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The Community Roundtable

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

Championing Community Management at SXSW 2017

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By friend of TheCR Kate Baucherel, Co-Founder, ambix.io

sxswAt the 2016 South by South West Interactive Festival’s Community Management meetup, professionals from across the world agreed that our discipline needs greater prominence at SXSW 2017. Sessions tagged as “community” in 2016 were often a heartwarming part of SXgood, not showcases of best practice and cutting edge application for business success. Frustrated Community Management professionals vowed to change this for next year.

Following discussions with the SXSW organisers themselves, we are appealing for all community professionals who are submitting an idea to the Panel Picker to do one simple thing:

Tag your proposal with Community Management.

There are Community Management panel ideas emerging from thought leaders, community professionals, and household name enterprises. The Community Roundtable is also helping its members with submissions to deliver wide-ranging Community Management case studies, best practice, research and, thought leadership.

The Panel Picker process

The Panel Picker opens on 28th June, so this is the time to start planning! Visit the SXSW website to familiarise yourself with the Panel Picker process and requirements. When submitting a panel proposal you will select the stream that your panel submission applies to (branding, content etc), and have the option of adding three tags to give greater context to your talk. Make one of these Community Management, with uppercase C and M. No variations, no substitutions! By using a consistent tag across all panels proposed by community professionals, we can give delegates a clear picture of the breadth of material available when Interactive rolls around next March.

How SxSW handles duplicate content

Where a number of panels are proposed with similar content, the organisers will either select the strongest, or ask several proposers to work together. To deliver a strong Community Management program, talk to your fellow managers: see who else is submitting, what topics are being covered, and whether you can collaborate, or develop a different panel. We have a wealth of experience between us, and it would be a shame to waste any of it.

Food for thought

Could you showcase your expertise in any of the following areas?

  • Delivering business goals effectively
  • Innovation through collaboration
  • How Community Managers influence strategy
  • Community is the responsive front line of your brand
  • Return on Investment
  • Managing customer sentiment: controlling the conversation
  • Branding: Active community management builds loyalty
  • Content distribution and feedback – reconstructed
  • Lessons from consumer communities
  • Planning your intranet
  • Starting out on the right foot: community creation
  • Developing and leading a maturing community.
  • How Community management can fix your social strategy
  • Delivering Community Return on Investment
  • SXgood: community for nonprofits
  • Convergence: film promotion via community
  • Convergence: music fan community management

How to get involved

If you think you’d like to contribute to Community Management programming at SXSW 2017, get in touch as soon as possible. We are trying to reduce the risk of panel duplication, cover a wide range of topics, and put professionals together to share their expertise. Members of The Community Roundtable should email Amy Turner and independent Community professionals email Kate Baucherel.

Friday Roundup – Will Winter Ever End? Edition

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

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(Illustration by Sarah Lazarovic)

Despite it being not quite halfway through March we are very ready for winter to be over. After an unseasonably warm weekend it snowed twice in Boston this week. Enough!

We are already looking forward to April – and not just for the (hopefully) nicer weather. April marks our five year anniversary and we are ready to celebrate. This week we announced our 5th anniversary celebration – a Happy Hour in Cambridge, MA. If you’re in the Greater Boston area we’d love to see you!

That’s all for this week, friends. Have a great weekend, beware the ides of March and we’ll see you back here on Monday!

 

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Did you know that 95% of TheCR Network members agree that the content and peer input available inside the Network 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.

Tips for Community Managers Attending SXSWi 2014

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

SXSWi 2014Are you heading to Austin for SXSWi this week? Our co-founder, Jim Storer, will be there – if you spot him stop and say hello!

Whether you’re a first time attendee or an old veteran we’ve put together some tips and advice to help you survive and thrive in Austin. We’ve also scoured the session guide to put together our own list of cool sessions, parties and events  that would be interesting for anyone with community on the brain.

Take a peek and let us know if there is a can’t miss session, party or meet-up we should include. Do you have advice or a SXSWi tip that we left out? Please share in the comments below.

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The Community Roundtable is committed to advancing the business of community. We are dedicated to the success of community and social business leaders and offer a range of research, training and advisory services. We facilitate TheCR Network – a trusted environment in which to discuss and share daily challenges and triumphs with proven leaders. Our weekly programming, access to experts, curated content, and vibrant discussions make TheCR Network the network for the smartest social business leaders.

Learn more.

Thomas Meyer on Online Community as an “Earned Media” Strategy

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a 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 series continues with episode #22, featuring Thomas Meyer, Senior Manager of Global Public Relations at Sonos Inc., maker of a premium multi-room music systems (disclosure: both podcast hosts are Sonos owners).
 

Highlights include:

  • Online community as an “earned media” strategy
  • Does a premium price point affect the size and activity of the community?
  • The relationship between customer satisfaction and evangelism
  • Not to focus on tools, but the value of the iPhone and email to community

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

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.

#SXSWLurkers – My Experience on a Panel at SXSW

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I had the opportunity to present at South-by-Southwest Interactive this year for the first time. I shared the stage with three friends and former colleagues for “Lurkers: Your Most Valuable Community Members.” We offered up this description:

Your lurkers are a vital and necessary part of your community and they often make up a majority of your membership but are dismissed as valueless members of the community. Treating your lurkers as if they have no value could be a fatal mistake in managing your community. Many community managers discount the value of lurkers when in fact, they are usually the cornerstone of your community. The panelists will help you understand the measurements you need to use to both understand the value of your community lurkers and how to translate that value back to the business. We will also share ideas on how to keep lurkers engaged and coming back to the community and how they can turn from lurkers into contributors. In this panel, you will learn why your community lurkers are valuable and how to measure their value by understanding how they are contributing to your community, what they are learning from your community, and how they are providing value back to the business. This will be a moderator-lead discussion with plenty of time for Q&A. Learn from a panel with a combined 32 years of community building and management experience.

To say it was an excellent experience is an understatement. From the moment we were accepted, Mike, Mark, Heather ** and I took our obligation to the audience seriously. We met every other week for an hour, starting in early January. We also utilized a private Facebook group to share links, debate ideas and follow up with one another on action items. I think we were all a bit terrified of falling short of the audience’s expectations.

We were conflicted when we found out we were speaking at the Hyatt at 5pm on Saturday. Late afternoon is typically a better slot than the morning, but being out of the flow of the “main tent” in the Austin Convention Center meant people might not make the extra effort to take in our session. Saturday afternoon is certainly better than Tuesday afternoon. As the schedule of parties started to hit, I became even more pessimistic since a lot of them were scheduled to start at 5pm. The thought of having to circle 10-20 chairs in the rooms and holding an informal q&a crossed my mind.

As I walked over to the Hyatt on Saturday afternoon I was surprised to see all the activity in and around the hotel. It was supposed to be the hub for the “Social Graph” track and it seemed to have a great group of people sticking around to take in sessions. My enthusiasm balloon was punctured when we went to the green room and found we were speaking against Drew Olanoff and another panel called “Zombies Must Eat: How Genre Communities Make Money.” Sandwiched between the guy that started the #BlameDrewsCancer meme and Zombies… damn, that’s some tough competition.

In the end we didn’t have to circle the chairs. We didn’t cancel the session because no one showed up. Instead we had fun, shared some stories and (I think) proved that lurkers are a really important part of every community. The room was close to capacity (100+) and we had a lot of interaction and questions from the audience. I had more than a couple people come up to me later in the week to tell me it was the best panel they’d attended so far. That feels pretty good.

My takeaways on my first SXSW panel experience?

  1. Your preparation doesn’t end when you submit your panel proposal. Sure the panel submission process is pretty thorough, but it’s just the beginning. The panels that fell flat for me seemed like a bunch of individuals who didn’t really know each other and what they brought to the panel. You may be brilliant, but if you’re on a panel you owe it to the audience to get to know your fellow panelists. Getting together the night before for dinner *might* work, but I *know* connecting with your panelists multiple times beforehand will help you hit it out of the park.
  2. Respect your audience and the other panelists. I was thrilled to see all the people in the seats when we got started. I must have thanked them five times for choosing us vs. a short nap or early party. Even though you’ll probably have the opportunity (SXSW parties are all day long), don’t drink alcohol ahead of your panel. Sure you can wing it, but you’re not as sharp if you do. Support your fellow panelists and don’t dominate the microphone. Following #1 will help you build a relationship with them in advance and make this a lot easier.
  3. Have fun and don’t take yourself too seriously. I hope this one pretty much speaks for itself.

I hope you get chosen to do a session/panel at SXSW next year. I’m sure you’ll kill it!

What have you learned in speaking at SXSW (or any other conference)? What would your top tips be for new presenters? The comments are yours.

* PHOTO CREDIT: Derek Peplau. See the entire slideshow from our session here.

** Three of the best friends and fellow panelists a guy could ask for. Thanks guys!

Christopher Barger on the “Immerse and Disperse” Method

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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 #16, featuring Christopher Barger, Global Director of Social Media at General Motors. Highlights include:
  • The “immerse and disperse” method of cross-training social media staff; immersing them via a consistent training program, then dispersing them to represent different divisions of the company
  • Using internal communities to identify creative thinkers who might not otherwise surface
  • Why a Fortune 500 company would bother sponsoring small events
  • Measuring results, both long- and short-term, using GM’s participation in SXSW as an example

MUSIC CREDIT: “Bleuacide” by graphiqsgroove.

PHOTO CREDIT: Becky Johns

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

5 Awesome Ideas for Community Engagement from Burr Settles

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Don’t know Burr Settles? He’s the force behind February Album Writing Month, otherwise know as FAWM. Like many community managers, he stumbled into the role because of his passion for independent music and an inspiration from National Novel Writing Month. What started as a fun thing to do in 2004 among a few friends has grown into a community of over 3,000 people who create, collaborate, and publish together.  We had Burr join us for a member call this week to discuss the FAWM project and what he had learned about community management over the years. Burr has four best practices that guide him:

  • Don’t Promote
  • Embrace Constraints
  • Keep it Ripe
  • Communication Over Aggregation

There is a great write up about those concepts here.  What I found to be one of the more interesting parts of our conversation with Burr was around the topic of constraints and how to use them creatively to drive engagement. Rather than lock people down, constraints offer a spark and a jumping off point for people to innovate and create. Burr talked about different ways constraints were created – centrally, self-imposed, and community generated – which all took the form of creative challenges.  My 5 favorite ideas were:

    1. Feasting – have people create as much as you can in one sitting (1-5 hours)
    2. Skirmishes – provide a topic/title/concept at a given time every week and give everyone one hour to complete the task
    3. Concept challenges – use an existing sets of things to inspire responses (U.S. presidents, periodic table of elements, deck of cards, etc)
    4. Daily/weekly inspiration – select a word, phrase, or piece of content for members to riff off of
    5. Brainstorming tools – Burr created these and I’ve used these in the past

      When you think about your community programming, consider incorporating some of these ideas – it will change things up, add an element of fun and competition, and get people talking.  At The Community Roundtable we’re running TheCR Summer Camp for our members – a fun way to learn more about social tools and methods while getting to know each other. It offers a different type of programming than we do the rest of the year, which breaks things up and offers some variety… plus it’s fun for us and that rubs off.

      Also, I hear from SchneiderMike (who recommended we have Burr in to speak as well – thanks Mike!) that the FAWM compilation CDs are excellent – check them out here.

      Interested in joining us for conversations like this one?  Find out more about membership in TheCR here.

      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

      Aaron Strout on Measurement and Best Practices

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      tough night I’ve been friends with Aaron since he and I were on the team together at Shared Insights. We worked on community projects like “We Are Smarter than Me” and traveled the country recording podcasts with industry rockstars. It was a bit odd interviewing Aaron since we’d tag-teamed so many interviews in the past, but we muddled through. 🙂

      On the podcast, Aaron shares more about Powered, including how their “four super powers” – Strategy, Content, Measurement and Platform – support communities for clients like Radio Shack, Sony, HP and Atkins. We dug into content and measurement in detail, exploring how companies should think about these important facets of community building.

      We also talked about Aaron’s role as an evangelist (or the Kevin Bacon of social media as Adam Cohen noted) and what best practices he’s picked up along the way. Given Aaron’s success and influence this is must-listen stuff. He’s humble of course, but shares a lot of nuggets about the secrets to his success.

      Download this podcast (22 minutes/19.8mb)

       

      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

      Conversations with Community Manager – Shawn Morton

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      I met Shawn last March while on the Innovator’s RoadTrip. He joined us for a beer in Columbus and talked about the innovative work he was doing at Nationwide. We soon realized we had a lot of friends in common and ended up at a lot of the same “social gatherings” at SXSWi. Good times!

      During this podcast Shawn talks about what it’s like getting a large organization started in social media, the importance of executive sponsorship and how demonstrating quick wins is a good strategy when you’re just getting started. He also talks about Nationwide’s use of Yammer and how it’s a good first step for people getting used to the power of social media. Finally, Shawn shares the innovative way he works with the legal team at Nationwide to make sure they’re comfortable with how the team is interacting on social networks. Enjoy!

      Download this podcast (22 minutes/20.6 mb)

       

      Podcast: Play in new window | Download

      Subscribe: Spotify | RSS