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The Community Roundtable

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

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: March 2016

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable

TheCR Network logoMarch madness took hold of us this month – and I don’t just mean a quasi-competitive team bracket challenge happening over here! Big things happened in TheCR Network this March – and I’m excited to give you another peek behind the membership curtain.

Check what’s been going on inside TheCR Network this past month:

  • Internal Community Fundamentals Kick Off (Training): I was beyond thrilled to kick off an all-new perk for our members – guided community management training – free as part of their membership! We launched our inaugural course “Internal Community Fundamentals” as a six week virtual group training for members of TheCR Network. Participants will progress through a module based training with peers in a facilitated private group inside TheCR Network. We are so excited to see the engagement and excitement already happening in the first week!

  • Show and Tell! Engagement Drivers: Down & Dirty Case Studies (Roundtable Call): One of our most lively discussions this month centered around the idea of programming for engagement. We love hearing from our members what awesome ideas they have implemented – and how they got the engagement they were looking for. This was an awesome call where members from some impressive organizations shared their community successes, while at the same time getting great ideas from their peers.

power and perils of integration badge

  • The Technology of Community: The Power & Perils of Integrations (Roundtable Call): I like big brains and I cannot lie. One of the biggest perks about my job is that I get to work with some of the community industry’s most interesting people, and this month was no exception. The always amazing Maria Ogneva joined me this month to host a Roundtable call focused onto discuss community platforms in the context of the company’s technology stack. We had a fantastic conversation and it’s always such a treat to put members front and center.

Screen Shot 2016-03-25 at 1.20.24 PMThose are my big highlights for the month, but I’m going to cheat and add in one more member activity that took place outside the Network. I traveled to Las Vegas, along with several other members of TheCR Team for Jiveworld 2016. While Vegas is always an experience this was a special trip.

We had over 25 members in attendance, and got to connect with them in sessions, at out booth, over lunch, dinner and maybe even a few cocktails. I am a strong believer in the power of online communities, but it is always nice to get out and meet members face to face every now and then.

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Want to access our exclusive community programming for the benefit of your community work? Looking for community peers to share with and learn form? Reach out and ask us about membership in TheCR Network

 

Three engines of powerful communities

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The State of Community Management 2016 survey is open until March 18. We need you, but we’re already seeing results that could fundamentally shift your community plans.

By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training

SOCM2016 Draft Cover ShadowWe’re a little over halfway into the SOCM 2016 survey period, and have a little more than half of the survey total I really want to see for this year’s research. But even so, just going through the early data – there is so much here that I can’t wait to share.

So here’s a little taste – and a call to action. The data is awesome, but a bigger dataset will make a huge difference, and I guarantee, those who take the survey get 10x the value out of the report this spring.

So, who’s taken it so far?

About 40 percent of those who have taken the survey classify themselves as working in the high tech/telecom/software sector. That makes for a robust sector that we can really dig into in our results.

Everyone else – we need you. We need to double or triple the number of responses in the media/entertainment, nonprofit, business/legal/professional and health care sectors to get a big enough segment to dig into. And seeing into how these more “traditional” sectors handle communities is a fascinating window into how customer and worker relationships are changing.

And a note for community vendors. You have a great opportunity for a third-party view of communities on your platforms as a group. Don’t miss it. Right now, a hat tip to Jive for providing 25 percent of our respondents. Everyone else? Get the word out to your customers about the survey – and the opportunity for them to get their free community evaluation scores.

The divide among Top 10 community platform vendors at the moment is below.

Vendors

Now, on to the data!

Three emerging engines of powerful communitiesengine

1. The power of documenting value.

We asked this year if people had defined the value of the community for the organization, the member and the “shared value” of the community – what matters to both sides.

The statements themselves were a mixed bag, but the results are remarkable. Defining value helps focus your efforts, and communities that have done it are more mature across the board than those who have not.

2. The power of the feedback loop.

A new question this year, inspired by members of our State of Community Management working group in TheCR Network, has asked about the ways communities receive member feedback. The data is incomplete, but the trend is that communities that provide a formal feedback process score more highly across the board than their peers.

3. The power of programs.

We talk often that community content and community programs are two sides of the same coin. Good content brings people into community, but programs create opportunities for “member collisions,” where they can share and interact. So far, the proof is in the engagement numbers. Communities with robust, integrated programming calendars have far better engagement than their peers.

Oh, and for the fourth straight year, we can again say the 90–9–1 rule of community is dead. Very very dead.

SOCM2016_GetStarted_BadgeThe survey is open through March 18, and we need your data today.

If you aren’t taken it, please do. For you and for us.

If you have taken it, get a friend or two to take it.

Oh, and one more thing.

Community professionals are charitably-minded

We decided this year it would be a nice thing to offer a $5 coffee gift card to folks in exchange for their time. The nice thing? The majority of respondents would rather give food to those in need than grab a latte and scone. 56% of respondents so far have chosen donations to No Kid Hungry/Save Our Strength over a Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts gift card.

Your data can make that check bigger, too!

take the survey button

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: September 2015

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By Georgina Cannie, Community Fellow at The Community Roundtable.

Despite my best efforts to cling to summer temperatures, to seems that Fall has arrived in full force. While I might be feeling a little reluctant to pull out my boots and scarves from the closet, I am more excited than to welcome TheCR Network members back from their summer vacations with a new wave of Network going-ons.

Here’s a sneak peek into what’s been going on inside TheCR Network

Community Careers and Compensation (Research): While this research (and the survey that fuels it) are public, we offered TheCR Network members the opportunity to collaborate on the second installment of what was formerly know as the Community Manager Salary Survey. Members met to help shape everything from the skills that should be included to what kind of tone and orientation would make the research most valuable to them when advocating for their role. Members even chimed in to help us brainstorm and vote on a new name!
Fall Programming (Events): Now that the kids are back in school and community professionals are looking towards 2016, we have launched a new line up of expert and member led Roundtable events. We are looking at Maximizing the Impact of a Small Community Team, “Socializing” your Executives and translating the 2015 State of Community Management research findings into tactical action plans- to name just a few.
Gamification Learning Group (Collaborative Learning): A handful of members have decided to take a Coursera-hosted training course on Gamification. They teamed up in TheCR Network to discuss their learning goals, support each other’s progress and trade insights.

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

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Intrigued by TheCR Network, but want to learn more about what membership entails before joining?

Join Hillary Boucher and a special community guest for a monthly look inside TheCR Network.  Each month Hillary will share a look at the research, programming and professional development available exclusively to Network members and her guest will share a short case study on how the Network helps them achieve their community goals.

Bring your questions and see how TheCR Network can provide the tools you need to excel in your community role.

Our next webinar takes place on Wednesday, October 7th at 3pm ET.

Register now! 

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: August 2015

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Hold onto your pumpkin spice lattes – according to the calendar it’s still summer until September 22. I’ll take it! We’ve had an incredible summer inside TheCR Network. Yes, someone always seems to be OOO, but that has not stopped members from collaborating or our team from forging ahead with exciting new projects (ahem, platform migration).

Here’s a sneak peek into what’s been going on inside TheCR Network

  • Small Move, Big Change (Book Club): Every summer we host a book club and this year we read Small Move, Big Change by Caroline Arnold. There was a lot of personal interest because the author focused on making micro-resolutions in your personal life to affect big change, but our goal was to discuss how this strategy can be applied to community building within an organization. A perfect topic for practitioners working on adoption and engagement.
  • Blueprints: Mapping Values to Community Success (Working Group): This working group led by TheCR Champion Jennifer Honig has continued to meet this summer and chose innovation has their use case for mapping business drivers to community success.
  • Ask the Experts (Forums): With the launch of our member superhero program we began inviting superheroes to host a week long “Ask me anything” in the forums. We are extremely pleased with the level of engagement, the great questions members are asking our superheroes, and the amazing knowledge coming out of these sessions! Happy to see a new program take off successfully!

If you are interested in learning more about what it’s like to be a member of TheCR Network check out this extensive overview which shares our general programming opportunities and resources made available to members.

Want to access our 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: November 2014 Wrap Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

November was packed with quality programming inside TheCR Network and I found myself joking with members who were attending two (or more) Roundtable calls a week. “Nice to see you again!” I was happy to hear one member respond with, “There’s just so much good stuff happening at TheCR this week.” I love hearing feedback like this! Want a sneak peek of what kinds of programs and discussions were happening inside TheCR Network this month? Take a look:

  • Beyond Engagement: Moving Business & Creating Movements (Roundtable): TheCR member Maria Ogneva originally presented this at JiveWorld in October and I invited her back for a few reasons. Maria had done an call “Building Community from Scratch: Zero to Pilot” last spring and I knew it would be good to get an update and I also knew giving members the opportunity to dig into Maria’s experience and expertise is a valuable opportunity. One of the things we discussed on this call was how to approach ridiculous job postings and negotiate a role that is appropriate for you and the organization. A hot topic with our current Community Manager Salary Research report where we discovered the misalignment of expectations, experience and compensation in the space.
  • Data Visualization Skill Builder (Roundtable): We were grateful to have Tableau’s community manager, Tracy Fitzgerald, in to to share how she uses data to tell her community’s story. And while it was pretty cool to get an insider’s peek at Tableau as a tool, we discussed general best practices for using data to tell the story of your community internally. It was a great call that married some of our traditional storytelling resources together with data collection.
  • Salesforce Dot Com Community (Practitioner Demo): We had a member who recently launched a new community using Salesforce. He offered a demo and while I expected a handful of participants this one really pulled members out of lurkdom. Turns out practitioners really value having the opportunity to receive a tool demo from a fellow practitioner versus a vendor. Glad we can make that happen! We’ll definitely be making these types of vendor test-drives part of our on-going programming.

This is just a small sampling of what we offered members in November. We hosted a Community Maturity Model training, we brought in an expert to teach members about Appreciative Inquiry and how community managers can use this powerful tool, and we dug into the CMSS research. If you are interested in learning more about what it’s like to be a member of TheCR Network check out 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.

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: August 2014 Wrap-Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

I spent a lot of time this month looking forward and planning member programming for Fall. And while summer can be a bit quieter around TheCR Network, it was great to take a look back and see the different ways members were connecting and receiving value from their membership. Here are a few of my favorite examples of member engagement inside the network over the past month:

  • Developing B2B Social Communities (Roundtable): Every summer we host a book club and this year we read a book, Developing B2B Social Communities: Keys to Growth, Innovation and Customer Loyalty, authored by two of our members, J.J. Lovett & Sam Creek, and edited by our co-founder, Rachel Happe. Being that I manage a B2B community myself, I was happy for the push to read it and found it to be well organized and a comprehensive and actionable handbook for implementing, sustaining and measuring the value of a community program. The real treat was the hour long Roundtable call with the authors. Members had a ton of great questions for J.J. and Sam and were grateful for the insight that was shared.
  • Sharepoint/Yammer Knowledge Share (Discussion & Roundtable): Earlier this month a member posted a request to connect with other members who have experience using Sharepoint & Yammer for their community initiatives. A handful of members offered to connect with him individually, but we suggested that we hop on an informal Roundtable call. This way all parties could benefit from the discussion and it was good to see members exchanging their best practices and lessons learned. The bonus? We’re able to archive their insights in the network in the form of a Roundtable Report for the benefit of all of our members.
  • Community ROI Case Studies (Discussion): We have a member building a community from scratch and she came in to request community ROI case studies. We were able to connect the right members to her request and they shared how they approached measuring the ROI of their own communities and offered to connect individually to discuss further. Community success!

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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Community Managers – Declare Your Value! 
Have you taken the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 yet? Your insights into your role are invaluable as we document and define community manager best practices across industries. The survey is short (15 minutes) and we’d love to hear from you. Take the survey now.

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: June 2014 Wrap-Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

I was chatting with one of my teammates at TheCR last Friday and we could not believe we were at the end of June already. This month seemed to just disappear in the blink of an eye!

June inside TheCR Network marks the end of our formal spring programming calendar. If your community participation slows down a bit like ours does you may want to think about focusing on your more strategic projects during your community downtime. We’ll be revisiting our community strategy this summer as well as focusing on our road map. Enough about the future. Let’s look at the June highlights from inside TheCR Network!

  • Applying the Community Maturity Model for Internal Consulting (Roundtable). This was an absolute value packed call and such an exciting collaboration between us and our members. We love to see how our members adapt and build off of the Community Maturity Model. In this case one of our members shared his adaptation and how he is using it to consult across groups within his organization. He gave a live demo and member participants were grateful for the opportunity to discuss his approach with him and ask him questions in real time. You can see an excerpt here.
  • User-centered Design for Community Managers (Roundtable). We brought in guest expert Dr. David Travis to discuss user-centered design for community managers by member request. Dr. Travis gave us a high-level overview of the basic tenants of user-centered design and then we opened the conversation to the group. It was an engaging call with many applicable insights for community professionals.
  • Risk & Online Community (Roundtable). A community manager and an attorney walk into a bar … and you get the Blake & Ben Show. Think entertainment meets real world, plain language information on what an organization and a community manager needs to be thinking about in terms of risk and best practices for ensuring that your online community and community management practices are not putting your organization at risk.

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.

We’re planning some fun summertime programming for the network for July & August! If you are interested in joining us please let us know. Have a great summer!

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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.

Podcast: State of Community Management 2014 Sneak Peek

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

April marks not only the 5th anniversary of The Community Roundtable, but also our 5th year publishing the annual State of Community Management research reports.

Last week I caught up with Rachel Happe for a preview of the research and got to chat about how the State of Community Management research has evolved in the last five years, what’s new for 2014 and got a sneak peek at three key findings in this year’s research.

The complete 2014 State of Community Management report will be released in late April. In the meantime, you can check out past reports from 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 – or download our State of Community Management Toolkit to access reports, the Community Maturity model and a helpful reference guide.

Stay tuned for the full findings!

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Did you know that The 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.

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TheCR Network Sneak Peek: March 2014 Wrap-Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager of TheCR Network

March = SXSW

And lest we forget SXSW! Many of our members rendezvoused in Austin earlier this month. That’s our fearless co-founder, Jim Storer, on the left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As promised, I am back to share a snapshot of what went on inside TheCR Network this month. In February, I gave a pretty extensive overview of our regular programming, content offerings, and range of conversations that take place over the course of one month. Today, I picked out highlights from March:

  • Community Manager Exit Strategy (Discussion). A good community manager builds real and solid relationships with their community members. But what happens when you change roles or companies? Members are discussing the proper etiquette of saying good-bye to your community and the best practices to ensure clear communication and a clean hand off to the new community manager. It was particularly helpful (and touching) to have a member share the private message she posted to her super-user program members and the the public announcement she made when she left her community of two years to start a new role.
  • How to Build a Mentor Program (Case Study). Earlier this month we had a TheCR Network member share an excellent case study on a live, virtual Roundtable call. We got an extensive overview of this member’s adventures in building a traditional mentoring program within her community. In the past we have discussed the merits of reverse mentoring program, but this dive into a traditional mentor program was a popular and well-received case study.
  • Best Practices for B2B Customer Engagement (Live Virtual Roundtable Session). We find that our members who manage B2B customer and partner communities come up against some specific engagement challenges that are different than their consumer facing counterparts. Tomorrow we have an experienced member sharing his more successful engagement strategies for B2B communities and facilitating a discussion amongst our practitioner participants to gather the group’s collective wisdom on the subject. A true meeting of the minds!

This is only a small sampling of the events and discussions that took place this past month. I’d love to hear your top priorities and topics of interest from this past month in the comments. If you are anything like our members, I bet you were juggling a full plate. Tell us about it!

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Did you know that 95% of TheCR Network members agree that the content and peer input improves the quality of their work? It’s true! Membership in TheCR Network saves community and social business leaders time and improves the quality of their work by connecting them quickly with peers, experts and curated information. Learn how joining TheCR Network can improve the work you do.