The Community Roundtable

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

Kathy O’Reilly on Managing Niche Communities

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management. Our podcast series, Conversations with Community Managers (a co-production with The Community Roundtable), continues with episode #14, featuring Kathy O’Reilly, Director of Social Media Relations for Monster.com (a Voce client). Highlights include:
  • Handling disparate – but related – audiences via community; in this case, job seekers and employers
  • The challenges of managing many separate niche communities without splintering the corporate mission
  • Using a healthy content library to support community and spark discussion, including use of external contributors
  • Making sure you have the resources (people, content and time) to nurture a community properly
  • Goals: create brand awareness, product awareness and driving traffic

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

The Inextricable Link Between Social Media and Enterprise 2.0

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Social media and enterprise 2.0 are largely thought of separately these days, in large part because social media primarily affects communications and relationships with constituent groups outside of the organization and enterprise 2.0 addresses collaboration and innovation behind the firewall.  In reality, organizations will find that by doing one they must address the other. Why?  Social technologies significantly reduce the cost of content creation, distribution and discovery, thereby significantly increasing the speed of information and value transfer.  If implemented on one side of the corporate firewall but not the other, it creates an imbalance that grows quickly, increasing tension and strain felt in other parts of the organization.

In most cases, the information environment outside the organization is changing far more rapidly than the information environment internally. Customers, partners, prospects, and employees can find, access, and share information in a way that corporate infrastructure, security, culture, and policies inhibit.  Organizations are having a hard time keeping up with – never mind responding to or taking advantage of – these new environments. As organization do adapt, the external environment is continuing to speed up and become more efficient at arbitraging information and value. In a particular market that means the advantages go to people and organizations that are first to see the opportunity. If as an organization, you have built a robust social media ecosystem for marketing and customer support, but have ignored applying social and networked communications technology internally, new opportunities will be found quickly in the market only to hit a brick wall once introduced internally.  On the flip side, if you’ve applied internal social technologies that enable rapid innovation and collaboration, but you have no external channels by which to inform your market and gather feedback rapidly, that innovation will have limited value to the organization.

Those companies that have been at this a little longer than others realize this and we are starting to see how radically it is affecting their entire enterprise – Dell, SAP, EMC, CSC and many others now understand that this is not about a Facebook or blogging strategy, it’s about increasing the speed of business and increasing their competitive advantage. It’s no longer a question of if, but when.

Is your organization the one hitting the gas pedal or are you still riding the brakes?

If you are interested in sharing and collaborating with other professional in charge of enterprise social initiatives, come explore what membership in The Community Roundtable has to offer.

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Lisa Beatty on Brand-Focused Communities

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.
 

Episode #10 features Lisa Beatty, “Chief Jane Advocate” for Jane Nation, one of the first online communities for women to share their opinions and ideas about brands, and information among themselves and with brands about the uniqueness of their community.

Podcast highlights include:

  • Running a community that is a hybrid of centrally-produced and controlled content, and more self-moderated forums
  • The relationship between a community about brands and the brands themselves, including the need to comply with disclosure guidelines, and how to include the brands as part of the community (with examples from the Mayo Clinic and General Motors)
  • Approaching community monetization without ads, with approaches such as sponsored content and access to community members for private conversations
  • The challenges of managing a community including people at different stages of their lives (age, careers, parenthood, etc)
  • Reconciling running a brand-focused community with a career as an advertising executive, as Beatty does

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Dave Olson on Pre-Social Media Communities

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.
Episode #9 features Dave Olson, Marketing Director for HootSuite, which helps people and companies track, monitor and manage their Twitter communities.

 

Podcast highlights include:
  • How the traditional title of “Marketing Director” translates to online marketing, customer service and social engagement
  • Turning metrics into meaning by realizing the personalities behind the community members
  • Tips on community: making members feel like they belong and are contributing, and that they are being heard and acknowledged
  • Stories about communities in the 1970s, enabled by “ditto machines” and other pre social media technology (the roots of Dave’s current personal projects are found at https://www.uncleweed.com/)
  • An example of a company (SubPop records) that started their community building in the pre-social media era (pre-Internet, even), and evolved it into the age of Twitter
  • Adding value, context and storytelling vs simply “attracting a crowd”

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

PHOTO CREDIT: kris krüg

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Jodi Gersh on “Old School” Journalism and New Media Channels

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.
 
Episode #8 features Jodi Gersh, Social Media Content Manager at the Gannett Company, where she helps Gannett’s 80+ newspapers and 20+ TV stations with their social media needs and strategies.
 

Highlights include:

  • Meshing “old school” journalism with new media channels
  • How Gannett coordinates social media learnings and tactics among more than 100 separate entities.
  • The importance of internal communications in keeping employees at all levels- and in all markets- engaged in using social media, including the use of “old school” methods like email
  • Upcoming trends: you guessed it, location and mobile
  • Melding “citizen journalism” with professional investigative journalism

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Brian Simpson on Combining Online and Offline Relations in Hospitality

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.
Our sixth episode features Brian Simpson, Director of Social Hospitality at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York City.
 

Highlights include:

  • How online extends and combines with the vital offline relations and events in the hospitality industry
  • A discussion of whether or not being a nimble small business is an advantage over being a big chain when it comes to using social media
  • How hard metrics and the more “touchy-feely” side of social media mesh
  • A critique of Roger Smith Life and the value of showing an off-product side of your business; “It’s got to be interesting.”

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Social: Moving from Head to Heart

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[This is a guest post by a Community Roundtable member, Michael Pace.]

I know it’s a foofy title or should be a Lifetime movie with Meredith Baxter Birney, so save the snark until the end.

In November, I took a position at Constant Contact as their Director of Customer Support, focusing on “alternative” support channels (Self Service, Social Media and Community). My background was hard core Operations/Customer Service, with a strong belief that long term quality always beats out short term productivity gains. My prior Social experience consisted of a Facebook account (you know to keep track of all the people in high school you hated).

So I drank from the firehose of information: RSS fed everything on social media and community I could find, created a twitter account (followed by 2 dozen more of the like) and joined The CR .

By February, I knew I was still an uber newbie, but thought I had it down pretty well.

#1 Listen: (checked) If I heard 1 more person tell me the first step is to “Listen”, I was gonna puke.

#2 Engage: (checked) Got it – provide good edu-taining content (no problem)

#3 Metrics: (checked – kind of) Nobody really gets it, so fake it long enough until your smart Operations oriented brain figures it out

#4 Build Relationships with the Tribe (In progress) Get to know the key influencers around, so go to

Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies in Boston. And here we go

Day 1 (Primer Day): It’s a typical conference:

  • Met some cool people
  • Was told I need to Listen again (don’t worry, I swallowed it down)
  • Went to my first “Tweet Up” – that was fun, I was a little tired so I left a bit early

Day 2 & 3: (A-HHHHHHHH, I get it now)

Something is different here, I cannot put my finger on it, but I feel like I am on fire! Everything is clicking. I am talking to everyone at a mile a minute, with crazy ideas and evangelising the incredible world of community. I cannot wait to get back to work, but I don’t want to leave.

  • Listening & Engagement have completely different meanings than I previously heard, I still don’t how to articulate it, but I know I have a new feeling about it
  • Speaker after speaker is filled with incredible ideas, case studies and passion
  • Measuring engagement is different for every business, because objectives are different (ROO vs. ROI)

I was almost the last person in the room Wednesday afternoon; I still had more talk about, write about and get down before I left.

I slept all of about 2 hours on Wednesday night. I picked up Trust Agents a few weeks ago (collecting dust on my night stand) and burned through 80% of it. I woke up and learned of a new place to go in the morning with more of the same – SMB17 – I am still flying high, with a little help from Dunkin.

SMB17 was another great session (complete notes from TwapperKeeper). At the end of the session, Aaron Strout (aka. Tyler Florence – alright that’s the end of it), said something that put all the pieces together.

He said, “Key thing is getting social media from your brain to your heart”. Once it’s there, you’ll have that a-ha moment”

THAT’S IT, that’s what happened, it moved from my overly analytical brain to my heart and soul. I don’t know exactly how or when, but I am betting a bunch of you had this moment. Hopefully, there will be more. I love this stuff. Aaron had me at “Key”.

Ok, you can break out the snarky lines about the foofiness now.

Sonny Gill on Social Media Participation in Education

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.
Our sixth episode features Sonny Gill, Community Manager for DeVry University.

Highlights include:

  • Regulatory hurdles for social media participation in the education sector
  • The importance of integrating and harnessing the disparate internal communities at educational institutions
  • The importance of students as an, ever-changing and tech-savvy resource to help drive community-building
  • Extending connections beyond the current faculty and students to incoming freshmen and alumni- is that happening enough?
  • A discussion of “Community Chat,” which Sonny ran with Bryan Person on Twitter andFriendFeed (and how to keep momentum going in community- bring the chat back, guys!)

Download this episode.

Subscribe to this podcast series.

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Shwen Gwee on using Social Media Tools to Grow Community

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.

Our fifth episode is an interview Shwen Gwee, who works in the health care and pharma industries, and heads up a network called SocialPharmer* and the blog Med 2.0.

Highlights of the conversation include:

  • Taking a community cultivated at a conference and continuing to grow it online with social media tools
  • Conversely, how online groups (like Twitter chats) can be used to lead to more substantial offline events
  • The reluctance in highly-regulated industries like pharmaceuticals to using social media, and how to counter those
  • How growth in industry participation has actually taken off in some areas, particularly Twitter, and Facebook, which has seen many popular Fan Pages grow up around support for people with certain diseases
  • Lessons learned from live events, including: the ability for people to talk across different verticals, the opportunity to speak with patients in an informal setting, and in-depth discussions of the mutual trust needed to keep social media use growing in pharma

Download this episode.

Subscribe to this podcast series.

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

* Note: SocialPharmer is currently a Ning group, but with the announcement that Ning will stop support for free groups, Shwen has told us that he is working on moving the network to a new platform, to be determined soon.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Rachel Happe on Social Media Vs Community

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.

Our third episode features an interview with Rachel Happe, co-founder of The Community Roundtable.

Conversation highlights include:

  • Introduction of the topic: the difference between the roles of social media manager and community manager. Rachel has been thinking on this topic, with posts such as “Social Media is Not Community“
  • Rachel discusses social media as content-based, while community is more specifically relationship-based
  • How should a CMO hire a social media manager? What should they look for?
  • How the type of company effects the need for deeper relationships or less deep connections (is it a scaling problem?)

Download this episode.

Subscribe to this podcast series.

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS