SOCM Archives

Friday Roundup: The SOCM 2015 – Strategy, Operations & Tactics

June 12, 2015 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

If you’re following along regularly you may have noticed that our annual research report – The State of Community Management 2015 was released last week, and we couldn’t be more excited. The SOCM 2015 is the culmination of not just months of data collection, research and design, but years of community expertise distilled into one document. This year our key findings are:

Strategy: Invest in people and systems, not just platforms
Operations: Advocacy Programs are More Than a Checkbox
Tactics: Quick Wins Exist to Improve Engagement

These key findings are the cornerstone for the full report, which provides data that helps you:

Plan and develop a roadmap
Prioritize resources effectively
Educate stakeholders
Increase your credibility
Demonstrating your value as a community professional

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the SOCM 2015 yet you can download the full report, for free – here!

Things We Are Reading This Week

How Can I Use Gamification for Community Engagement? – Gamification is a hot topic in TheCR Network, and among community managers at large. In fact, – nearly half of our surveyed communities in the State of Community Management 2014 employed some form of gamification (and more than 60% of best-in-class communities do). As gamification tools become more common, more community managers are looking to tap into gamification as part of their efforts to increase engagement. It’s more than just “turning it on.” Everything from how you structure rewards, badges and levels to general usage patterns can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of your effort.

11 conferences today’s community professional can’t miss – Community, social, marketing – it’s all about driving business value. Keep up with the latest in innovative growth tactics at these conferences.

It’s here! The State of Community Management 2015 Report –

Each year, we look forward to providing more data to support the work of online community professionals – those that enable, facilitate and inspire network of people to contribute in ways that generate more value than the sum of each individual contribution.

3 Ideas For Growing Your Community Marketing Team – Influitive – What B2B community managers should consider when expanding their marketing team.

Richard Branson Is Right: Time Is the New Money – In the Participation Age, a new form of payment is emerging: time.

New Social Media and Community Jobs

Senior Social Business Strategy Consultant – East Region – Jive Software – Boston, MA
Community Manager – Rally Health – San Francisco, CA
Enterprise Community Manager – First American Financial – Santa Ana, CA
Director, Social Media Strateg – Leading Financial Services Firm – Boston, MA
Director of Network Relations – Scion Staffing – Stanford, CA
Community Manager – Sep Media – Los Angeles, CA
Pro Sports – Director, Social Media – WorkInSports – New York City, NY
Marketing and Communications Director – Non Profit Organization – Oakland, CA
Talent Community Manager – Horizon Media – Entertainment and Media Industry – New York City, NY
Director, Social Media & Community Marketing – Leading Online Shopping Website – New York City, NY
Community Director – Bay Shore Staffing – Boston, MA
Associate Director, Digital Marketing – Sony Music Entertainment – Entertainment and Media Industry – New York City, NY
Social Business Executive – Marketing Communities & Advocacy – USAA – San Antonio, TX
Community Manager – BeMyApp – Boise, ID
Community Manager – Product Ninja – San Jose, CA
Community Manager – Simple Mills, Inc. – Chicago, IL
Community Manager – ThinkCERCA – Chicago, IL
Community Manager – Tendr – Brooklyn, NY
Community Manager, Consumer Operations – Google – Mountain View, CA
Community Manager, Social Media, Consumer – T-Mobile – Bellevue, WA

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Looking for community peers to chat with, vent to and learn from? Check out our Facebook group and make some new community friends!

What community metrics are most important to track?

March 24, 2015 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

One of the most daunting tasks for many community managers is dealing with community metrics. A member recently approached us with the following question: “I’m getting started with tracking metrics for my community and looking for guidance – where do I begin? What metrics are most important to track?”

Like so many community issues there is no one-size fits all solution (probably not the response you wanted to hear!) We can tell you that through the State of Community Management 2014 report we found that 85% of best-in-class communities can measure the value of their community, so clearly measurement worthy goal. We’ve put together three best practices for getting a metrics and measurement program off the ground:

1. Ensure you have a clear and measurable strategy.

Almost 80% of best-in-class communities have a measurable community strategy. Why? That – more than anything else – will give you clear guidance on what to track by articulating the business goals and behavior change you hope to see.

2. Identify a consistent reporting timeframe.

About 60% of survey respondents prepare reports monthly. Reporting more often is likely a waste of time because behavior change takes time, but reporting monthly is often enough to get the feedback everyone needs to make adjustments to tactics.

3. Determine reporting audiences.

Think about who will be viewing your progress and goals. What story are you trying to tell them? Choose metrics that support the goals of your community and can be easily understood.

We also recommend both preparing monthly reports to track activity and sharing results with stakeholders and aligning your reporting with your community’s objectives to best engage your community stakeholders.

Do you consistently report on community metrics to your team? How did you decide what to report on, and how do you present this data in a meaningful way to your stakeholders?

Want more insights like these? Download the free State of Community Management 2014 report, and keep an eye out for the State of Community Management 2015, due out this spring!

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Want to access a global network of community professionals? Learn how membership in TheCR Network can provide 24/7 365 networking, training, professional development, and education.

3 Best Practices for Creating Community Rules of Engagement

March 18, 2015 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Whether you’re starting from scratch with a brand new community, or working with a mature community that doesn’t have well defined programs and processes defining and managing community rules of engagement can be a struggle. We often get asked for a cheat sheet when creating these community rules.

While it’s hard to prescribe a single set of rules for engagement that make sense for different organizations, we put together three best practices for creating rules for engagement that make sense for any type of organization:

1. Define what success looks like.

Make an exhaustive list of everything you don’t want to see in the community – and everything you do want to see, including who participates and how. Be as specific as possible and include stakeholders in this brainstorming. Don’t be afraid to share this guide with your members!

2. Involve community members.

Communities with playbooks and mature policies are more likely to include members in strategic, tactical and policy related decisions. While the relationship between the two things is cyclical – getting members involved early can help drive policy maturity.

3. Develop enabling policies that encourage desired behavior.

Of the communities surveyed that can measure value, 67% have enabling policies. Think of these kinds of policies as a “to-do” list vs. just a list of restricted behaviors. Research shows that it doesn’t take years to develop mature policies and guidelines. 44% of communities that are only a year old have policies that promote positive behavior – and developing these policies early helps you shape and define your community culture before unwanted behaviors take hold.

Do you have a formal set of rules for engagement in your community? How did you go about defining these rules, and how do you actively share and manage these rules inside your community?

Want more insights like these? Download the free State of Community Management 2014 report, and learn more about how community managers approached this issue in The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes.

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Want to access a global network of community professionals? Learn how membership in TheCR Network can provide 24/7 365 networking, training, professional development, and education.

Community Management Case Study: The Evolution of a Community Advocacy Program

February 3, 2015 By Jim Storer

One of the perks of being a member of TheCR Network is access to fresh community management programming every week. Our community manager, Hillary Boucher, does an amazing job of tracking down interesting and engaging case studies from every stage of the community journey.

This past year Hillary and members of TheCR Network sat down with Erica Kuhl and Matt Brown from Salesforce to discuss a case study of Salesforce’s MVP program. While I can’t share the whole Roundtable call with you here, there are three key best practices I wanted to share for building out a community advocacy or leadership program.

Note: Matt is also one of the case study participants in the Community Manager Handbook, which was released February 4.

If you don’t current have any formal community advocacy or leadership programs, they are something to consider for your to-do list: community advocacy and leadership programs correlate to overall community maturity, the number of full-time community managers, the ability to measure value, higher levels of executive participation, higher levels of product team and subject matter participation, more user-generated content, higher levels of conversation vs. content sharing and more robust community tools

1. When building a community advocacy or leadership program, avoid over-governing the program with too many policies at the beginning. In this case, Salesforce wanted to grow the program with their MVPs. As they started to grow and enlist new MVPs, they added policies, guidelines and expectations in tandem with the growth.

2. Understand from the onset of the program the plan to leverage your advocates. This is critical in order to guard against the advocates feeling used or abused. It also contributes to a successful transition from an informal to a formalized program.

3. Ensure the organization elicits the feedback of the top advocates in the creation of the program. If this group likes the program and has an opportunity to refine it, it will be accepted by the greater population of advocates.

Do you have a formal community advocacy or leadership program in your community? What tips would you add for someone starting on the ground floor with a new program?

We recently had a great discussion over at #ESNchat about how to make the most of community champion programs. You can check out the Storify from the chat here, or review the mini-deck for highlights from the five questions we discussed, which included:

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Looking for more case studies like this? Members of TheCR Network have access to weekly community management programming and our complete archive of over 200 expert-led sessions. Learn more about being a member in TheCR Network.

Friday Roundup: 20 Minutes to Shape the Future of Community

January 30, 2015 By Ted McEnroe

By Ted McEnroe, The Community Roundtable

balloons The fifth Friday of 2015 is in the books, and this one comes at the end of a jam-packed week at The Community Roundtable, where we celebrated #CMAD, postponed #CMAD, launched our landmark annual survey and released the first piece of a new and fun Community Manager Handbook.

And that was just Monday.

A good part of our focus here at TheCR is shifting this week to gathering data for the 2015 State of Community Management survey. The 20-minute survey delves into a wide range of topics relating to communities and community management, and we have some goals in mind. We want data that helps us see where community maturity connects with desirable business outcomes – you know, the ROI question.

But we also want to gain insights from a broader range of communities. If you know people in the nonprofit space, or if you know media community managers, or have friends who manage communities in more “traditional” industries like manufacturing, encourage them to join the survey. As Rachel Happe put it in her post Now Open: 2015 State of Community Management Survey, “We need you to help us help you.”

So please, take the survey and spread the word. As a reward, at the end of your survey you get a free assessment of where your answers place you on the scales of the Community Maturity Model, which we hope gives you some insights into your own work. Your data will also be a part of the broader research, which will come out this spring, and have an impact on the future of community management.

While we open another SOCM chapter, we’re about to put a new research project out – The Community Manager Handbook: 20 Lessons from Community Superheroes. The Handbook will be released next Wednesday, after a webinar hosted by Higher Logic at 2pm ET. Sign up here! The Handbook is a series of 20 case studies of common issues community professionals face in their community life cycles. It’s unlike any other research we have ever released, both in approach and editorial tone.

We want to thank all those who came to our CMAD events in San Francisco, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Washington, DC on Monday. Mother Nature had other plans for us Monday night in Boston and New York, but as the old saying goes, “When life gives you blizzards, make 216 more hours of Community Manager Appreciation.” We postponed our CMAD events in Boston and New York to February 4, and while we couldn’t convince the CMAD organizers to fill 240 hours of hangouts until the 4th, we would love to see you there! Sign up for the CMAD: Post-Snowpacalypse Editions on our Eventbrite.

Oh, and we gave the CMSS poster treatment to some key facts about the role of community manager.

Some Other Interesting Readings This Week:

Why Online Community Managers Don’t Get the Respect They Deserve (And What You Can Do About It): It is important to point out that no one is denying the enormous impact having a community manager in place has on creating healthy and growing online communities. In their annual report on “The State of Community Management,” The Community Roundtable found that having a dedicated community manager clearly led to higher community maturity. So, in an age when community managers are growing in demand, how can you prove your value?

Community Management Realized: (This week), many will celebrate the role of community manager. I have never been a fan of this event. Perhaps this is because I have avoided the limelight. My job is to let others shine, realize their potential, and share their stories. A community manager is never alone in their job. There are times when one may feel the burden of being the sole spokesperson and storyteller of the community, but a community exists through reciprocal relationships and transcends the individual.

If You Build an Online Community, Will They Come?: “If you build it, they will come.” This worked for Kevin Costner in “Field of Dreams,” but when it comes to creating an online community to drive better engagement with your customers, it’s not that simple. Building the community is only about one tenths of the work that needs to happen to not only get them there, but what’s more important, to make them stay.

How digital collaboration will evolve in 2015: Information technology typically changes in leaps and bounds, and for collaboration in digital channels, those changes have been rather turbulent over the last decade. While the most significant overall trend during this time has been the strategic up-leveling of corporate engagement using the social business model to foster large-scale, high impact corporate communities, the pendulum of innovation has recently swung back to more intimate and close quarters.

New Community and Social Media Jobs

Community Management Fellow (Paid) – The Community Roundtable, remote

Research Fellow (Paid) – The Community Roundtable, remote

Sales/Marketing Fellow (Paid) – The Community Roundtable, remote

Social Media Community Manager – Commune Hotels and Resorts, San Francisco, CA

Technical Community Manager – The Optical Society, Washington, DC

Community Engagement Manager – itBit, New York, NY

Community Manager – Codeacademy, New York, NY

Community Manager – Nitro, San Francisco, CA

Social Media Community Manager – Walt Disney Co., Celebration, FL

Alphaworks – Community Manager – Betaworks, New York, NY

Community Manager – Data & Society, New York, NY

Community & Content Manager – Spredfast, Austin, TX

Now Open: 2015 State of Community Management Survey

January 28, 2015 By Rachel Happe

Yes, it’s that time of year again – time to take stock of where our community programs are and what’s next.

For The Community Roundtable, this is our biggest and most important initiative every year because our shared value with you is to demonstrate the value of community management. We collaborate with you to deliver research that does just that – creating something that generates more value than any of us could on our own.

This year’s research builds on our State of Community Management 2014 report – pushing what we know about the markers of community management maturity and scoring communities in the eight competencies identified in the Community Maturity Model.

We know this research has helped our members plan and budget – creating community programs that are more strategic and have more resources with which to succeed. It will help you understand things like:

For communities that can measure ROI, they have an average ROI of x%
X% of new member welcome processes include automated welcome emails, x% include personal welcome emails from a community manager and X% include video tutorials
The average and best-in-class engagement profiles include x% lurkers, x% contributors, x% creators and x% collaborators.
The average community SLA (service level agreement), for those that have them, is x hours.
How many communities without a full-time community manager can measure their value compared with average and the best-in-class segment.

This research will help you understand how well your community is addressing a variety of management initiatives – and help stakeholders understand where you have gaps and what is required to address them. Critical information as the community management discipline matures.

However, we need YOU to help us help you. Please consider taking our 20 minute survey. While the majority of questions are easy responses about things you have in place or don’t, there are a few pieces of data you may want to gather ahead of time:

Your engagement profile: Inactive, lurker, contributor, creator and collaborators. (Total should equal 100%)
Your community budget breakdown: Community management resources; Content and online programming/events; In-person events; consulting, advisory or research; Outsourced moderation and community management; Platform and technology. (Total should equal 100%)
Your annual ROI percentage, if you calculate it
Community SLA
Breakdown of community management time: Engagement; Content and program development; Strategic and planning responsibilities; Technical work; Analytics. Total should equal 100%

New this year, you will receive scores for each competency immediately.

Curious how well you will do? Take the survey here.

Community Managers Matter

December 18, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

If 2014 had a theme at TheCR it might have been “Community Managers are important.” I know – it seems obvious, and if you are reading here then chances are you too think that community managers are important, but time and time again this year we’ve uncovered research, or heard a case study that once again proves the value of community management and good community managers.

Despite progress in understanding the discipline of community management over the years, far too many communities are still without any dedicated community management resources. However, the truth is, community managers matter – they impact the engagement, ability to measure value and the maturity of the community. For anyone hoping to get business value from a community, appropriately resourcing community management staff should be a priority.

Do you work in a community that prioritizes the importance of dedicated community management? Have you found that dedicated community managers make it easier to measure the value of your organization’s community? We’d love to hear from you!

You can review more findings related to community management in the State of Community Management 2014. This post is part of a series highlighting some of the most thought-provoking data from the SOCM 2014 – brought to you via a fun poster – perfect for sharing on Twitter, hanging at your desk, or printing out and waving around your next community strategy meeting.

Want even more community facts? Check out the full SOCM 2014 here:

The State of Community Management 2014 from The Community Roundtable

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Looking to take your career in community management to the next level? 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.

What’s the Big Idea About Community? A Look Back at The State of Community Management 2014

December 4, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

We can hardly believe that 2014 is coming to a close. It’s been a big year here at TheCR – we released our fifth annual State of Community Management report, we launched a brand new research initiative in the Community Manager Salary Survey, and we introduced new services like the Community Performance Benchmark to help mature communities measure their value and plan for the future.

We also started sharing community content in new (and hopefully fun and engaging) ways.We launched the Community Manager Spotlight series, brought you weekly news and job roundups and shared nine fun facts from the State of Community Management via the SOCM Fact poster series. This last piece grew out of a member telling us she often prints out our research and blog posts and brings them to meetings with her to communicate the value of community with her executive team. We wanted to make it just a little bit easier for everyone to digest the big ideas in the SOCM 2014, and make it even easier to share community management data points with your colleagues.

We hope you found this poster series fun and informative. Below are all nine posters in case you’re doing a little end of the year cubicle redecorating, or wanted a nice framed gift for your community-loving boss!

Want even more community facts? Check out the full SOCM 2014 here:

The State of Community Management 2014 from The Community Roundtable

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Friday Roundup: Building a Community Roadmap

November 14, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Did you get hit by the polar vortex that is sweeping the nation? We’re bracing for the cold here in Boston, and it is undeniable, Fall is fading and Winter is coming. Luckily we’ve got lots of exciting community manager content to keep you warm! This week we shared our newest eBook – “Building a Community Roadmap” sponsored by our friends at Enterprise Hive.

This eBook is based on the finding in the State of Community Management 2014, and provides definitions, templates worksheets and a great case study to get you from 0-60 on your community roadmap. You can view the eBook here or visit Enterprise Hive to download it for free!

Stayed tuned next week as we release our latest research platform – the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014. This research 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.

You can join this free webinar next Tuesday where Rachel will provide a deep dive into the community manager role, and overview of the research and then download the report!

Our favorite community manager articles and news from around the web:

Help! I don’t have budget to add new staff to my community team. – Budgeting challenges are a big concern for a lot of community managers. One of the most common questions we get from community members is some variation on: “Help! I don’t have budget to add new staff to my community team. Where should I prioritize my time to make sure my community continues to grow?”

Startups are flocking to hire community builders. Why now? – When 28-year-old Alex Wood traveled alone through Japan this summer, he decided not to go the conventional hostel route. As a Silicon Valley developer, he wanted to learn about the country through the eyes of an Airbnb host, but he was worried he wouldn’t meet other travelers that way.

Community Supported Everything – Education for a Changing World. What would happen if communities took higher education into their own hands? What if education meant pursuing our passions and growing at our edges, immersed in a culture of creativity, accountability, integrity and action?

Building a Community Roadmap: A State of Community Management 2014 eBook from The Community Roundtable and Enterprise Hive.

Community Manager Spotlight: AMA with Becky Scott, Sr. Community Engagement Manager at iTalent – We had so much fun with out last community manager AMA we couldn’t wait to bring you another. Join us for this 30 minute webinar on Tuesday, December 2nd at 2pm ET for an AMA (ask me anything) chat with Becky Scott, Sr. Community Engagement Manager at iTalent.

New community manager and social media jobs:

Community Manager – Wanderu – Boston, MA
Community Manager – Zagster – Cambridge, MA 02141
Technical Community Manager – DigitalOcean – New York, NY
Social Media Community Manager, Freelancer – Sideways – New York, NY
Community Manager – Tripda – New York, NY
Community Manager – Metamarkets – San Francisco, CA
Community Manager – Warehouse Goods Inc – Boca Raton, FL
Community Manager – WeddingWire – Chevy Chase, MD
Community Manager – Young Entrepreneur Council – Boston, MA
Community Manager Position – Urban Leash – Chicago, IL
Community Manager Intern – Balabosta Ventures – Darien, CT
Web Content/Community Manager – Acquia, Inc. – Burlington, MA
Community Manager (Sausalito) – Red Tricycle – United States
Community Manager – Finn Partners – New York, NY
Community Manager – Sparkloft Media – Portland, OR
Community Manager – Urban Leash – Chicago, IL
Internal Communications Specialist Job – Marathon Oil – Houston, TX
Employer Brand & Social Media Specialist Job – Merck – West Point, PA
Social Media Coordinator – The Option Institute – Sheffield, MA
Social Media Coordinator – A’GACI – Los Angeles, CA

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Looking for a community management resource that provides the education of a course, the networking of a conference and unparalleled access to community experts and global practitioners? Check out the exclusive benefits of membership in TheCR Network.

Building a Community Roadmap

November 12, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

We are excited to share with you a free eBook based on the findings in the State of Community Management 2014 report – 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 new eBook answers the questions:

Why are community roadmaps important? First, we take a look at what a community roadmap is and its place in your community program. We’ll review how a community roadmap sets your community up for success, along with actionable advice about aligning priorities, communicating value and organizing planning in your community programs.
What is the Community Maturity Model?
Next, we’ll review the Community Maturity Model as a framework for productive communities. We also consider the elements of a productive community in order to help you start, build and grow a productive online community
How do I build a roadmap using the Community Maturity Model?
Lastly, we’ll give you some examples, templates and instructions for building a roadmap for your community. You’ll be able to use these provided resources to get started on drafting your community’s roadmap today.

This eBook, Building a Community Roadmap, is sponsored by Enterprise Hive. You can download the eBook for free today!

Building-Community-Roadmap-ebook Download