The Community Roundtable

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

The Community Roundtable Connect: Community Solutions Showcase 2019 Snapshot

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After the thought-provoking inaugural Community Solutions Showcase at TheCR Connect 2019, we wanted to create a useful recap of the discussion for the Network, attendees, and anyone considering a new community solution. And as a result of chats with the Community Roundtable team and attendees, we are certain the discussion is just beginning.

The CSS 2019 Snapshot covers some of the themes and topics discussed during the event; including the key trends we’ve observed about the community technology market, an update to our Community Technology Framework, and how our partners envision the future of community. The diversity in these vision statements alone made for a great discussion – and we hope it inspires your reflection too.

How to choose a community platform

Download the Community Solutions Showcase Snapshot

Evaluating Community and Engagement Platforms

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Are you evaluating and assessing community or engagement platforms? You are in great company – a lot of people are. This is being driven by shifts in the vendor space, the growing importance of these technologies to organizations, and the maturity of current programs.

At The Community Roundtable, we think about and break down these platforms in the following way:

Each of these layers – the engagement layer, the management layer, and the administrative layer – are important for a mature engagement platform. This structure reveals why community strategy is critical to a successful community or engagement ecosystem – it informs how each of these layers is structured so that the user experience, management tools, and administrative governance are aligned for optimized performance. This structure also helps reveal why a sole focus on the user experience limits the growth, maturity, and value of a community program.

My recommendations for starting your platform evaluation projects:

  1. Start with Strategy: if you do not, the complexity of these platforms will confuse you, your community management team, and your members. A good strategy will help you prioritize and identify the key behaviors that you need to enable – giving you strong guidance as you look at and configure platforms. Without that alignment, the conflict will at best keep you from efficiency and at worst, hamper engagement and value.
  2. Evaluate Analytics & Reporting Next: no matter what your members are doing, if you cannot see it in the data, segment it, compare it, and measure its value and influence on business outcomes, you will not be able to optimize the system. Additionally, the ability to easily get tactical, operational, and strategic reports will impact your ability to manage the community and communicate progress to stakeholders.
  3. Platform Architecture Bites Back: if you do not evaluate the permissions structure, the way in which new communities are provisioned, and the integration and indexing of content, audit options, and ecosystem governance you may be left with a tool that severely limits growth.
  4. Last, Evaluatee User Functionality: if your key behaviors are available in the platform but difficult to use, that will be problematic and it will constrict engagement rates and value. Additionally, design and in particular how graphics and faces are exposed, matters in social systems. Faces are critical to online communities feeling like communities instead of a static website, a content repository, or a transactional ticketing solution.

Are you in the process of looking at these solutions?

TheCR Network offers exclusive in-depth information and unbiased user advice, including our Community Platform Requirements Library & Vendor Comparison Tool and platform-based cohorts for learning and sharing. Learn more.

Lisa Allison on Migrating Community Platforms

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Join the community experts at The Community Roundtable as they chat about online community management best practices with a wide range of global community professional. Topics include increasing online audience engagement, finding and leveraging executive stakeholders, defining and calculating online community ROI and more.

Episode #60 features Lisa Allison, Community Strategist and Enterprise Community Manager at Analog Devices.

Lisa and Shannon Abram discuss best practices for completing a smooth community platform migration on this short community-focused podcast.

This episode of Conversations with Community Managers is sponsored by Telligent.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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TheCR’s Community Platform Requirements Library & Vendor Comparison Tool

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Vendor Comparison

Do you need to evaluate community platforms?
Are you being asked to justify your existing platform?
Are you looking at platform gaps but are not sure you are thinking of everything?

The Community Roundtable has collaborated with our members to develop two new tools to support this work:

  1. The Community Platform Requirements Library
  2. Community Platform Vendor Comparison Tool

The Community Platform Requirements Library

The requirements library is everything you might want to include in an evaluation – and probably a lot more, categorized by primary and secondary themes and, when applicable, the behaviors they support as defined in TheCR’s Community Engagement Framework.  While many IT groups treat community functionality as one big feature, community managers know better. This tool, which includes over 400 features, helps IT and other stakeholders understand the complexity of a robust community platform.

Vendor Comparison
Community Platform Vendor Comparison Tool

This tool is a high-level comparison tool. It allows the assessment to be weighted by primary and secondary requirements categories (which align with the requirements library), depending on the specific priorities of the organization. This is a great tool to use with stakeholders to help them understand how different vendors address needs.

A note of thanks: This tool was developed by TheCR team with a lot of input from our members – in particular, a set that participated in a requirements workshop at TheCR Connect. Collaboration like this is at the heart of what makes TheCR Network so valuable.

Would you like access to this and other tools that save you time and make you work smarter?

30+ Years of Community Resources

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A couple days ago I paused to reflect on all of the people and resources that have helped me (and The Community Roundtable, our members, and partners) since we launched in 2009. It’s not a short list. I put the question to TheCR team and we started to collaborate on a list of resources going back as far as we can remember. The attached infographic attempts to capture our list, but it would have been a mile long if we included them all. I’ll use this post to share a handful of people and stories that may help bring the infographic to life.

I first started thinking about communities in the mid 90’s, using online bulletin boards to network with thought leaders to help build conferences around specific technology topics. We used a couple of pool computers to access the boards and were frequently in line waiting to use the dial-up modems to access the boards. During these early years, I was fortunate to meet Vanessa DiMauro. She was (and continues to be) on the forefront of community and was generous with her time for a newbie. Check out her “Back to the Future of Online Community” for an exhaustive look back.

Several years later I first read The Cluetrain Manifesto and was energized by the promise of community. I jumped at the chance to interview David Weinberger at the first Community 2.0 Conference in 2007. Unfortunately, the audio from that podcast is missing in action. Suffice it to say that David shared his knowledge and experiences openly for all that were willing to listen.

Throughout the 2000’s, Jim Cashel and Bill Johnston at Forum One were instrumental in bringing together community practitioners at their annual unconference in Sonoma, CA. More retreat than conference, it was always a fascinating group of people who came together to help one another uncover the secrets of community building. Bill was also responsible for publishing the first community manager salary report, which we sought to update eight years later.

Rich Millington aka Feverbee shares what he learns about community building through his blog and frequently engages in thoughtful discussion on Twitter. He’s a deep thinker in the community space, seeking to find scientific backing for the strategies and tactics we use in the space.

Since launching The Community Roundtable in 2009, we’ve been fortunate to have a long list of amazing community practitioners stop by to share what they’ve learned with our members. I’ll highlight a few below (in no particular order).

John Hagel joined us to talk about his book Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities

Burr Settles shared what he learned growing and supporting fellow musicians on FAWM.org

Harold Jarche stopped by to talk about how communities can facilitate culture change.

Rachel Makool explored work/life balance and community managers. Side note: I met Rachel at the first Community 2.0 Conference when she was at eBay, running one of the largest/most active communities in existence at the time. We recorded an incredible podcast with her, alas it’s also lost to the ether. 

Nancy White joined us to talk about using storytelling in community building. Side note: Nancy’s been studying (and sharing) online facilitation for decades. Her Online Community Toolkit is a great resource for all community managers. 

Jeremiah Owyang shared his views on the evolving role of community managers several times with our members. He also wrote an introduction to our State of Community Management research and founded Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD), which is still celebrated today.

Liz Strauss shared the secrets she’d gleaned in writing one of the oldest (and most successful) blogs on the internet.

Erika Kuhl, one of the true pioneers of online community, shared member engagement tips she’d learned managing the Salesforce.com community.

Sean O’Driscoll shared tips on building a successful advocacy program, which he learned managing Microsoft’s MVP Program.

I could do this all day. We’ve been very fortunate to know and learn from an incredible array of really smart people. At The Community Roundtable, we’ve tried to be a good community citizen by sharing much of what we learn through our research, models, and frameworks and will continue to do so going forward. This is a collaborative, inclusive group of people that have been sharing and learning from one another for over thirty years. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Explore this list of resources and more (and send us your contributions) at History of Community Management Resources

What is Conversation Research? An Infographic Explainer

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jason falls

Recently, Jason Falls, the Co-Founder of the Conversation Research Institute (CRI) joined members of TheCR Network for an exploration of conversation research. With years of experience in social technology, both on the agency side and brand side Jason developed the concept of conversation research. Even though people may think that this is a new concept, Jason believes community management professionals will be familiar with the premise of his work. He’s simply put a new label on it.

Based on the great discussion inside the Network we put together an infographic highlighting what Jason taught our members. Jason stress to the participants that they should not expect to replace traditional research with conversation research. Conversation research is more of a supplement to traditional research, and a great way to augment what you might already be doing.

Conversation Research - Jason Falls

Members can access the full roundtable report, including three case studies that Jason shared, as well as best practices for applying conversation research and lessons learned here.

Not a member of TheCR Network? Learn more and join today to have exclusive access to expert practitioners like Jason Falls – and our complete archive of over 350 roundtable reports on community management, community strategy, metrics and measurement, and more! Join TheCR Network.

Tools for Community Management: Trello, Canva, Slack.

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Tools for Community ManagementThe recent Atlassian acquisition of Trello, got me thinking about some of my favorite community manager planning, design and communication tools. Turns out my top three go-to tools for community management were not designed specifically with community management work in mind. Nonetheless, I couldn’t live without them.

Trello

“I have the simplest job!” …said no Community Manager ever. As anyone in community will tell you, no day looks the same and very few projects are one-and-done. Trello helps you manage all the moving parts.

Trello is a list management tool that allows you to categorize your thoughts in a highly customizable way. I kid you not when I say I could not live without it; I currently keep everything from my Editorial Calendar, to my Playbook, to my daily to-do list on Trello. On top of list making, the App allows you to color code, mark check lists, set due dates, toggle to calendar view, and tag team members.

Need to manage a list of users? Trello helps you label them by engagement status. Want to keep an eye on a co-worker’s project? Trello subscribes you to their list activity. Top that off with a sleek interface and endless app integration options and you’ll wonder why you ever wrote your checklist on a scrap of paper.

Canva

This tool is my secret weapon. So much so, that I hesitate to tell anyone about it. Why? I can easily create high-quality graphics that trick people into thinking that I am a graphic design genius with high level coding skills.

As Community Managers, we inevitably end up wearing many hats and often have limited budget with which to work our magic. Canva is your best friend on days when you are asked to step to the fringes of your job description. Design a community logo, event image, or gamification badge – this cloud-based image design app has you covered.

Slack

I’m pretty sure the only email I have ever received from my boss was a letter of employment. That’s because my team communicates exclusively on Slack.

Slack is AIM for grown ups – a real-time messaging app designed for team collaboration. Communicate with coworkers in public, private or direct message channels. The result of using Slack aligns perfectly with the spirit of Community: when questions and answers are worked through publicly, the entire team benefits. Add to that the searchable archive of any term or user, and you are living well beyond the confines of email chains.

Want to bring even more community into Slack? Try it out as a chat space for your users in supplement to your platform.
True Story: I drafted this blog post in Trello (using a checklist to organize my ideas), designed the title image in Canva, and pasted the entire thing into Slack for a coworker to review. Ta-da!

What tools are you using to make your community management easier? I would love to hear about your favorites – the more the merrier!

The Value Of Social Business – Infographic

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As we continue the conversation on the value of community management I think it’s helpful to take a step back and think about social business as whole. This weeks infographic, originally published on MindJet is a great look at how companies think about social as a business tool.

Not surprisingly, the highest reported uses are for marketing and customer service. A whopping 77%  of respondents are not actively measuring the ROI of their social business programs – more support for the idea that measurement and metrics are huge topics in the social media and community world for 2014.

Social Business Infographic

 

Is tracking ROI high on your priority list for 2014? What metrics do you have in place to accurately assess the impact of your community or social initiatives?

 

 

Advisory:
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The Community Roundtable offers customized advisory workshops that are ideal for companies looking to start their journey, build out their community program or grow a community program that is not yet at its full potential. Sessions can be conducted in person or virtually and are designed to meet your needs.

Learn more.

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:

Screen shot 2013-12-31 at 12.22.06 PM

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.