The Community Roundtable

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

Friday Roundup: January is in the Books

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

Another January in the books! The first month of 2014 flew by (personal note: I did get married and honeymoon this month, which probably helped the time move fast for me!) and our first experiment with themed content was a great learning exeperience. I really enjoyed sharing ideas and content around the theme of “Building Community” – next month we’re tackling the idea of “Connect” and I can’t wait to see what the month will bring!

This week there were two pretty big events on our radar #CMAD (Community Management Advancement Day) and the IBM Connect event in Orlando, FL. Both provided a wealth of really great content we want to share so the link list is extra long today.

  1. A fun list of the top 100 Community Managers on Twitter
  2. The first in our new Faces of Community Management profile series
  3. A growing list of community manager books.
  4. Should you give thanks (or a bonus?) to your community manager?
  5. Community Manager: Key to the Future of Business
  6. How to Truly Show Your Online Community Manager Appreciation
  7. Redefining management in the Digital Age
  8. Social Technologies: A Catalyst to the Practice of Knowledge Management
  9. Social Media Salary Guide – Infographic
  10. Social Business Myth Busters from Sandy Carter!
  11. Really great advice on approaching people who are smarter, busier, and more important than you
  12. 24 Community Management Tips from the Experts
  13. Why All Community Managers are Improv Artists
  14. Online Community ROI, Redefined (In Pictures)

Wow that’s a lot of links! We also launched the survey for our 2014 State of Community Management Report this month. If you haven’t taken it yet we’d love your input – we’re looking for community folks from every size company in every stage of the community journey. You can take the survey here. Thank you in advance for your help.

Have a great Superbowl weekend – I’ve got big plans that involve some homemade kettle corn and watching the game (and the commercials!) with friends. I’ll see you in February!

Building Value: Articulating the Power of Community Management

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Over and over we hear from members and peers that articulating the value of a thoughtful and well-executed community program is one of the hardest parts of their job. Sure – wrangling tough community members isn’t a walk in the park, and no one likes a troll, but condensing the power of community management into a few sentences is often very tough – even for experienced community practitioners. If you’re building out a community program at your company, you’ve likely faced the same challenge.

In the document below – our 2013 State of Community Management report, we focus specifically on the value of community management. Highlights include discussion around what business communities look like – and the value of this type of program, as well as an in-depth look at the role of a community manager and the value they bring. Resources like this report can really provide the concrete research and case studies that non-believers are looking for.


2013 SOCM: The Value of Community Management from The Community Roundtable

Check out all of our State of Community Management research here – including the evolution of the social business industry and analysis of organizational patterns and lessons learned from industry leaders and practitioners, and see how you can leverage the insights within to better articulate the power of the work you do. We know the value of expert community management – help the rest of your company see it, too.

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The Community Roundtable Toolkits are designed to help individuals map out the next challenges in their community journey. The Toolkits provide actionable templates, guides and resources whether you are laying the foundation for a successful program to organizing, assessing and reporting on their community efforts to truly transforming your organization into a networked business to gaining the knowledge needed to effectively coach executives in social.

Learn more.

Building your Community Approach

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By Shannon DiGregorio, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Here on The Community Roundtable blog we’ve decided to try something new for 2014. Each month we’ll pick an aspect of community management and tackle it from many angles, providing commentary, resources and expert opinions. Planning and building seem like  natural themes for January – as we all look ahead to the next 12 months it’s especially important to make sure a solid foundation is in place for your community plans and how you build your community approach.

“Build” is also one of the three main maturity transitions we’ve identified as part of the community maturity model. This is a great tool to assess where you are on your journey – go ahead, we’ll wait while you check it out. In short, Build is the transition where you start to formalize and incorporate what you have learned in phase one when a lot of time is spent experimenting. During the build process governance, resources and metrics to benchmark your work are developed. This short Build checklist should help you decide if you’re in this phase:

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If you’re approaching the Build stage of your journey these existing resources will help you accelerate your planning for 2014: 

Over the next month we’ll share content focused on all aspects of building community that can help if you in the Build stage or if you are going back to re-asses your governance, staffing or metrics approaches. We’re focusing on building value, building reputation, building connections and building programs – with expert advice and some fun surprises thrown in. If you have any great resources that have helped you build your approach please reach out – we’d love to hear from you!

 
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If you’re looking to build your community program there is no better resource than the TheCR Network. TheCR Network is a membership network that provides exclusive strategic, tactical and professional development programming for community and social business leaders. The network enables members to connect and form lasting relationships with experts and peers as well as get access to vetted content.

TheCR Network is the place to learn from social business practitioners. Join today.