrite. Edit. And so on. In the end, we end up with reports full of data and analysis that can answer your questions and help you plan your community or career strategy. And a whole lot more.

It’s a lot of work, but it’s a joy to do. And none of it would be possible without the input of hundreds of community management professionals like you – who take the time, share their data and help us create a whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Communities are complex organisms, and there are no magic formulas – many of us have learned that through experience. There’s also no one piece of research that will answer every question. But bit by bit, together we’ve created a body of work that can guide communities new and old, large and small, on the road to success.

Oh – and keep an eye out for the Community Careers and Compensation 2015 summary report next month. I can’t wait for you to meet our newest baby.

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The most popular data types in the State of Community Management

June 8, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

Having just enjoyed (survived?) my first season writing and editing for the State of Community Management 2015, one of the most interesting parts of the post-release followup is actually seeing what pieces resonate with people. They seem to fall into three categories.

The Key Indicators Data

No shockers here. It’s my first time at this rodeo, but there were data that I knew would generate interest in the research – and did, including our look at community engagement profiles. The engagement profile data is like the SAT for community managers. It’s an easy way to compare your community performance with others near and far – even though it’s a stat that can be prone to misinterpretation depending on how you use it.

One thing we worked on for this report was comparisons of how the data changed with different use cases. One piece of the SOCM I enjoyed writing was the discussion of what including inactive users does to the engagement profiles of internal and external communities. The shift in the numbers depending on whether you count inactives (those who don’t even log in) or not shifts numbers markedly, and depending on your community use case it can clarify or obfuscate your “real” engagement. Interestingly, with inactives excluded, the engagement profiles of internal and external communities differed less than you might think.

The Journey Data

The old saw “Where you stand depends on where you sit” might need an addendum – “…and how long you have been there!” There is a series of data in the SOCM that younger community managers may not fully appreciate, but those who have been working in the space for a long time love – data I think of as “journey data.” They’re things like the percentage of communities that have budgets approved by or report to the C-suite.

It’s data that newer community professionals can easily dismiss, but for some of our more seasoned colleagues, it’s a reminder of how far we have come in connecting communities to business objectives. Executives may not understand community in many cases, but awareness, responsibility and engagement are improving.

The Now Data

These are the correlations that can drive actionable ideas, and I don’t have a favorite in this group, because they vary for any community. Looking for things to get new members engaged? There are a lot of things you can do – and there is data to back up the ideas. Feel like you need to get a handle on your strategy, create a roadmap, build that crisis plan to get your community to the next level? There’s data there to back up that assertion.

There’s also data that demonstrate the work we need to do in the community space. Too many communities have a strategy, but no resourced roadmap to get there. That’s like saying you want to move to Mars, but have no idea where it is in the sky and/or no rocket to get there. We obsess about ROI but at the end of the day most of us haven’t figured out how to measure it for our communities. These aren’t easy problems to solve, but each year, we get more data with stories behind them that make us all a bit smarter about solutions. I love hearing people say we’ve given them data that helps them move forward. Research is at the core of what we do – it transforms good ideas into sensible strategies.

Every year, we are honored to have so many people say that SOCM release day is one of their favorite days of the year. We hope you’ll share the stories of the value it provides for your work, and take part in our research to help inform community programs, their members, their professionals and their stakeholders.

The State of Community Management 2015 is an indispensable resource for community professionals seeking to understand their communities, and the State of Community Management survey can provide you insights and scoring of your community maturity. Download the report and take the survey!

CMSS Stats You Can Use: What’s the Best Way to Network?

March 4, 2015 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Community professionals have no shortage of resources to help them grow in their careers.

It’s an exciting time to work in the community management world. Given the rise in community management, blogs, books and other publications are in abundance for those looking to read up on good practices and trends in the field. (You can check out our recommended reading list here.)

Conferences and other networking opportunities that connect community professionals with their industry peers help them stay current with trends in a field that is growing as technology advances. We’ve found that vendor conferences can be particularly helpful when connecting you with people that are struggling with the same challenges that you face – and provide a great way to expand your understanding of the platform you use.

Through our Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 research we found that 51% of survey participants belong to a professional development group – these groups (like TheCR Network) provide an instant network of like-minded community practitioners and a 24/7 support system for often-siloed community professionals. Many cities also host community-focused meet-ups (like OcTribe in San Francisco and the Community Manager Breakfast series in Austin)- check out what is available near you or start your own group!

Community managers may want to take a look at our newest eBook, as well. Defining Community Management Roles provides you with information on salaries, experience, skills and responsibilities for three key community management roles – community manager, community strategist and director of community. Check it out now!

Community Career Profiles: All About Community Strategists

February 12, 2015 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Engagement and people skills rank as most important skill set for a successful community strategist, but strategic and business skills were most important to nearly 20 percent of those in this role. Strategists also have the highest technical skills among the three job profiles in this research.

External strategists have a wider range of responsibilities than internal strategists profiled and are more likely to be responsible for overall program management. Internal strategists’ top priorities include building the community strategy and roadmap, measurement, internal consulting, advocating for the community, training and consulting with IT on platform integration.

The poster below shares some of the most interesting findings from the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 in regards to the Community Manager Role.

The average salary for a Community Strategist is $85,075
The average Community Strategist has 14.3 years of work experience
38% of external Community Strategists have been promoted

Top three responsibilities for Community Strategists:

Monitoring activity & listening
Developing the community strategy
Measuring and reporting community performance

Top three priorities for Community Strategists:

Specific business outcomes
Activity rates
Membership growth

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Have you filled out the 2015 State of Community Management survey yet? The findings help shape the dialogue about community management and this year, upon completing the survey you can see how your community sits within TheCR’s Community Maturity Model. Learn more at https://the.cr/socm2015survey.

CMSS Stats You Can Use: All About Directors of Community

February 4, 2015 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Directors of community bring a community management skillset – strong engagement skills, a knack for contentdevelopment – to the table, but spend most of their time on strategic and business objectives. While similar in skill profile to strategists, directors of community spend a great deal of their time advocating for the community, managing the program and managing team members.

Interestingly and despite the fact that it is the bulk of their work, only 33 percent rank strategic and business skills as most important to their role. This suggests that while the business skills are important, a firm grounding in day-to-day community management is critical, and the responsibilities of the role cannot be fulfilled without that grounding.

The poster below shares some of the most interesting findings from the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 in regards to the Director of Community Role. Namely:

The average salary for a Director of Community is $106, 356
The average Director of Community has 16.2 years of work experience
65% of Directors of Community have been promoted

Top three responsibilities for Directors of Community:

Developing the community strategy
Advocating for the community
Developing community policies and guidelines

Top three priorities for Directors of Community:

Activity rates
Specific business outcomes
Membership growth

Are you a Director of Community at your organization? We’d love to hear how your responsibilities and priorities stack up against our survey participants. What is your top community focus for 2015?

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Directors of Community may find a lot of great ideas for their team in the new Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes, available starting February 4. Learn more at https://www.communityroundtable.com/CMHandbook.

CMSS Stats You Can Use: How Do I Find a Community Manager Job?

January 22, 2015 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

As we close in on CMAD this Monday, we hope there will be a lot of focus on community managers and their careers. Our Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 found signs of an emerging career path for community professionals – but it’s not a path driven by the help wanted ads.

Community management is a profession of relationships – use your network to discover your next role. Most community jobs are not currently found through traditional job listings.

We found in our Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 research that only 27% of community managers found their current role through a job listing. Instead, build your professional community and network to identify new opportunities. Have a brand you are passionate about? Join their community as a member – showing interest and commitment to something you love is a great way to get noticed by a potential employer.

And get yourself more noticed in the places you want to succeed. In a digital industry, reputation matters. Share what you know and seek to connect with others in the industry. Whether you’re active on Twitter or LinkedIn, contribute to a professional development network or association, serve as a mentor, or speak at events, taking the time to help others learn what you know will demonstrate your expertise and commitment. Having a strong professional network increases your likelihood of having the inside scoop on new community manager jobs.

Propose your own promotion

And sometimes, the best next step on your career path is as close as your current desk. If you’ve been in your role for a few years, evaluate your current responsibilities and goals for your community and seek out an opportunity to promote yourself. Think about what you do and need to keep up with the day-to-day tasks in the community AND stay on top of strategic planning – and write a new job description detailing how a new higher level role would better capture the work you do, benefit the community and make the case for hiring someone to help out with your previous responsibilities. Smart employers know the critical importance of retaining top talent, and your approach can help you articulate both your value and the value of your community in important ways.

CMSS Stats You Can Use: How To Win That Community Manager Job

January 14, 2015 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

As organizations begin to increasingly recognize and reward the value of good community management the market for jobs has begun to heat up. While at any given moment there are literally dozens of interesting community jobs open around the country (and truly, the world) the competition for these roles is getting stiffer. How can you set yourself apart?

Working with communities requires a diverse skill set and is more complex than many assume.

Through our Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 research we identified community management skills in four skill families:

Engagement and people skills: These skills enable relationship development, understanding motivations and the design of social environments that reward individuals.
Content development skills: These skills enable the creation of multi-modal content and programming designed to build engagement and drive value from multiple segments.
Strategic and business skills: These skills include the program management, governance, advocacy and training required for organizations to understand this new approach.
Technical skills: These skills include an understanding of the need for and implications of platform architecture, integration and analytics.

The best way to differentiate yourself from the competition for community roles is to strength your skillset in the above families – especially in areas that other candidates might be weak. One example? We found only 51% of community managers have graphic-based content skills. Use your downtime to brush up on traditional graphics tools like the Adobe Creative Suite and new tools like Canva and Pitkochart. Not only will you be able to add valuable skills to your resume, you’ll set yourself apart from 49% of the competition!

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TheCR Network offers dozens of skill-building professional development opportunities and a network of hundreds of top community leaders to help you build and grow your skills and expertise. Make an investment in your community – join us!

Looking for a Few Great Community Fellows

December 17, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

help wanted I’ve already mentioned that we’re excited for all the new content, programming and research that 2015 will bring. Now, I’m extra excited to announce that to support all the new community initiatives we are undertaking we are also expanding TheCR team.

In the past we’ve hired Community Fellows specifically for our research and community management teams, and this time we’re expanding both the scope and size of our search – we are currently seeking community fellows for our Research, Community Management and Sales/Marketing teams.

TheCR Fellowship program is designed to help the right candidate immerse themselves in the community management discipline and accumulate the expertise to qualify for community management roles after their time with us.

At a high level, each Fellowship will provide:

•   Formal community management training
•   Hands-on experience in community management, with a lens toward research, engagement or sales/marketing.
•   Access to leading community management practitioners
•   Direct access to potential employers
•   The opportunity to work with a variety of organizations and brands
•   Community management and business mentorship from TheCR team.
•   A monthly stipend

While you can visit each job description above for more details for each position, the Fellow’s roles would generally include:

•   Commitment of 35+ hours a week for at least 6 months and no more than 12 months
•   Day-to-day tasks related to their role
•   Special projects which, depending on the person’s skill set and interests, could be research, content, business development, marketing, or events projects

Why a fellowship and not a permanent hire?

As a small organization there are large risks for someone in deciding to work with us and there are risks for us in making a permanent hire. By providing training, access to market leaders, and a stipend to a fellow, we can ensure that she or he is very well positioned to find a great position with a larger organization at the end of the fellowship. To us, this creates a win-win-win for potential candidates, employers, and for us. It also serves our mission by enabling us to develop trained, experienced professionals for the market. We liked our last two fellows so much we hired them both into permanent roles, which is also a potential outcome of the fellowship.

Why a Fellowship at TheCR?

The Community Roundtable has been championing the discipline of community management for over five years. In that time we have built up frameworks, training and research that demonstrates the value of community and community management. We work with over 100+ leading brands and organizations and understand more about how communities are used and managed in business environments than any other organization. Because of our network and relationships, this is a great opportunity for the right person to meet and collaborate with our clients and members.

Learn More About Each Role

Do you have what it takes? Check out the open positions now:

While not a requirement for the right candidate, preference will be given to people within commuting distance from Boston.

Join TheCR Team: Research Fellow Wanted

December 17, 2014 By Jim Storer

Do you want to join TheCR team and learn more about community, research and analysis? We are thrilled to announce that we are hiring a Research Fellow for 2015.

Why a Fellow?

The Community Roundtable has hired a number of fellows over the years because it is a unique opportunity for both an individual, TheCR and TheCR’s ecosystem to benefit. Our fellowships are intended to last 6-12 months and give individuals a strong background and network with which to find a permanent research or analyst position – you can read more about this program here.

What you will learn:

How to execute on complex research initiatives
How to build a collaborative, networked-based approach to research
When and how to integrate research across organizational functions
How to create research that delivers date in actionable and relevant ways

You might be our next research fellow if you:

Understanding of, experience with and passion for the potential of social technologies and online communities
Care about your work and the people with whom you work
Bring your best effort to every project but can leave your ego at the door
Are analytical and can synthesize quantitative and qualitative inputs
You have experience with data analysis, benchmarking, statistics and/or survey techniques
Understand that data is only as good as the story that it tells
Love building Excel arguments or algorithms in code
Have strong communication and editorial skills
Enjoy content creation – our research team is responsible for our annual research, as well as additional content including ebooks, infographics, white papers and more
Are self-organized, self-driven and have strong project management skills
Enjoy the flexibility – and responsibility – of working from home
Have a great sense of humor and want to work as part of a small, driven team

Responsibilities:

Demonstrate the value of community and community management with research
Survey development and administration
Data analysis, segmentation and synthesis – Excel proficiency is a must
Content development – must have good writing and presentation development skills
Special projects which, depending on your skill set and interests, could be related to research, content, business development, marketing, or events

You might be the ideal candidate if:

You are a storyteller and data nerd who is curious about how community management is transforming business.

Apply Now

Do you have what it takes? Are you excited by what we could do together? Please tell us more about you! While not a requirement for the right candidate, preference will be given to people within commuting distance from Boston.

2014: A Year of Community Advancement

December 16, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

It’s hard to believe we’re coming up on 2015 – the past year flew by, and we wanted to take a minute to pause and reflect on the past 12 months before we dive into planning the next 12! We kicked 2014 off by launching several new initiatives aimed at connecting community managers with each other, and showcasing just how different the average profile of community practitioners can be. Our Faces of Community Management profile series shared a glimpse into the background of a wide array of community managers, and our monthly Community Manager Spotlight webinar series provided an in-depth look at what leading community professional are working on and best practices for furthering your career in community.

We shared our annual State of Community Management 2014 research in April and released an accompanying infographic”Drive Success with Basic Executive Coaching” and eBook “Building a Community Roadmap” later in the year. You can check out all the related report materials including exclusive insights, expert advice and informative blog posts here.

In October we released a brand new research platform – The Community Manager Salary Survey which aims to bring more awareness to the emerging career path in community management; detailing what community professionals can expect from different roles and what hiring managers should know to grow effective community programs. In addition to the full report, which you can download here, we also released an informative infographic “Careers in Community Management” that profiled three main community roles and provided exclusive job role, responsibility and salary information for each.

The Fall also saw us assume the stewardship of Jeff Ross’s extremely popular “#ESNchat” a weekly twitter chat where enterprise social network focused community professionals gather weekly to discuss hot ESN topics and share advice and best practices for creating thriving ESNs. The upcoming topic schedule, as well as archives of past chat can be found here.

Finally, we shared some news from inside the TheCR Network – the introduction of our first formal Champion program.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 and connect our members more closely with similar peers and industry experts.

We are proud to have shared so much new research and content with you over the past twelve months. 2014 was a year of growth and expansion at TheCR – both in terms of new programming and research initiatives, but also in terms of our team, TheCR Network, and our connections with community professionals around the world. We hope you also enjoyed a fruitful and fulfilling 2014, we can’t wait to connect with you in 2015 and help advance the community work you do.

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Looking to take your career in community management to the next level in 2015? 92% of members agree that TheCR Network supports and advances their personal and professional goals. Learn how our research, access to peers and experts, targeted content and exclusive concierge service can help you achieve your goals in the new year and beyond.