The Community Roundtable

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

Assess your Community Management Maturity

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Eight years. The Community Roundtable has been doing its annual research on the landscape of community management for close to a decade.

We have learned a lot in that time and this research has contributed to the discipline by:

  • Consolidating and determining standard practices within community management, making it less of a mystery and more predictable
  • Documenting the complexity of doing community management well, while at the same time providing a structure that helps people understand it
  • Emphasizing the need to take a strategic, intentional and proactive approach to efficiently build communities
  • Highlighting the practices that correlate with success; practices like building roadmaps, advocacy programs, welcome processes and more
  • Defining the strategic value of community, culminating in a standard community ROI model

Just in the last year, we’ve made huge strides in adding financial and analytic rigor to the discipline – and just in time, because executives are paying attention. With strategic attention comes more scrutiny and the need to prove that communities return meaningful results while at the same time requiring education about how to make these programs successful – and the investment required to do so.

There has never been a better time to participate in our State of Community Management research.

By simply participating you will get three important benefits:

  1. Ideas about what is important to successful community management
  2. Scores for each competency in the Community Maturity Model that will help you prioritize projects and compare your progress against the research
  3. Your current community ROI

We’ll also throw in a gift card for coffee to thank you for your time, as it is more than your average online survey and will take you about 30 minutes.

Please consider helping us make this year the best year yet for our research.

Also, please consider sharing the survey with your peers who run communities or community programs: https://the.cr/socm2017survey

Five reasons to take The State of Community Management 2017 survey right now

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Eight years. That’s like a century in community management, but that is how many years we have been pouring hundreds of hours of our time into creating The State of Community Management. This is my third year at the helm, and I’m excited. With new questions, new data analysis tools, and another year of comparative data, I can say without hyperbole that this will be the best, most informative State of Community Management ever.*

Why the asterisk? That’s you.

You see, our research – the carefully crafted questions, intensive data preparation and analysis, writing, graphics, design, and thought leadership – is only as valuable as you make it by taking part. Last year,  339 community professionals invested their time and entrusted their data to us. This year, we want even more participation, and so do you.

By filling out the survey – you are making the results more valuable for you.

Why? Well, because in data – more is better. The greater data set last year allowed us to compare communities across industries, use cases and sizes without fears of having a small sample size. That meant being able to share items in the report and blog posts that dug in on the issues facing subgroups of communities. Those subgroups? They’re customer support (or innovation) communities like yours. They’re in the nonprofit (or health care) space like you. They have a lone wolf community manager (or a team of community managers) like you. A big sample means we don’t just spot the big trends in community management – but the little ones as well.

In 30 minutes (or less), you’ll get a scorecard of where your community management stands, and maybe some things you haven’t thought about.

The survey data isn’t just for us, it’s a way for us to report back to you on where your community management strategies, practices and engagement patterns put you in our Community Maturity Model. We won’t publicly rank you – don’t worry – this is material for you to use to celebrate your successes, and maybe target some areas for improvement. We’ll also push your thinking about your community, your community engagement, and your community value.

In the past three years, we’ve built powerful cases on the need for community managers, the fallacy of the 90-9-1 rule, and the ROI of community. Knowledge is power.

It’s a survey developed with community professionals, for community professionals.

The State of Community Management is unlike any other survey, in that it’s both tech-neutral and developed in partnership with a team of experienced community managers from TheCR Network. Our working group spends hours discussing and reviewing questions to make them relevant to community practices across industries and use cases. We, too, live by the findings – we use what we learn in our own community for community professionals, TheCR Network.

We have a history of treating your data responsibly.

There’s a lot of important data in the survey. Budgets, staffing levels, other competitive information. That’s why each year we reiterate our pledge. We will not sell, use or otherwise share your individual survey response with anyone. Period. We won’t even report on groups that are too small to guarantee anonymity. The only time you’ll hear from us is if there is a question about your data, or to let you know the research report is available. Our business is built on the strength of our research.

Coffee. And a chance for much more.

OK – there’s one other reason we get in touch. In exchange for your time, we want to buy you a coffee – one of those fancy ones, even – with a Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts gift card. (You can also donate your $5 to Save Our Strength and feed the hungry.) And when all is said and done, one person will win a gift card worth $1 for every completed survey.

So – what are you waiting for? If you have any questions, shoot me a DM on Twitter.

Take the survey (and share the link!) athttps://the.cr/socm2017survey

Throwback Thursday – Community Management Research

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We are gearing up to launch our 8th annual State of Community Management Survey, so I thought it would be a great time to share an overview of all the community management research we publish. This week’s #throwbackthursday highlights our four major research platforms for community management professionals.

Community Management Research

The State of Community Management

Report: The State of Community Management is our annual research platform that tracks the performance of communities and community management across the eight competencies of the Community Maturity Model. The State of Community Management 2016 marked the seventh year of this vitally important resource CCC2015_Cover_ShadowTiltfor community professionals and organizations and built on the insights and expertise of our past reports.

Community Careers and Compensation

Our Community Careers and Compensation research traces its roots to the Community Manager Salary Survey, which TheCR first launched in 2014. In addition to questions about the salaries, roles and titles of community professionals, with the CCC, we expanded our efforts to capture the skills that community professionals across the spectrum find most valuable, and added questions about where community sits within the organizational structures of businesses, nonprofits and other organizations.

The Social Executive

One of the major challenges of the community and social business teams with whom we work is the education of their executives, who vary widely in expectations, priorities for and engagement with social tools and approaches. Because this is such a critical issue, we consider The Social Executive research platform to be key in helping our members and clients make progress in their own organizations.

The Community Manager Handbook

The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes combines research findings and advice from The Community Roundtable with short case studies and tips from some of the smartest community professionals in the space, for community managers looking to start, build and grow their communities. The superheroes include current and recent members of TheCR Network, sharing their tested approaches to address the challenges facing communities large and small, old and new.

Have you used any of TheCR’s community management research in your work? We love to hear about our research in the wild! Drop us a line and let us know! 

 

More Community Management Resources

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Can’t find what you’re looking for? Drop us a line and we’ll do our best to help you find the community management info you need!

How to Recognize Your Top Community Members

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community trophyAs we close out 2016 I wanted to share some best practices for recognizing and rewarding the top contributors in your community. Whether they are super users who take pride in answering others questions or super-star content creators, everyone likes to be acknowledged for their contributions.

In the State of Community Management 2015, we found that while most communities recognized key contributors in some way – with badges and swag most often – they often failed to provide real, business-driven rewards for community advocates, such as opportunities to test products, feedback opportunities and access to executives.

That’s not to say recognition and badges don’t matter – they are a valuable way to say thank you, and let others in the community see the people you count on to contribute, giving others someone to emulate and see as the leaders you want them to be. Being an advocate takes time and effort, however, and to make advocates a valued part of the community, make sure you are giving them real value in return.

If you’ve got some downtime this week, why not think about ways you can reward and recognize your most active and influential community members? Building in a monthly process for acknowledging these members can go a long way toward building morale and ensuring continued engagement. Check out these post for ideas on ways to make your community advocates and super users feel special:

5 reasons to recognize the superheroes in your online community

Give real responsibilities, and real rewards, to your community advocates

Real rewards for community advocates

 

Throwback Thursday: The Ins and Outs of a Community Roadmap

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By Shannon Abram, The Community Roundtable

IStrategy and roadmapsf you don’t know where you’re going it can be a long journey to success in community management – which is why we’re highlighting best practices for community roadmaps in this week’s #throwbackthursday post! From the basics of why a community roadmap is important, to the best practices you need to build a community roadmap, right on to securing executive buy-in for your strategy and roadmap we’ve got you covered.

Don’t just take our word for it though. Our research has shown that there is a real gap between thinking about strategy in your community, and having a fully-resourced roadmap. 63% of communities with an approved strategy lack a resourced roadmap! Keep reading to learn how you can make the jump to a roadmap backed with resources!

This week’s #throwbackthursday focuses on the importance of a community roadmap.

  • Why is a Community Roadmap Important? – A community roadmap gives direction to your community
    Community Roadmap

    Building a community is not a linear path. A roadmap documents milestones to keep the community on the growth curve to success.

    program. Your community strategy describes your destination. The roadmap helps steer you there. Roadmaps often look like project plans, detailing specific activities and the resources required. Roadmaps mark milestones in a community’s journey, making tracking progress easier.

  • Building a Community Roadmap – The State of Community Management 2014 research found that the best–in-class communities are more likely to be able to translate an approved strategy into realistic planning. As a result, 85 percent of them can measure their value, however building a roadmap can be a daunting task for any community manager. This eBook helps you get started building your own roadmap!

Want even more #throwbackthursday action? Check out all our throwback posts!

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Communities in 2016: Quantifying the Value of Community

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By Rachel Happe, Co-founder and Principal, The Community Roundtable.

It’s an exciting time to be in the community field. In the past couple of years, communities have SOCM 2016 Cover with Shadow Finalgained the executive spotlight. It’s currently shining pretty brightly. But the spotlight brings its own challenges and pressures. There are more vendors, a wider range of understanding and expectations, and more pressure to produce and articulate value. That is at best stressful and distracting, and at worst it can undermine existing efforts to cover the basics.

In short – you may need shades.

It’s time to prove we deserve that attention and can deliver on the promise of a community approach. We have to tell the stories of our community value and articulate the resources we need to get there. We are at an inflection point, and it’s a challenging time to be a community program owner. As with any inflection point, chaos comes before consolidation around the new normal.

The good news? Executives are excited about the potential of communities and community management skills are in demand.

The bad news? All the attention and expectations can distract us from the things that have made us successful so far, and at the same time, we need to learn new lessons in scaling. Budgets are growing, but they are not keeping pace with the demand for our time, which is our scarcest resource.

Why is this all happening now?

  • Community leaders have done a great job communicating the potential of communities and demonstrating they can deliver high engagement rates.
  • Social media value is crumbling as social networks turn into social ad platforms. While they do deliver value, they have not fulfilled their potential for deep engagement.
  • Organizations need to adapt to the pace of change and innovation is a strategic priority. Communities are the most effective way to deliver agile learning and change.

It’s rocky out there because a lot of people are feeling unsettled and there is no clear, correct path to changing our organizations. In the current environment, it’s easy to question or second guess ourselves, but one thing I feel strongly about is this: a community approach can help navigate RachelHappe_Letterhead_Image_Templatethese issues in a way that brings along customers, prospects and employees. It is the best way, and maybe the only way, to keep our organizations in sync with themselves and with their markets.

As community professionals, we need to keep our focus on the fundamentals and continue to reinforce value and success:

  1. Don’t lose sight of the basics.
  2. Continue the dialog with those that can benefit from your community.
  3. Develop an ROI model: define the specific business value that is generated from the community.

The 2016 State of Community Management report is a great opportunity to sit back and take perspective on where communities are going, where your organization is headed and how you can deliver on the promise of community.

Also a big thank you to Higher Logic, who supported this important work. For those of you interested in highlights, join us for a webinar on Wednesday, May 25th at 2pm ET.

Community Webinar

How do community managers spend their days? An SOCM2016 Preview

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By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training, The Community Roundtable

“How we spend our days, of course, is how we spend our lives.”

-Annie Dillard

calendar-checkmark-sobor-monitoring-vrcAsk an overworked community manager what they wish they had more of – and you’re likely to get one of two answers: resources or time. How a community pro spends his or her time matters greatly to their communities, but how much? We asked our participants to share how they and their teams spent their time – and saw some interesting trends.

More advanced community managers emphasize content less, and strategic and business matters more, than their peers.

There was an interesting shift as we looked at communities across our community maturity scoring. Community managers in less mature communities said content skills were most important for them. But those in more mature communities highlighted strategic and business skills. (Everyone said engagement was at or near the top of their skill priority list.)

Despite that, engagement and content take up the majority of community professionals’ time.

Even in more advanced communities, community professionals still have content and engagement on their plates a majority of the time. The difference, though, is that more advanced communities typically put more emphasis on creating engagement – items like planning programs, asking questions and connecting members, rather than creating content for the community.

What goes on in the community platform is just half the job.

In the past, we’ve talked about the iceberg effect of community management – and the data this year drives that home. The average community manager in this year’s survey spent slightly over half their community time working within their community platform, and the rest connecting with the community on email, on the phone, and in person.

Blog Quote SOCM 2016 1Of course, “in the platform” does not equate to “visible in the community”, either – a reminder again both that much of your important work can go unseen by members, and that “working out loud” is a great way to bring visibility to work (yours and others’) that makes a robust community possible.

One other note – community managers in best-in-class (The top 20% highest scoring) communities divided their time almost exactly the same ways as the average among platforms. It’s not where you spend your days that determines your community success. It’s strategically leveraging that time to meet your community goals.

We hope you’ll set aside some time for The State of Community Management 2016. It’s set to come out on May 18! Want to be notified when the SOCM 2016 is released? Sign up below!

(Are you a member of TheCR Network? As always the research will be available for direct download inside the Network immediately upon release – no need to sign up here!)

Three Reasons to Take the SOCM Today

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By Shannon Abram, The Community Roundtable

The 7th annual State of Community Management survey closes this Friday, March 18th – time is running out to contribute!

We know your time is valuable, so here are important three reasons to take the SOCM today:

Get Great Ideasbrain_icon

“Taking @TheCR surveys brings up many new ideas…or ideas I forgot about!”

A survey-taker shared this on twitter – and she’s right! Taking the SOCM can help you get new ideas for community initiatives, or help you dust off your old to-do list!

Learn Your Maturity Scorematurity_icon

Everyone that completes the SOCM 2016 will receive your community maturity scores for the eight competencies in the Community Maturity Model – for free!

These scores give you a gap analysis to better understand an prioritize your resources.

icon_coffeeDrink Free Coffee

We know your time is valuable – that’s why in addition giving you the full SOCM report for free – we’re buying your next coffee!

Every completed survey earns a $5 Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts gift card – plus an entry into our grand prize – an AMEX card worth $1 for every completed survey we receive!

take the survey button

Thank you in advance for your contribution to this ground-breaking community research! Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns. Have you already taken the survey? Wow, you’re wonderful! Please tell your community friends and colleagues, your neighbors, the guy behind you at Starbucks… you get the idea!

Three truths of successful communities – the SOCM2014 in review

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By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training, The Community Roundtable

TheCRLibrary_SOCM2014_ThumbnailThe State of Community Management 2014 marked a major step in the evolution of the quantitative ways we were able to assess what worked in community management – and in successful communities. The prior year, the State of Community Management 2013 gave us a quantitative understanding of what community management looked like – but by 2014, we were ready to measure the indicators of what made a community mature.

It was the culmination of something we had already begun to do with our members in TheCR Network – use the Community Maturity Model as a framework with which to benchmark community maturity. Our ability to understand and identify the artifacts of community maturity led to the introduction of something new – our “best-in-class” segment. We were able to highlight the 20 percent of communities who scored the highest overall in the survey, and highlight those elements that really made them stand out relative to the overall survey population.

successful communities
The findings from SOCM2014 included several research-backed findings that hold up just as well today as they did then. Among them:

Community maturity delivers business value. Our “best-in-class” communities were much more likely to be able to measure their value to the business.

Advocacy programs increase engagement. Community leadership and advocacy programs correlated with higher engagement, the ability to measure value and executive engagement, suggesting empowering informal community leaders were a powerful tool for strengthening community

Executive participation impacts success. Getting formal leaders – executives – to take part helped communities secure resources, improve engagement and take a more strategic approach to community, including resourced roadmaps for community development.

For the first time, too, we were able to see measurable evidence of something that until then was known but unproven. Communities that scored well in one competency usually scored well in other areas. For example – communities with well-developed strategies didn’t just score well in strategy. These successful communities usually engaged leaders more effectively, empowered and supported community managers and developed the policies and governance structures to help communities succeed, too. If they didn’t, it was a sign of untapped opportunities to grow – and a clearer direction to pursue.

By 2015 – we were able to take the next step.

SOCM2016_GetStarted_Badgetake the survey buttonThis post is part of a series summarizing The Community Roundtable’s annual State of Community Management reports. The full reports are available on our website, and you can take the State of Community Management 2016 survey through March 18 at https://the.cr/socm2016survey

CMGR Swag – Week Three of The SOCM

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By Shannon Abram, Director of Marketing at The Community Roundtable.
SOCM2016_GetStarted_Badge

The 7th annual State of Community Management research survey and contributions is rolling along – do I sound like a broken record yet? If so, at least I have a good reason. The SOCM is the community industry’s most comprehensive research platform and the data collection period is one of the most important times of the year for us!

I cannot stress enough how important this research is – and how valuable your contributions are to us, and to the community industry as a whole. The larger sample size we collect the deeper the insights we can provide – free – to you, and community manager around the world!

Have 20 minutes? START THE SURVEY HERE

As a thank you for every participants time their next coffee is on us or you can donate $5 to No Kid Hungry/Share Our Strength.

As a surprise to all participants we are giving away a weekly community prizeCMGR Essentialspack every Friday for the duration of the survey period (eight weeks!) This week’s prize is a goodie bag of community swag – directly from TheCR Vault! Including:

  • Two exclusive community t-shirts
  • A TheCR Moleskine
  • Hard Copies of our most recent research
  • Extra TheCR Surprises!

 

This week’s winner has chosen to remain mysterious – but next week it could be you!

If you didn’t win, don’t worry – take the survey you’ll be entered to win every Frida until the survey closes! Next week we’ll be giving away a “TheCR Goes to the Movies” including a copy of our favorite movie, tasty movie watching treats and more!

Don’t forget to share the survey with community friends and colleagues – the grand prize is $1 for every survey participant – help us give you the best prize possible and collect the most comprehensive community data in the world! Share the survey: https://the.cr/socm2016survey

Things We are Reading This Week

CMGRs are Entry-Level? Not Anymore.

Dear IT Department, Why Community Management Matters

Best Practices for Community Platform Migration

Lightning in a Bottle: How to Build a Successful Community in Days

Milestones of community maturity: Getting there from here

Six Obstacles To Building Communities In Organizations

Why Community User Feedback Matters

New Community and Social Media Jobs