The Community Roundtable

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

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

Kathy O’Reilly on Managing Niche 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. Our podcast series, Conversations with Community Managers (a co-production with The Community Roundtable), continues with episode #14, featuring Kathy O’Reilly, Director of Social Media Relations for Monster.com (a Voce client). Highlights include:
  • Handling disparate – but related – audiences via community; in this case, job seekers and employers
  • The challenges of managing many separate niche communities without splintering the corporate mission
  • Using a healthy content library to support community and spark discussion, including use of external contributors
  • Making sure you have the resources (people, content and time) to nurture a community properly
  • Goals: create brand awareness, product awareness and driving traffic

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Michael Pace on the Roles of Email and Social Media

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The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this podcast 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 continues with episode #13, featuring Michael Pace, Director of Customer Support at Constant Contact. Highlights include:
  • Moving an email-oriented company into social media and community by internalizing the information about social media into the corporate psyche and processes
  • The changing, yet continuing place of email in our communications hierarchy
  • Creating “virtuous cycles” by providing recognition and sharing it with the larger community
  • How social media and community are creating new job roles
  • The “Social Media Council” model of bringing the social media from different departments together- is it necessary to have such a council based on a set of tools?
  • The “a-ha” moment of adopting social media: getting beyond the books and blogs and meeting people to gain knowledge first-hand

 

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Ray Gans on Defining an “Active Community Member”

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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. After an extended vacation, we’re back! Episode #12 features Ray Gans, Community Manager at Actuate (a Voce client). Highlights include:
  • A description and history of the BIRT  Exchange, a business intelligence community run by Actuate
  • Building an effective community with a passionate group of developers
  • Measurement- what to measure, why and how
  • What defines an “active community member?”
  • The importance of (international) face-to-face user groups in augmenting community

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Alex Plant on B2B Social Media

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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 #11 features Alex Plant, head of social media for NetApp. Among his overall social media duties, Alex oversees a video studio and a staff of videographers and editors.

Podcast highlights include:

  • The effective use of video for social media content in a B2B setting
  • While the technical audience for B2B social media is strong, the real growth is expected in the business-level audience
  • The intersection of social media and traditional marketing; including calls to action as a crucial part of engagement
  • Measurement- tying awareness building measurements such as share of voice and sentiment to traffic generation
  • Blogs are very powerful tools for capturing people’s attention (still!)
  • The effectiveness of feeding ideas to bloggers and other influencers to keep a constant flow of external content
  • Determining whether or not to have separate subject channels for separate audience to maintain high levels of relevance, interest and engagement, while maintaining control over the overall content direction
  • Internal culture; the value of support from the top

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.

Summer Reading: The Best of TheCR

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We’ve written a lot about community management over the past year – and interviewed a lot of amazing community managers – and as often happens with blogs the content gets buried in favor of what’s new and hot so we thought we would resurrect those posts that our readers have found most valuable and interesting.  It makes for some good summer reading, especially to share for those of you helping to educate the rest of your organizations about what ‘community management’ means.

  1. The Community Maturity Model
  2. Show & Tell: How Community Managers Use Twitter
  3. The Iceberg Effect of Community Management
  4. Community Is A Management Approach, Not Just a Role
  5. Hiring a Social Media or Community Manager?
  6. Looking for a Community Management Job?
  7. The Value of Community Management
  8. The State of Community Management – 2010
  9. Differentiating Between Social Media and Community Management
  10. Collection: Conversations with Community Managers

We’ve seen some wonderful riffs of our posts and have been gratified to see others using our Community Maturity Model to shape their own thoughts, presentations, organizational gap analysis, and strategy documents.  Thank you to all of you who have found our content and then taken it and added to it – for us, it is a measurement of our success when we can inspire conversation, and more importantly, action.

What have we missed?  Are there topics that we have not addressed or touched on lightly that you would like to see more of? What topics are most valuable/interesting to you?

Lisa Beatty on Brand-Focused 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 #10 features Lisa Beatty, “Chief Jane Advocate” for Jane Nation, one of the first online communities for women to share their opinions and ideas about brands, and information among themselves and with brands about the uniqueness of their community.

Podcast highlights include:

  • Running a community that is a hybrid of centrally-produced and controlled content, and more self-moderated forums
  • The relationship between a community about brands and the brands themselves, including the need to comply with disclosure guidelines, and how to include the brands as part of the community (with examples from the Mayo Clinic and General Motors)
  • Approaching community monetization without ads, with approaches such as sponsored content and access to community members for private conversations
  • The challenges of managing a community including people at different stages of their lives (age, careers, parenthood, etc)
  • Reconciling running a brand-focused community with a career as an advertising executive, as Beatty does

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Dave Olson on Pre-Social Media Communities

By

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

Jodi Gersh on “Old School” Journalism and New Media Channels

By

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 #8 features Jodi Gersh, Social Media Content Manager at the Gannett Company, where she helps Gannett’s 80+ newspapers and 20+ TV stations with their social media needs and strategies.
 

Highlights include:

  • Meshing “old school” journalism with new media channels
  • How Gannett coordinates social media learnings and tactics among more than 100 separate entities.
  • The importance of internal communications in keeping employees at all levels- and in all markets- engaged in using social media, including the use of “old school” methods like email
  • Upcoming trends: you guessed it, location and mobile
  • Melding “citizen journalism” with professional investigative journalism

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Brian Simpson on Combining Online and Offline Relations in Hospitality

By

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 sixth episode features Brian Simpson, Director of Social Hospitality at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York City.
 

Highlights include:

  • How online extends and combines with the vital offline relations and events in the hospitality industry
  • A discussion of whether or not being a nimble small business is an advantage over being a big chain when it comes to using social media
  • How hard metrics and the more “touchy-feely” side of social media mesh
  • A critique of Roger Smith Life and the value of showing an off-product side of your business; “It’s got to be interesting.”

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.