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The Community Roundtable

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

Community Management 101 for Associations is Now CAE Approved

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Exciting news for our friends in the association space – The Community Roundtable is now a CAE-approved training provider!

For over a decade we’re provided global community professionals with the training they need to excel in their roles. For the first time we’re offering a course specifically for community professionals working at associations.

Community Management 101 for Associations outlines the scope of the community manager role in association communities and provides prescriptive approaches for successful community management.

Learning objectives for this self-directed online course include:

  • Recognize and implement strategies and tactics for advocacy (including leadership development)
  • Identify how online community programs help associations promote change and innovation
  • Understand the role of an online community as a knowledge resource center
  • Develop ways to maximize an online community program as a productive communications channel for members, volunteers, stakeholders, and employees.

Learn more or register!

The Community Roundtable is now a CAE-Approved Provider. The program(s) outlined above meets the requirements for fulfilling the professional development requirements to earn or maintain the Certified Association Executive credential. Every program that we offer which qualifies for CAE credit will clearly identify the number of CAE credits granted for full participation, and we will maintain records of your participation in accord with CAE policies. For more information about the CAE credential or Approved Provider program, please visit www.asaecenter.org/cae.

As a CAE-Approved Provider educational program related to the CAE exam content outline, this program may be applied for 6 credits toward your CAE application or renewal professional development requirements.

Using a Playbook to Support Community Manager Success

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If you’ve played team sports for any period of time, youmight be familiar with using a playbook – and with good reason. No matter how strong your individual skills, knowing what you and your fellow team members can and should be doing in a given situation gives you a leg up on your competition. Knowing your plans ahead of time means you can focus on executing them – as a team!

The playbook in a community context isn’t that different. A well-thought-out community playbook gives the members of your community team a sense of their options in various scenarios. How do you manage standard problems? How do you hold a consistent tone with your community? How do you handle a crisis situation? These are all critical questions, and you want the answers to be the same for every member of the team.

In this case study, shared by Claudia Teixeira, Community Specialist at the World Bank Group you will learn how developing a training and a comprehensive community primer directly impacted the development of a strong cadre of community professionals at the World Bank Group.

Community Case Studies - Using a Playbook

You can view or download the Using a Community Playbook:

Download the Using a Playbook Case StudyDownload

Three Reasons You Can’t Miss Our Strategic Community Workshop

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I know you are busy. 2018 is shaping up to be another crazy year, and the idea of committing to a course (even an online one) is daunting. With so much on your to-do list, it’s easy to push your professional development off until later.

I’m here to tell you: that is a mistake.

I’ve got three (research-backed!) reasons you should consider signing up for our Strategy Community Workshop. 

Community professionals who can develop strategy are in demand.

Community strategy development is the most valued skill in every community-related role we’ve examined in our research.

This has powerful implications for leaders of community programs. Directors of community should expect that their community specialists, managers and strategists want and need to have a say in defining and implementing community strategy. Hiring managers need to seek out people they think can couple that desire for strategic input with the skills to develop, implement and review.

For community managers, the shared power comes with shared responsibility. New hires should expect that they will be held accountable for their participation in community strategy development.

If you aren’t sure where to start, or even what community strategy development entail our Community Strategy Workshop will get you started and make sure you a comfortable with the basics of community strategy.

Community professionals who can develop strategy make more money.

In our research, community professionals who scored high on strategic highly benefitted, too. They earned an average of about $91,000 – a slight but noticeable bump over the overall average. This falls into the “noteworthy but not surprising” category: those who most highly valued business skills were more likely to be Directors of Community, and those who valued strategy were more likely to be community strategists (and make higher salaries in those roles.)

Can you really afford not to focus on developing your strategic skills? Our Strategic Community Workshop will level up your skills and give you valuable strategic assets for your community program today.

Communities with core value assets are more successful and more well-funded.

In our SOCM research we found that the foundation of a successful community really is the presence of a well-defined strategy – one that integrates social tools and methods with business goals and processes. A good community strategy also aligns an organization’s goals with member needs setting you up to succeed in both keep engagement high and provide ROI.

A thoughtful community roadmap sets your community up for success and provides actionable ideas about aligning priorities, communicating value and organizing planning in your community programs.

The Strategic Community Workshop is focused on helping you draft three core community assets – a business case for your community, a roadmap for your community and an ROI model for your community – all perfect for making the case for your program with stakeholders and executives.

Limited spots remain for the January session of the workshop. You can learn more here.

Six skills to make you a successful Director of Community

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You may run an online community – but to own an online community program, you need to add some skills to your toolset.

“Great player. Couldn’t cut it as a coach.”

“She was such a great reporter – but I hate her as an editor.”

“Man, I can’t believe his startup crashed and burned like that. He was so good…”

director of community

Which one is the Director of Community?

In every business – there’s the stereotype. You’re great at what you do – so you get promoted. You get a new office. You get a pay bump. And often, you fail miserably. That’s because the skills that make you good at what you do are often not at all the same skills to make you good at managing people who do what you do.

That’s the case in community management, too. The Community Careers and Compensation research highlights that Directors of Community and Community Managers share a role in community – but the specifics take them in very different directions. Community managers focus on what goes on in the community – content, engagement and community strategy. As a director, though, you don’t own the community – you own a community program, and need to prioritize building, promoting and connecting community to the business, and need to manage the community as a cost center.

The manager sits at the edge of the community and looks into it. The director sits on the edge and looks out from it. So if you’re a community manager with an eye toward growing your career, what do you need to think about?

Here are six skills that move you to the front of the line as a Director of Community.

director of communityManaging people – Not a shocker here, but directing community should (unless you are building to your first hires) involve managing a team of community professionals. What makes a good team? What skills do you need? What skills do you have on board? How will you support your team’s continued growth? Having a system to know what you have, hire what you need and grow what you can is critical.

Building a business case – Thinking about your community strategy is critical, and as a director-level hire, you need to think about how the community works in the business context. Defining the value of community – and the shared value upon which you can connect members and the organization, is important. From there, you need to understand the community benefit in business terms. What’s the ROI? How can you demonstrate that community gets into making your organization a more effective business?

Converting your executives – Executive engagement is a powerful force in community success, but too often, we set unrealistic expectations for converting executives from skeptics to believers. (How many of your members at any level go from disinterested to community leaders, anyway?) Being able to strategically explain the value of community to your executives and other stakeholders can get them on board. Using a system like The Social Executive framework can help you pique their interest, show them the opportunity and get them to see the value.

Enabling training – You’re not just a teacher and evangelist, you’re head of curriculum for a community training program. Developing training that gets new members into and engaged with the community can be a daunting challenge, and in most communities, training is too big to handle alone. Creating a learning mindset and preparing advocates and trainers to help put your system into action is a critical and valuable business skill.

Empowering advocates – As a Director of Community, you’re likely in an organization with the opportunity to build a robust advocacy program for your most important members. What do you do to build that program, and get your most active and important community members to scale your community management efforts while giving them real value for their contributions?

Capturing how it works – Getting stakeholders engaged in community strategy? That may be the easy part. The challenge after that point is developing your roadmap and benchmarking your programs, so you can compare where your community is now to where you want it to be – and then figure out how to move it forward.

Of course, as a community manager, you have a leg up. Your job has been dealing with people – but you have a new set of “customers” in a Director role. Being able to translate what you do as a manager can help get you hired – and being able to turn that into practice can make you a success.

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Community Management TrainingTheCR is pleased to offer a guided course in Community Program Essentials to help you take the skills you have built within communities and apply them to making community a stronger part of your organization. The 8-week course starts April 26, and gives you a cohort of peers and weekly office hours in addition to self-paced video lessons and worksheets you can use to put the course ideas into practice. It’s an opportunity for Community Managers looking for their next role, and for Directors of Community to hone their skills.  Click here to learn more!

Three Reasons You Should Register for Community Program Essentials

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By Shannon Abram, The Community RoundtableCCC_FunFact3_2015.png

As community management emerges as a true discipline and not just a job, community pros can start to think about their career path – and how to get from where they are to where they want to be. Our research has shown that investing in your community skill set is a surefire way to advance your career.

Ready to increase your skill set? Here are three reasons you should register for our Community Program Essentials course!

REASON #1 – YOU’LL GROW YOUR SKILLS

Our Community Program Essentials course will help you grow your community program management skills, and focuses on creating the strategic, operational and technical elements to make communities succeed within the larger organizational context. Our Essentials training explores the elements of making community a more powerful part of an organization and helps you learn to think strategically about your community.

REASON #2 – YOU CAN WORK AT YOUR OWN PACE

Our Spring Session of Community Program Essentials course is the best of both traditional and online learning. The training sessions will be a social learning experience that takes place in a private setting where participants will progress through the modules as a group. We’ll provide prompts and light facilitation in the group forums and host weekly office hours to help participants block time on their calendar to participate.

REASON #3 – BUSINESS, STRATEGIC AND TECHNICAL SKILLS ARE REWARDED – KA-CHING!

Community professionals who place high value on business, strategic and technical skills make more money than their peers. Strong business and strategic skills were more likely to be found among community strategists and directors – but technical skills were scattered across roles, suggesting a technical specialty is a way to increase earning without taking on managerial responsibilities. Improving your community programs skills is a great step toward achieving your community career goals.

The Spring Session of Community Program Essentials kicks off on April 26th and runs for eight weeks. Enrollment is limited for an intimate learning experience. Learn more or register now to get started!

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My community is great! Why is it failing?

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One possible reason? Because you’re working in isolation. Learn to connect your community with your organization with Community Program Essentials!

By Ted McEnroe, Director of Research and Training, The Community Roundtable

You’ve probably been there at some point. You run (or are a member of) a great community, good engagement, and everything seems awesome on the inside. For a while. But something’s not quite clicking – maybe it’s not getting new members, or recognition inside the organization, or it just starts to feel like it’s an island in the ocean.

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Sounds like you have a community – but you’re not integrating that community with its environment. A community in this scenario is like a flower in a small pot. It can survive, and even grow a little, but eventually if it is to grow to its fullest potential it needs to be able to spread its roots.

The Community Roundtable is pleased to kick off its class of Community Program Essentials, a course designed to help you better integrate communities into an organization. While our Community Management Fundamentals courses focus on how you manage within your community, Community Program Essentials focuses more on how you effectively integrate communities into the larger organization. Among the topics we’ll cover:

  • Building Your Community Business Case
  • Getting Executives Engaged
  • Developing a Community Playbook
  • Developing an Approach to Training
  • Community Assessment and Benchmarking

…and more, as they say. The course is available as a self-directed course. You’ll watch a 10-minute video lesson, take a short quiz, and use worksheets to help you take the lessons in each video and apply them to your own use case.

TheCR Academy - Community TrainingBeing “the community guy” or “the community gal” in your organization can feel isolating – with this course, we want to inspire you with new ideas and connect you with peers you can interact with well after the course ends.

Best Practices for Training a New Community Manager

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Best Practices for Training a new community manager

Intrigued by TheCR Network, but want to learn more about what membership entails before joining?

Watch Hillary Boucher share a special look inside TheCR Network.  In March Hillary shared a look at the research, programming and professional development available exclusively to Network members and highlighted best practices for a training a new community manager. It’s a must-see for any community professionals that are tasked with on-boarding, training and managing new community managers.

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Announcing New Community Management Training for Members

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By Hillary Boucher, Director of Networks at The Community Roundtable

I’m excited to announce that our already amazing membership in TheCR Network now gets you MORE! Our Community Fundamentals Training is now available to all members as part of your membership package through our new guided community management training program.

Guided community management trainingStarting this spring we’ll be running the training in the network as a six week training series, alternating between Internal Community Fundamentals and External Community Fundamentals – join the Network now and sign up for a training class today!

The training for online community managers will be a social learning experience that takes place in a private group where participants will progress through the modules as group. We’ll provide prompts and light facilitation in the group forums and we’ll host a weekly office hours to help participants block time on their calendar to participate.

Participants will have access to:

– Six training modules
– Private discussion group
– Private Slack channel for open office hours & impromptu discussions and support

If you are interested the Internal Community Fundamentals runs March 21-April 29 and the External Community Fundamentals runs May 9-June 26.Join TheCR Network Button

Join TheCR Network today to have access to this new perk – a $495 value – free to members!

Already a member? 

guided community management training
guided community management training

Have questions? You can email me or comment below!

TheCR Connect Agenda

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TheCR ConnectBy Shannon Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

TheCR Connect is the inaugural workshop in our regional events series. Kicking off in Boston this Fall, TheCR Connect is an event exclusively for community practitioners – those engaged in the development, implementation, management and measurement of community initiatives. You might be a community manager for a 5,000 person internal community, the community specialist at a start-up, or the director of community for a Fortune 500 brand. Learn more.

With just seven weeks left until TheCR Connect Boston I’m excited to share the full agenda*. Without further ado:

8:00am – Breakfast

8:45am – Welcome from TheCR

9:00am – Keynote: Community Inspiration with JJ Lovett, CA Technologies

10:00 – Community Case Study: How to Win Friends & Influence People – the Community Edition Presented by Akamai – Whether you manage an internal or external community we have all experienced some of our biggest challenges negotiating internally. We have to weave our way through a maze of opinions and / or corporate policies to achieve the goals we have established for our community. This session will facilitate a discussion around the following; How to Prevent, How to Avoid, How to Accept, or Run Around It while influencing people and winning friends.

10:30am – Break/Optional Tour of Akamai’s Command Center We couldn’t visit Akamai without getting a look the famous Network Operations Command Center (NOCC).  The NOCC’s proactive stance and unique view ensures a seamless response to network conditions – enabling Akamai to deliver rich media content and applications, regardless of network traffic volume. The NOCC is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by expert network operations personnel.

11:00am – AMA with Community Experts We’re putting community experts in the hot seat to answer your most challenging questions. Featuring Patrick Hellen, DeepIS, Luke Sinclair, AMEX, and Lauren Vargas, Aetna.

11:45am – Office Hours w/ Community Superheroes We believe every community manager has a superpower. We’ve rounded up a group of these community superheroes including Welcome Wonder Woman, the Executive Engager and more to answer your questions and get your community programs on track.

12:30pm – Lunch & Matched Networking Groups Sometimes it’s hard to find the person you need to meet the most. We’ll take the guess work out of connecting with the participants that can make a difference in your community and career.

1:30pm – Interactive Roundtables Dig in and dive deep on a community challenge that you’re working on. We’ll break into small groups and expert facilitators will share advice and guide you to actionable plans and tools for community success. Roundtable topics may include: Defining Community Value, Sharing Your Community Success and Building Your Community Dream Team.

2:30pm – Break

2:45pm – Community Case Study Stay tuned! Our second community case study will be announced shortly.

3:30pm – Creating a Culture of Yes: Improvisation for Community Management Improvisation is about more than being funny. It involves active listening, confidence, creative thinking, flexibility and working as a team. We are thrilled to host a team from ImprovBoston for a look at how the principles of improv can be successfully applied to community management.

5:00pm – Closing remarks

6:00pm – Happy Hour After a busy day we’ll decamp to nearby Mead Hall for tasty drinks, delicious food and more great conversations.

Want to join us? Members register here, non-members request an invite.

* This Agenda is subject to change at any time.

TheCR Connect is made possible thanks to our partners.

TheCRConnect_Partners_AkamaiTheCRConnect_Partners_JIVE

Upcoming Events and Conferences

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Must Read Community Research

More Signal, Less Noise – The State of Community Management 2024

Melissa Westervelt on Policies and Governance

Communities Drive Meaningful Change Management

Foundations Of Community Success

The Evolution of Customer Communities

Community Centers of Excellence Enable Distributed Leadership

Now Enrolling: Developing a Community Roadmap Workshop

The State of Community Management 2020 Webinar Archive

Calculating Community Return on Investment (ROI)

Understanding Community Roles and Responsibilities

Want to join a Roundtable Call as our guest? Email us to find a call that works for you!

Attend a Roundtable Call

Past Events

View more past events for community managers.

Browse upcoming events for community managers and community professionals.

The best way to learn about community management? From expert community managers who use proven, research-backed tactics you can trust.

The upcoming events for community managers and community professionals listed above include live online community events, online community management and intranet management workshops, virtual online community management and intranet management roundtables, networking and meet-ups for online community managers and intranet managers, online community management and intranet management conferences, and more.

Have an upcoming event for community managers, community professionals, or intranet managers? Let us know and we'll do our best to publicize it.

Many of the upcoming community events listed here are part of exclusive programming for members of The Network. The Network is a private, peer community of hundreds of active online community and intranet mangers and online community management and intranet professionals. Live programming includes expert-led roundtables, online training for community managers, live discussion groups, and more. Learn more about the community manager events in The Network here.

We have hit quite a busy season with events and conferences scheduled in the next few weeks.  While the list below are ones we will be directly involved  with, there are many more that we are listening in on using their twitter hashtags.  They include:

Enterprise 2.0 Conference = #e2conf

Womma Summit = #wommasummit

Sharepoint = #spc12

Techonomy = #techonomy12

Now here’s where you can find TheCR team and members of TheCR Network in person and online in the next few weeks:

Thursday, Nov 15

Defrag Conference Boulder, Co – Rachel Happe presents keynote:  “The Social World:  Working with Complex Adaptive Systems”

TheCR Live Austin – A breakfast gathering to meet and talk community and social business with peers in the industry

Wednesday, Nov. 28

Gilbane Conference Boston, Ma – Rachel Happe will appear on the panel “Collaboration From The Inside Out And The Outside In

Thursday, Nov. 29

TheCR Live Chicago – A lunch gathering where community managers and social business pros meet and discuss the industry and their challenges

Wednesday, Dec. 5

Social HR Camp Cambridge, Ma – Leanne Chase will lead and participate in sessions at this HR un-conference

Webinar (Online):  Talent Community Facts & Fundamentals – Leanne Chase co-presents this webinar on community and recruitment for HR professionals

Thursday, Dec. 6

The Center for Association Leadership Technology Conference Washington, DC – Jim Storer will be on a panel “8 Habits of Highly Effective Association Community Managers”

Friday, Dec. 7

TheCR Live Boston (Cambridge, Ma):  A dutch-treat lunch where we talk community, social business, the Red Sox and other fun topics

We hope to see you at one of these events.  What events are you heading to between now and the end of the year?

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TheCR Network is a membership network that provides 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