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The Community Roundtable

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

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: August 2014 Wrap-Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

I spent a lot of time this month looking forward and planning member programming for Fall. And while summer can be a bit quieter around TheCR Network, it was great to take a look back and see the different ways members were connecting and receiving value from their membership. Here are a few of my favorite examples of member engagement inside the network over the past month:

  • Developing B2B Social Communities (Roundtable): Every summer we host a book club and this year we read a book, Developing B2B Social Communities: Keys to Growth, Innovation and Customer Loyalty, authored by two of our members, J.J. Lovett & Sam Creek, and edited by our co-founder, Rachel Happe. Being that I manage a B2B community myself, I was happy for the push to read it and found it to be well organized and a comprehensive and actionable handbook for implementing, sustaining and measuring the value of a community program. The real treat was the hour long Roundtable call with the authors. Members had a ton of great questions for J.J. and Sam and were grateful for the insight that was shared.
  • Sharepoint/Yammer Knowledge Share (Discussion & Roundtable): Earlier this month a member posted a request to connect with other members who have experience using Sharepoint & Yammer for their community initiatives. A handful of members offered to connect with him individually, but we suggested that we hop on an informal Roundtable call. This way all parties could benefit from the discussion and it was good to see members exchanging their best practices and lessons learned. The bonus? We’re able to archive their insights in the network in the form of a Roundtable Report for the benefit of all of our members.
  • Community ROI Case Studies (Discussion): We have a member building a community from scratch and she came in to request community ROI case studies. We were able to connect the right members to her request and they shared how they approached measuring the ROI of their own communities and offered to connect individually to discuss further. Community success!

If you want to get a full idea of what membership is like you can take a look at this extensive overview which shares our general programming opportunities and resources made available to members.

Want to access our fall programming for the benefit of your community work? Reach out and ask us about membership.

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Community Managers – Declare Your Value! 
Have you taken the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 yet? Your insights into your role are invaluable as we document and define community manager best practices across industries. The survey is short (15 minutes) and we’d love to hear from you. Take the survey now.

3 Qualities to Look For When Hiring Junior Community Managers

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This is a guest post by Marie Connelly, Community Manager at GHDonline and member of TheCR Network.

Over the course of the last year or so, I’ve been thinking a lot about hiring junior community managers for our team, particularly in entry-level roles. At the Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard University, we’ve partnered with organizations like the Global Health Corps and Northeastern University’s co-op program to provide opportunities for young people looking to gain work experience in community management, marketing, and of course, global health.

Hiring Entry Level Community Managers

While we’re hiring students and recent graduates, these aren’t your average part-time internships—they’re paid, full-time fellowships, and the folks we bring on become an integral part of our team. They develop their own projects, talk with members, work with our leadership team and community moderators, and make significant contributions to our efforts to improve health care delivery through global collaboration. Obviously, it’s important to find the right candidates, but how do you know what to look for when applicants haven’t had significant experience with community management before?

Here are three qualities I always look for:

1. Curiosity

This has always been my #1 characteristic for what makes someone a successful community professional. Curiosity is what drives us to learn more about our members, listen to their needs, unpack that complicated support query, find the interesting story, and keep up with all the new developments in community management, and the tools we use. When interviewing junior candidates, I look for people who ask great questions, and can show how they’ve explored their interests and passions in the past.

2. Writing skills

While communication skills of all stripes are important for community work, strong writing skills are paramount, particularly for junior team members. I try to look at a range of written communication styles during the interview process: emails, social media postings, shorter written pieces, and longer ones. Those who write with clarity, have the ability to make a compelling argument, and are comfortable switching between writing styles will likely be ready for the wide range of writing tasks that come with this job.

3. Something I don’t have

This is an important thing to look for with anyone you’re hiring, but I suspect it gets overlooked when candidates aren’t expected to have very much experience. While you’re going to be teaching and training a new team member quite a bit, don’t forget to consider the things they’ll be able to teach you. One of my junior community colleagues has great video and visual design skills, another has been doing PR work in college, and our most recent hire has experience doing advocacy and education work in Nepal. They’re all bringing something to the table that I don’t have, which makes our ability to approach new challenges and opportunities as a team much, much stronger.

While these are, no doubt, characteristics to look for in any new teammate, I’ve found them to be especially helpful in identifying the right candidates for entry-level community positions. We can always train new team members on the tools we use and the particular elements of our approach, but these three characteristics give me the confidence that someone is going to have the foundation to hit the ground running when they join our team.

I’d love to hear from others what characteristics they look for when hiring folks who are totally new to the field—what would you add to this list?

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Have you taken the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 yet? Your insights into your role are invaluable as we document and define community manager best practices across industries.Take the Survey

The survey is short (15 minutes) and we’d love to hear from you. Please take the survey now.

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: July 2014 Wrap Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

Flat Hillary

A TheCR Network Tradition – Each Summer our very own Flat Community Manager hits the road and visits members all over the world.

Summer is just flying by inside TheCR Network. I exercised some work-life balance and took a fully unplugged vacation this month thanks to my supportive team who held down the fort while I was out of the office. And while we decrease the number of virtual live events we host due to vacation season the network has been quite busy in the forums. Here are a few samples of discussions, collaboration, and knowledge sharing that occurred inside TheCR Network this month.

  • Zero to Community: Building Community from the Ground Up (Discussion): We have a number of experienced community managers who have taken on new roles where they are building a community from scratch. A few months ago we held a call to share mini-case studies on getting from zero to pilot, but the collaboration continued this month. A member started a thread requesting a sample RFP as he prepares to tool up and he received incredibly detailed and supportive resources from fellow members who had recently gone through the process. It’s the kind of discussion thread that makes a community manager proud.
  • Community Manager Salary Survey Member Event (Virtual Event): As you probably know we released a new research initiative and are in the process of gathering responses for our Community Manager Salary Survey. We threw a member event as a fun and convenient way to get members to block off some time on their calendar to take the 15 minute survey. We hosted a virtual chat where they could check-in, get a community manager high-five, and connect with our team and peers. It was a great success and a good way to connect and collaborate. All attendees received a digital delight package including exclusive badges and bonus downloads for our summer challenge.
  • Using the Community Maturity Model as an Internal Consultant (Report):  This month we released reports from an extremely valuable demo and case study shared by a member who built a maturity assessment tool off of the Community Maturity Model and is using it to consult across his large company. We love seeing members build off of each others’ work and add valuable resources back into the TheCR Network for their peers. I’m very pleased to add this report to our archives. (Did you know we have 200+ Roundtable Reports archived and catalogued by competency in the member library?)

If you want to get a full idea of what membership is like you can take a look at this extensive overview which shares our general programming opportunities and resources made available to members.

We’re looking ahead to fall and planning a robust programming calendar for members. If you are interested in joining us or have more questions about membership please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask.

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Community Managers – Declare Your Value! 
Have you taken the Community Manager Salary Survey 2014 yet? Your insights into your role are invaluable as we document and define community manager best practices across industries. The survey is short (15 minutes) and we’d love to hear from you. Take the survey now.

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: June 2014 Wrap-Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

I was chatting with one of my teammates at TheCR last Friday and we could not believe we were at the end of June already. This month seemed to just disappear in the blink of an eye!

June inside TheCR Network marks the end of our formal spring programming calendar. If your community participation slows down a bit like ours does you may want to think about focusing on your more strategic projects during your community downtime. We’ll be revisiting our community strategy this summer as well as focusing on our road map. Enough about the future. Let’s look at the June highlights from inside TheCR Network!

  • Applying the Community Maturity Model for Internal Consulting (Roundtable). This was an absolute value packed call and such an exciting collaboration between us and our members. We love to see how our members adapt and build off of the Community Maturity Model. In this case one of our members shared his adaptation and how he is using it to consult across groups within his organization. He gave a live demo and member participants were grateful for the opportunity to discuss his approach with him and ask him questions in real time. You can see an excerpt here.
  • User-centered Design for Community Managers (Roundtable). We brought in guest expert Dr. David Travis to discuss user-centered design for community managers by member request. Dr. Travis gave us a high-level overview of the basic tenants of user-centered design and then we opened the conversation to the group. It was an engaging call with many applicable insights for community professionals.
  • Risk & Online Community (Roundtable). A community manager and an attorney walk into a bar … and you get the Blake & Ben Show. Think entertainment meets real world, plain language information on what an organization and a community manager needs to be thinking about in terms of risk and best practices for ensuring that your online community and community management practices are not putting your organization at risk.

If you want to get a full idea of what membership is like you can take a look at this extensive overview which shares our general programming opportunities and resources made available to members.

We’re planning some fun summertime programming for the network for July & August! If you are interested in joining us please let us know. Have a great summer!

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Did you know members of TheCR Network have unlimited access to our Library, which includes:

  • Research: TheCR’s State of Community Management and Social Executive research (including downloadable reports exclusive to members)
  • Resource bundles: Curated content from TheCR and beyond to help you with specific topics
  • Quick Cases: Short case studies from TheCR Network members on specific community projects
  • Conference Resources: Links to the network’s collaborative Community Conference Guide and a collection of Conference Trip Report Podcasts featuring TheCR Network members’ takeaways from community related conferences
  • Roundtable Reports: Over 200 summaries of our weekly Roundtable calls

Learn how you can access TheCR Network Library and more with a membership.

Faces of Community Management: Rebecca Braglio, Pet360

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

This month’s Face of Community Management is TheCR Network member Rebecca Braglio. Rebecca is the Community Engagement Manager at Pet360 and has one of the most interesting paths to community management that I’ve ever heard. Check out her story and learn how her (very cute) dog helped her find a new career as a community manager.

Note from Hillary: Rebecca is one of our super users inside TheCR Network and I’m always so grateful to catch up with her. You might find us chatting in virtual Happy Hours, connecting on a Roundtable call, or hanging off a trolley in San Francisco in between conference sessions. 🙂 I appreciate her warm and compassionate demeanor and how she helps make the network a welcoming place for new members. We’re lucky to call her a member!

Rebecca Braglio, Community Manager Pets360

 

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95% of TheCR Network members (including community mangers like Rebecca) agree that the content and peer input available inside the Network improves the quality of their work. 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.

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: May 2014 Wrap-Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

TheCR team up to no good at LiNC 14 in San Francisco.

TheCR team up to no good at LiNC 14 in San Francisco.

May was another great month inside TheCR Network! As Shannon mentioned earlier this month, our team was busy traveling and had the opportunity to meet up with many of our members face-to-face at various industry events. I work virtually with all of our members and it was so nice to meet folks, share a real (vs virtual) happy hour, and learn more about the challenges they face so we can better provide programming and resources to address them.

Even with all of our travel there was still plenty going on in the Network. Here are a few highlights from this month inside TheCR Network:

  • Building community by addressing behavior change (Roundtable). We were fascinated by the presentation Nir Eyal gave inside TheCR earlier this month on building habit forming communities. What made this call a winner? The content was stellar, but members were able to take advantage of casual format of a Roundtable call and interact directly with Nir. We had some great questions and conversation. Tons of applicable insights for community managers (and here I was worrying it would be too product focused). I have already been adapting some of his insights and applying them to my own community work.
  • Building a community from scratch (Roundtable). We have a number of veteran members who have recently taken on the challenge of building community from scratch. We heard two case studies: one from the B2C side (Sidecar) and another from the B2B perspective (Limelight Networks) and took a deep dive into how the practitioners approached and managed the three months it took them to get from zero to pilot. Best part of this call? We’ll be checking back in at the six month and the one year mark to learn about their progress. I’m very excited to capture this info for our members in our archives.
  • Adventures in coaching the C-suite (Roundtable). Always a popular topic because it’s so very integral to the success of community initiatives. On this call we had two members share their experiences of coaching executives. This call was facilitated by Maggie, one of my teammates who works here at TheCR and worked closely on The Social Executive research we released last year.

If you want to get a full idea of what membership is like you can take a look at this extensive overview which shares our general programming opportunities and resources made available to members.

I hope you had a great month, too! I’m looking forward to all the great conversations we have planned for June including metrics, enterprise collaboration, and user design for community managers. I hope you will join us!

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Did you know members of TheCR Network have unlimited access to our Library, which includes:

  • Research: TheCR’s State of Community Management and Social Executive research (including downloadable reports exclusive to members)
  • Resource bundles: Curated content from TheCR and beyond to help you with specific topics
  • Quick Cases: Short case studies from TheCR Network members on specific community projects
  • Conference Resources: Links to the network’s collaborative Community Conference Guide and a collection of Conference Trip Report Podcasts featuring TheCR Network members’ takeaways from community related conferences
  • Roundtable Reports: Over 200 summaries of our weekly Roundtable calls

Learn how you can access TheCR Network Library and more with a membership.

Faces of Community Management: Luke Sinclair, Sitrion

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

Another month in the books and another chance to share with you a new Faces of Community Management profile. This month we’re highlighting Luke Sinclair, Director of Community Management at Sitrion and member of TheCR Network. I was lucky enough to meet Luke this month at Sitrion’s annual conference – Collective 2014. In addition to being the emcee of the event, Luke delighted in emulating Oprah and giving away free books at every turn. Collective was easily the most engaging event I’ve been to personally and a large part of that was Luke’s infectious personality (the Australian accent doesn’t hurt either). Luke even managed to get a room full of pretty serious looking people snapping selfies left and right. He is a true delight to work with and best of all he really, really loves his job in community management.

Without further ado: Luke Sinclair!

Luke Sinclair

 

 

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Did you know that TheCR Network members work with all kinds of communities? In fact, about 25% work in either internal or external communities and 50% work with both! No matter what kind of community you work with membership in TheCR Network will save you time and improve the quality of your work by connecting you with peers, experts and curated information. Learn how joining TheCR Network can improve the work you do.

 

 

Webinar Recap: Community Manager Spotlight with Maggie McGary

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

Last month we were lucky enough to sit down with Maggie McGary, Web & Social Media Administrator at AOTA. Maggie is a community veteran – and has been an active member of The Community Roundtable since our inception in 2009.  Maggie is a writer and digital strategist with over five years of hands-on experience managing websites, online communities and social media for associations. She has deep experience in all facets of content marketing including blogging, social media marketing, community management and web content development. A well-respected subject matter expert, Maggie presents frequently at ASAE and other industry events, and blogs about social media both on her blog, Mizz Information, and Socialfish.

In addition to over 10 years experience in the association world, Maggie is a blogger whose guest posts have been featured on numerous blogs including The Washington Post, SocialFishing and Social Media Today. Maggie blogs about social media at https://MaggieMcGary.com, and you can find her on Twitter @maggielmcg.

Below you’ll find the complete Community Manager Spotlight webinar featuring Maggie. She provides a fantastic framework for supporting and encouraging engagement and provide great advice to any community professional – not just those in the association space.

This content has moved inside The Network.

Don’t miss our next Community Manager Spotlight webinar featuring Ian White from Rackspace. Ian will be sharing best practices for community-based customer support. Register now!

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Did you know that 95% of The Network members agree that the content and peer input improves the quality of their work? It’s true! Membership in The 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 The Network can improve the work you do.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Friday Roundup: J.Boye Recap Edition

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

Photo Credit: @jedpc

Photo Credit: @jedpc

We kicked off an exciting May of travel by tagging along with Rachel as she attended the J.Boye Web & Intranet Conference in Philadelphia. Rachel, along with three TheCR Network members, presented at the conference, and if our twitter stream is any indication, a great time was had by all.

Next week Rachel and Shannon will visit Orlando for Collective 2014, and the week after Jim, Hillary and Jillian will trek to the West Coast and visit San Francisco for Lithium’s LiNC. Will you be attending any of these events? Let us know – we’d love to catch up in person!

Didn’t get to attend J.Boye? We’ve pulled together all our favorite moments from the three day event in our very first Storify and included it at the end of this post.

Don’t worry – we didn’t forget the links (or the jobs!) this week:

Framework: Collaborative Economy Honeycomb – “The Collaborative Economy enables people to efficiently get what they need from each other. They use powerful technologies that enable Crowdfunding, Peer-to-Peer lending, the Maker Movement, and the Sharing Economy. If you look closely, the crowd is becoming like a company: self funding, designing, producing, and sharing what they already have.”

To Be Heard, Turn Down The Volume – “What is it about the Internet that has made everybody so sure of themselves? You’d think the level of disruption during the past 20 years would have had the opposite effect. Instead, the number of people stepping onto their virtual soapboxes and telling the rest of us what to do and think has exploded. They opine with such surety, such clarity, such force.”

New Webinar: Community Manager Spotlight with Ian White – This 30 minute live webinar on June 3rd at 2pm ET will focus on Ian’s community journey and his team’s innovative use of a community customer support model. His team recently won a silver award for Best Use of Technology in Customer Service at the eighth annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. This webinar will include a Q&A – have your questions ready.

Want to Succeed in Social Business? Invest in It .- “The good news is that 76 percent of communities have approved strategies. This is a great indication that organizations and executives can now envision the value communities will contribute to their business and suggests a maturing market. The bad news? Only 35 percent communities have approved and resourced roadmaps.”

Community and Social Media Jobs:

  1. Community Executive at 1000heads – Greater New York City Area
  2. Senior Community Manager at Reputation.com – Redwood City, CA
  3. Global Director of Social Media BlackRock USA –  NY
  4. Social Media Copywriter at Thrillist Media Group – NY
  5. Director Social Media Marketing at Capital One – Mclean,VA
  6. Associate Director, Social Media at Fuel Freedom Foundation – Irvine, CA
  7. Pro Sports – Social Media Associate at Workinsports – Minneapolis, MN
  8. Online Community Manager at TechSoup Global – San Francisco, Remote Work Possible
  9. Community Manager at  HERE, a Nokia business – Boston, MA
  10. Social Media Community Manager at MDG Advertising – West Palm Beach, FL
  11. Community Manager at Carolina Herrera – New York, NY
  12. Social Media Strategist at Mason Zimbler – Austin, TX
  13. Community Manager at CyberCoders, Newton, MA
  14. Community Manager – Unreal Engine at Epic Games – Cary, NC
  15. Director of Social Media at Bentley Channel Group – Washington, DC
  16. Social Media & Community Manager at Zoosk – San Francisco, CA
  17. Content & Community Manager at The News Hub – London, England
  18. Community Manager at NPR – Washington, DC

 

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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. 

 

TheCR Network Sneak Peek: April 2014 Wrap-Up

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By Hillary Boucher, Community Manager at The Community Roundtable.

I’m really not ready for April to be over. Can I get an extension on this month? Ha! I guess I better just keep moving forward. Part of the reason that April flew by was because we launched State of Community Management 2014 this month and celebrated our fifth anniversary. And somewhere in between we facilitated five Roundtable sessions, added four reports to our directory and supported dozens of discussions and introductions within the network. Phew!

I wanted to catch my breath for a moment and share a few highlights from inside the TheCR Network this past month:

  • State of Community Management 2014 Supplement (Resource Bundle). You may have noticed the “Lessons from TheCR” section for each competency within the State of Community Management 2014 report. Those were excerpts from full reports that live inside the ever growing TheCR Library within the network. We bundled all the reports mentioned in SOCM this year so members could have easy access to continue their research.
  • How to Scale Community Management Efforts (Roundtable Sessions). We had two calls that approached how to scale your community management efforts from different angles. One was facilitated by the very insightful Richard Binhammer who taught members how to use a talent assessment model to identify skill gaps and find community and social talent to supplement and support their strategy. The other call was a member-led discussion on how to hire for your community team. Experienced members swapped hiring approaches, favorite interview questions, and identifiers to help you spot a natural community manager.
  • Design Thinking for Complex Community Program Challenges (Roundtable). Complex challenges are those that don’t have a black and white answer. Sound familiar? TheCR member Erin Liman generously shared her expertise on using design thinking to approach the complex issues that many community managers face. Challenges like: “Our executives say they support our community initiative, but their actions tell a different story,” or “We bring our advocates to the table, involve them in decision-making, but they never seem to happy.”

I shared a more extensive overview of what goes on every month if you are curious and you can also check out last month’s sneak peek. Would love to hear what was going on in your world this past month in the comments, too.

Until next month!

 

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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.