The Community Roundtable

Inside TheCR Network: Outsourcing Community Management

Leanne Chase — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:28:28 +0000

Today we welcome Rick Allen who will be a frequent contributor to The Community Roundtable blog. With a background in writing, publishing, and technology innovation—and a passion for the web—Rick strives to improve online user experiences through content strategy. He writes and speaks often on web publishing topics and is a member of TheCR Network.

Last month, The Community Roundtable held a member roundtable discussion with Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group on outsourcing community management. Owyang had published an article in August discussing trends and options for outsourcing community management activities. The blog post launched a vigorous debate about how to determine when—if at all—it’s appropriate to entrust a third-party company with managing your community. Members of TheCR Network had a lot to say on the topic:

The outsourcing dilemma

Outsourcing community management is becoming an increasingly hot topic as organizations try to figure out how to scale their online communities. When a community demands more than internal resources can provide, it makes sense to consider outside help. And help there is! Many marketing and communications agencies have stepped up to the plate offering services to fill this gap—Owyang mentioned several in his post, including Cap Gemini, Liveworld, Ant’s Eye View, and Dachis Group. However, the question remains: will these services solve your community problems?

Community and your brand

Perhaps the biggest concern of those who were vocal on the call was brand management. One member asked the question, “When outsourcing, how big is the risk of losing corporate brand and authenticity in community management?” Indeed, by outsourcing community management, are we outsourcing our brand? How can we trust external community managers to adequately represent the values of our organization?

Many members of TheCR Network agreed that outsourcing the voice and tone of a community is risky. Community management relies on sustaining a common voice that supports your brand and values. It’s hard to mange that externally.

Some folks suggested that outsourcing content development is less risky than outsourcing the community management. However, if we can trust agencies to create on-brand content, perhaps there’s an opportunity to trust them with the ensuing conversations as well. This slippery slope is what fuels the outsourcing debate. Where should the line be drawn?

Everything in moderation

The option of outsourcing community management is not an all-or-nothing prospect. While your brand and community strategy may not be appropriate to outsource, there may be other responsibilities that are. Owyang suggested four possible levels of community management to consider for outsourcing:

1. Strategy

2. Brand representation

3. Member response

4. Moderation, curation, and analytics

By evaluating your business and community objectives as well as social platforms, you may find that member responses, moderation, curation, or analytics can be adequately managed externally. Or, if you manage a young community and need guidance for development, perhaps outsourcing strategy is an appropriate option after all.

Train the trainers

Just as agencies can train internal staff on community management best practices, internal staff can train agencies on their brand. Community management must be a partnership—and while it becomes more challenging to collaborate with agencies than your own staff, it can be done.

The limitations on training agencies to represent your brand likely depend upon your business and community goals. As TheCR co-founder Rachel Happe mentioned, “The more you want to drive innovation from community interactions, [the more difficult it is] to outsource.”

Is it time to “skill up”?

In regard to the four levels of community management, Jim Storer, co-founder of TheCR, suggests organizations take a close look at their goals before outsourcing anything beyond the “moderation” level: ”When we talk with our members it’s clear that they evolve their view of the community/social opportunities for their business based on a 360-view of the current initiatives. I’m not sure this would happen if they weren’t as plugged into the day-to-day activities.”

One of the trends Owyang identified was that community managers are learning to “skill up” in order to take ownership of the strategy and high-level activities that guide community management. If this trend continues, more organizations will be better prepared to tackle the community management challenges that currently lead us to consider outsourcing options.

Have you considered outsourcing community management activities in your organization? Do you consider outsourcing a viable option?

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TheCR Network is an annual membership-based peer network of community, social media, and social business practitioners. We run strategic, tactical, and professional development programming and events as well as an online community for discussions and making connections. Join today.

Community Management: More Than One Role, a Discipline

Leanne Chase — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:32:22 +0000

The Community Roundtable aims to advance the business of community. I’m going to say that again…we advance the business of community. I wanted to repeat it because I think it’s an important distinction as the way we look at community management. As Jim Storer has said, everyone is a community manager – meaning everyone has constituents they can and want to build and cultivate better relationships with for mutual benefit. But not everyone has the title of Community Manager.

In our own company for example. My role is that of marketing. I am not a community manager. Or am I? If you look at it purely from this SocialFresh graphic it sure looks like I am. But I believe this data best represents those from the marketing function that fill a Community Manager role. And while community management is part of my role it is not my sole role nor is it my title. That is Hillary Boucher’s defined role and by all accounts from our TheCR Network community members, she does it well. Then there are Jim Storer and Rachel Happe. Neither of them are in the role of community manager and yet they are undoubtedly part of our greater community management activities and strategy each and every day.

Here’s my attempt to detail the difference

Practicing the discipline of community management means:

Bringing multiple constituencies together
Developing & cultivating relationships with those constituencies
Ensuring value for community members and the organization
Overseeing operations of the community
Being the cheerleader internally for support and awareness for the community

Along with supporting the above, practicing the role of Community Manager means:

Executing community customer service – responding to requests, questions, complaints regularly via social media and directly through community tools
Being the chief of engagement – ensuring members are comfortable in sharing, making sure members are participating, and checking in with those you haven’t heard from in a while
Onboarding new members – making sure members understand how the community works, getting them comfortable, and showing them how to use it for their interests
Curating or writing content for the community
Monitoring and mediating the discussion

We believe that community management is emerging as a philosophy and way of thinking about a functional discipline, as well as being a discrete role. A community-minded leader values transparency, engages with various constituencies, solicits feedback, promotes inclusion, and supports and shares other people’s ideas. That person may be a community manager. Or they may have a very different title…say CEO, mailman, store manager, human resources, CMO, customer service representative, and increasingly this discipline is being managed by teams whose members have a variety of specialties and who work across enterprises to coordinate social business activities.

Who do you know who is practicing the discipline of community management that may not have the title of Community Manager?

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The Community Roundtable is committed to advancing the business of community and being a valued resource to community management and social media professionals through our monthly subscription report, membership based peer network, community management training program and customizable advisory services for corporations and individuals.

A Day In the Life of This Community Manager

Hillary Boucher — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:56:10 +0000

It’s Community Manager Appreciation Day and we sure have a funny way of showing our appreciation for ours…by having her write a blog post. But we thought detailing what a community manager does day in and day out may help those who work with them to appreciate them all the more. And she makes it look easy and effortless but we know better.

Thanks Hillary for working even harder today. We hope you know how much we appreciate all the great work you do!

When you read the various “Day In The Life” posts from community managers, it becomes evident that every job is as unique as the company, industry
and the individual that inhabits it.

As the fellow here at The Community Roundtable, I have taken on the community management responsibilities for TheCR Network, our membership-based peer network. This has been a new experience for me, especially because my past work in the social space had been external facing. I’m learning a ton — both from the network of community managers and leaders that I serve, as well as the amazing team here at TheCR. Here’s a peek into my average work day:

8:00am – Quick Check-In

I scan my email and our team Yammer account while helping to shuffle my family through our morning routine. I take a quick look and check if there is anything immediate that needs my attention. I also swing through Twitter and check out the conversation.

9:00 am – Get Organized

I start my work day by re-filling my coffee cup, walking out the door and retreating to my office that is conveniently attached to our home.

First things first:

*I open a fresh browser page and open five tabs: yammer, Wunderlist (my to-do lists), Basecamp, our community site and Gmail. I will go on to open dozens of new browser tabs throughout the day, but I try to keep the first five my main working tools. This helps to anchor me when I inevitably find myself awash in open web pages.

*I glance at my calendar and take stock of my day. My time, appointments and tasks are already blocked out making it easy to jump right in.

*I check-in with my team on Yammer and let them know what my day looks like. I also pay attention to what others are working on, as well as set up any collaborative efforts that need to happen.

9:15am – React & Respond

I start off responding to any emails or messages that have come through since the day before. I answer questions, schedule calls, and answer member requests. Depending on the day this could take anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour.

10:00am – Morning Tasks

This could mean a number of things:

*writing and curating content for the weekly email
*walking new members through the on-boarding process
*sending out reminders for events happening that day
*updating directories within the network

11:00am – Shake It Up

It’s time to switch focus and swing through Twitter to check out the conversation, read interesting articles and engage with folks. If I find anything interesting I will bookmark it for the weekly email or make notes for potential roundtable calls. I might make tea, stretch a little and put on music before settling back into project based work — just to keep things fresh.

11:30am – Project-Based Tasks

It’s time to settle into another task. Depending on day and circumstance I could be:

*editing and processing new member podcasts
*curating specific content for a member based on a request or conversation
*monitoring conversations happening within the network and pinging folks on the back channel who might be interested or helpful to the conversation
*creating content for the blog

12:30pm – Lunch

Food and either errands or a workout.

1:30pm – Projects, Calls or Events

My afternoons are usually broken into two work session and are often scheduled with calls, podcasts and an occasional webinar. About twice a week there are afternoons without anything scheduled and that’s a good time to dig into a bigger project.

Check-in Calls & New Member Podcasts
I schedule one-on-one member calls and calls with new members, which get recorded as podcasts, for right after lunch. Also, depending on the day there might be an interesting webinar or Twitter chat to attend.

TheCR Network Roundtable Calls
One of the most valuable resources at TheCR are the weekly member roundtable calls. Industry experts (from both outside and within our network) moderate an interactive call through a rotating set of topics. We schedule these calls to fit the current needs of our members, as well as to address hot topics that pertain to the community and social space. These calls require prep and afterwards there are administrative tasks such as processing the call and chat transcripts so we can make the information available to our members as reports they can refer back to.

Projects
I have a bigger project that simmers on the back burner begging for my attention, but needs a block of time to really dig into it. Right now I’m helping Rachel Happe with the 2012 State of Community Management Report. Depending on when my calls are, I will try to dedicate at least two hours of time to this bigger project. It’s not a daily task and usually happens on a day that is not heavily scheduled with calls or podcasts.

5:00pm – Wrap It Up

This is only something I started doing in the past month and it’s made a positive difference in my workflow. Instead of abruptly stopping work and running upstairs to have dinner, I take fifteen minutes to clean up my workspace, re-organize my to-do lists and look at my calendar for tomorrow. I note appointments and block off time for tasks and projects that I’ve identified as next steps and priorities.

A General Note

For the sake of attempting to pull together an average day in a single blog post — I’ve consolidated times and tasks. My day varies based on member’s schedules and collaborations with the team. And to be sure, I am checking email, the community and Yammer and responding consistently throughout the day.

Does your day look anything like mine? How is it different?

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The Community Roundtable aims to be a trusted resource for all community managers & builders out there. Happy Community Manager Appreication Day. You are doing amazing & inspiring things & we appreciate you for it!

Community Manager Burnout

Leanne Chase — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:43:09 +0000

"Balanced on Water" by Murray Barnes

When I saw the topic for yesterday’s Twitter #cmgrchat, I thought it was a good one to discuss, particularly now. The holidays just ended where everyone feels stretched in too many directions. It’s January so the business expectations for a New Year are fresh in everyone’s mind and people are still playing catchup from the end of last year. And Community Managers are always on…at least that’s the way is seems.

But the discussion was not one of concern or complaint as you might expect. In fact it was full of lots of positive points from community managers on why they do what they do and ways others in this position can keep burnout at bay:

Community Managers are often Type A personalities and understand that. Much of the pressure they feel is more self-imposed than company imposed – and understanding and managing that themselves is key.
Setting realistic expectations both for yourself and your community is needed. And sticking to them. If the community doesn’t expect you to be on at 10pm and you’re not, it’s all good. If sometimes you are and sometimes you’re not it could cause confusion.
All jobs have stresses. Talking to your boss about the stress you’re feeling when it starts not when it’s gotten too far is important.
And talking about that stress out loud, whether to your boss or your friends or family, may lead you to solutions you would not have come up with on your own.
It’s okay to get in a funk about something…it’s just not ok to stay in a funk about it and give in to inertia. Give yourself some time & space to be in a funk (one chatterer suggested about 10 minutes) then shake it off and move on to something else or come back to it.
Keep your perspective. Two quotes that I really liked from this chat:

“We think we have 24 hours jobs, but the truth is, we can step away. Life will go on.”
“I now have this written above monitor, “Is anyone dying?” – No? Walk away, do something to numb brain and come right back.

And what are the signs you are experiencing burnout? Well for some it’s just staring at the computer screen blankly, for others it’s having nothing to contribute at business meetings and for yet another it’s not having the desire to play foosball. In other words, it’s different for all…but identifying it in yourself is also key. Check out transcripts of #cmgrchat here.

Do you think Community Managers are more prone to burnout than others? What are your keys for staving off and managing burnout?

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Community Management 101 Webinar – Key Take-Aways

Hillary Boucher — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:52:14 +0000

Talk of community management is all the rage these days and last week I sat in on the Focus Roundtable Webinar: Community Management 101: The Start-Up Edition. Four experienced community managers — Evan Hamilton (UserVoice), Thomas Knoll (Launch Rock), Alison Hillman (BranchOut), and Sarah-Jane Morris (Context.IO) — gathered to discuss participant driven questions.

Here are my key take-aways:

On the difference between a community manager and a social media manager

Community is larger than social media. Community is to strategy as social media is to tactics. That being said, Alison brought up the point that because these roles are so new there are no hard rules around definitions. The size and budget of your company, as well as its current needs, is likely to matter more than the title. Each of the community managers on the panel had varying degrees of responsibilities that overlapped community and social media manager roles as well as departments within their organization.

Evolution of the community manager role as an organization grows

Make sure the role of the community manager grows with the company. Evan cautioned against “getting stuck in a corner on Twitter” — separated from the rest of the company. He suggested that as the company grows, the role of community manager should become more strategic and evolve into a horizontal position that touches all departments. Thomas feels it is important to make sure everyone in the organization feels responsible for the community. He advises building community into the culture of the organization from day one.

Day in the life: How to stay organized and create content

Everyone has their own techniques for staying organized and managing their time, but all agreed upon the importance of being strategic with your work processes. Sarah-Jane warned of avoiding getting stuck in the “cycle of doom” which consists of cycling between twitter, facebook and email. Instead, plan blocks of time to work on specific projects and create content. The more you can get ahead of yourself the easier it is to identify new opportunities and act upon them.

Another strategy for getting things done is do engage the community when possible. Thomas revealed that he never does anything his community can do for him and Sarah “treats her new customers like gold” and finds they end up doing her evangelism for her.

Measurement

Measurement is possible. If you can’t measure how much money your efforts made than you can measure in other ways — for example, the awareness you built. What you measure will depend on your organization. It is important to have a strong handle on your organization’s goals so you can find ways to measure how your community efforts are working towards those larger goals. One interesting viewpoint from Thomas was to measure the investment and wait to find out what happens. Valid, though a more aspirational approach.

One take-away was quite clear from the webinar, the community space and conversation continues to evolve and with more experienced community managers beginning to teach skills and offer best practices, this profession can only continue to mature.

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Come Learn, Connect & Celebrate with TheCR

Leanne Chase — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:19:28 +0000

The Community Roundtable has a lot going on. So much for easing into the New Year. Instead we are starting it off with a bang and more. We held our first TheCRLive in Washington, DC on Tuesday night and from all accounts a great time and interesting, thought provoking conversation was had by all. But that was just the start…please come on along for an enjoyable ride with us this month. We hope we can connect with you at one of these many events:

(all times Eastern)

Jan 12 (Today!) at 2p: Free Webinar featuring Rachel Happe “How to Create and Grow a Thriving Online Community”
she will discuss the importance of community in business growth and the challenges of developing a community that has a tangible impact on an organization.

January 16 at 5p: IBM Connect session with Rachel Happe: People Are Your Weakest Link and Most Valuable Innovation Asset
People, relationships and communities are becoming key competitive differentiators like never before. Technology and infrastructure are becoming cheaper, more commoditized and plentiful. As a result, product innovation cycles are rapidly declining, and the time you once had to plan, design and vet new ideas has all but disappeared. How do you integrate customers and align internal teams for this kind of speed and agility? What new opportunities and risks does that present? Discover how a community approach can help to discover needs before they are articulated, vet products before they are designed and build customer commitments before products are delivered

January 18 at 4:15p: Lotusphere session with Rachel Happe: Strategy for Establishing a Thriving Community
Communities are a critical element of executing a social business approach but the need for, and requirements of, community management are often not well understood. Good community management improves community productivity for both the members and the organization and reduces the risk that the community will turn into a ghost town, an audience, or a mob.

January 23 at 6p: Community Manager Appreciation Day Boston with Jim Storer and Rachel Happe in conjunction with IBM at the Asgard in Cambridge, Ma. Come for the free appetizers or the great conversation or both.

January 24 at 12p: Community Management Training module 1 highlighting community strategist begins

January 27 at 12p: TheCRLive Boston - a dutch treat lunch with conversation about social media, community, the Red Sox and much more (in no particular order)

And if you’re a TheCR Network member don’t miss:

January 13: Internal Training Development – member led
January 17: New Member call
January 18: Content Strategy at Work - Margot Bloomstein
January 25: Leading Large-Scale Change: Network Centric Warefare - Mark Bonchek
January 27: Internal Training Development - member led

There’s even a rumor there might be a TheCRLive in Austin in early February…stay tuned!

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The Community Roundtable is committed to advancing the business of community and being a valued resource to community and social business professionals. We offer a monthly subscription report, a membership based peer network, a community management training program and advisory services for corporations and individuals.

A Big Old School IOU

Leanne Chase — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:58:21 +0000

We are thrilled to have a guest post today from Dawn Lacallade, a recognized thought leader in the social marketing and online community space. She is a long standing member of TheCR Network and has taken a lead role in helping to develop the community management training program we are delivering in conjunction with WOMMA & ComBlu starting January 24th. As someone with years of social media and community management experience, we asked her to share her thoughts about why training is an important part of the community management mix:

I have been lucky enough to have been playing in this Social Media/ Community thing for years. I am a career convert because…. In my previous life, before Social Media and Community, I was a manager at Dell. I had several roles… as a call center manager, project manager, training manager and even an EH&S expert. I started many of these roles with little knowledge of the role or the business. I was very lucky to be surrounded by incredibly smart people that were willing to teach me. Things I didn’t learn through peers and team members, I could find in formal training programs.

Social Media and Community is one of the hottest growing fields. There are many people that have been either thrust into the field by their companies or are excitedly beginning their careers in it. Those of us that have been practicing for years have an IOU to fulfill.

Give. Knowledge. Back.

Just like the wonderful teachers that helped me so much in my career at Dell, those of us who have been working with communities are the pioneers and have a duty to help those that follow. I can rattle off a few BIG learnings that were scarred into my memory. Some of these are my own and some I’ve watched as large companies flail to get their footing. These are the easy lessons to share. The more difficult ones are the nuanced how-to learnings that we learned over time and with experience. All of these learnings must be shared.

The sharing of knowledge in this space has been gaining momentum. It started with a few of us talking at a few conferences and gatherings. It gained huge momentum when The Community Roundtable gave us a venue to share and learn. We are at the beginning of the next great way to share knowledge and drive forward the practice that we all love so.

Many of my fellow practitioners have joined TheCR, WOMMA and ComBlu to create the first Community Management Certificate Program. No training program could replace work experience completely or hope to cover every topic, however, we hope to formalize the learnings and best practices and to standardize the terminology. For those of us experience practitioners who have created this training, it is the payment on our IOU.

Why this is critical.

It is critical that we ensure the upcoming professionals are educated and share as many of the learnings as possible. It’s our job. I hope you will join with us to bring this program to life with your knowledge, experiences and support.

For more information on the program visit the website: http://womma.org/communitymanager/

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Communities and the Value of Answering Unarticulated Needs

Rachel Happe — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:39:26 +0000

We had an excellent member call late last year with John Stepper of Deustche Bank who is working on a training course to help employees manage their reputation inside the organization. This conversation about influence and reputation is very active on the social web but taking that inside the enterprise puts a unique filter on the discussion. John is going down this path for a number of reasons:

There are gaps and problems with the current methodologies we use to measure the performance of knowledge work
It is very expensive to recruit and lose talented employees who cannot see the interesting opportunities available to them within the organization
The majority of individuals do not understand how powerful social tools can be to their own advancement

One of the interesting assumptions underlying the discussions was that people know what they want and how to articulate it. To me this is a big issue – and not only around professional development but in almost all areas of life and business. The very act of finding an answer assumes a number of things – that one:

Is aware of an issue
Knows how to articulate the problem
Understands what the answer might look like
Is comfortable asking for help

Each of the above steps are actually quite difficult and many people find some of those steps almost impossible – I don’t particularly like asking for help for example. However, this process is one that communities excel at enabling. Other people with more experience, after interacting with someone, often see the issue and know how to resolve it on the spot – long before the person with the issue even realizes that there is an issue. In this way, a potential mentor at Deutsche Bank may reach out and offer assistance to junior employee long before that person realizes they could use the help and understands what that help would look like. It’s how a product manager, after interacting with a customer over time, can see an issue the customer is having and propose a solution long before the customer makes the connections themselves.

The connection between communities and innovation is often made and to me, this ability to solve problems for others before they are even expressed, is one of the most powerful benefits of deploying communities. Innovation cycles have decreased rapidly with the rise of agile methodologies and the reams of customer data. Companies need to look at how they can fundamentally restructure how they think about innovation life cycles to remain competitive. Turning the tacit knowledge created by communities into innovation before it is translated and documented as explicit knowledge will be one of the core innovation methodologies going forward.

The challenge, of course, is that communities require a lot of time and investment before they begin to pay-off. Not all organizations will have the patience and foresight to develop their customer community before they need it.

Do you have examples of people in your community solving a problem for someone before they asked? We’d love to hear about it!

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The Magic of a Roundtable

Leanne Chase — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:52:02 +0000

Roundtable: Seating or discussion arrangement in which (usually) all participants are considered peers.

What is the magic of a roundtable? Perhaps its more easily seen in action. Recently I was on a weekly call with TheCR Network where we had an expert speaker talking about a hot topic. Usually experts speak while others listen.

This was not the case at The Community Roundtable that day. Mostly because one of our tenets is we want the members of our peer network to participate and move the discussion forward. So on this day, the speaker started the discussion but soon it moved from his expert opinion to our members discussing how they saw the issue from their hands-on experiences and their strategic planning. To the point where our “expert” that day became more of a listener than a talker.

There are two reasons I saw this to be great.

1) It shows our TheCR Network members are the experts. They are the ones in the trenches of Community Management and Community Strategy every day. They are happy to hear from pundits and thought leaders but are not afraid to push back or disagree or bolster an argument with personal business case studies.

2) It is where communities mature to after you start them and grow them and nurture them. You hope the community takes over the discussion and leaves you on the sidelines. It’s one way to know your group is continuing to move forward.

The discussion was so vibrant that we were asked to schedule a follow up session on the subject. And I am very much looking forward to having a seat at The Community Roundtable for that discussion. Because I know there is much to learn from all of my peers “seated” there with me.

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