2013 State of Community Management Report Stresses Importance of Community Managers

Even though my current role is broader than community management, I'm still a community manager at heart and it's still my passion. So I was super excited to get a peek at the first report of the Community Roundtable's 2013 State of Community Management yesterday and even more excited to see that it contains some great findings that should hopefully help show businesses that community management DOES matter.

You'll definitely want to read the report The Value of Community Management in its entirety, but in the meantime a few key findings for you:

• Almost 40% of organizations surveyed reported being able to measure the value of the role. I think this is huge because there are still far, far too many organizations who are willing to invest a bunch of money in a community platform (technology) but then refuse to spend any on community management--then a year or two later when the community the vendor promised would be so great is  nothing but crickets, leadership declares the experiment a failure and gets rid of it. If you want to see value from online community, you need to invest in community management.
• Successful community management is not a role delegated to the least experienced members of a team. Findings showed that, on average, community managers have about eight years experience and three years of community management experience. These are not interns running successful communities; they are experienced professionals with experience across many disciplines and with varied skillsets.
• Technical skills are not the primary requirements for community managers. Forget looking for a community manager based solely on whether they use Facebook and Twitter or tasking tech gurus with community management. Engagement and people skills ranked highest in importance on the survey, followed by content development and strategic and business skills. Building community is about engaging with people, not using tech tools.
• Community management is not just one person's job. Approximately 40 percent of survey respondents had only one community manager, but 80 percent of organizations that could calculate the value of community management employed more than one community manager. Community management is a huge job that spans across entire organizations and for a mature community, tasking just one person with all facets of community management is too much. Burnout is a big topic in the community management world recently; it's why I left my dream job. Especially as communities become more successful, organizations need to pay attention to scaling appropriately or they risk losing the very people responsible for the success of the community.
• Community management is an inside job. Only 22 percent of respondents reported that they are hiring contractors, vendors or agencies for external community management services, and only 10 percent are hiring them for internal community management. The report predicts that as community teams grow, this will change; I personally suspect that it won't. To me, it stands to reason that as community becomes more mature within an organization, more internal people will start taking on community management roles and the need to outsource will shrink, not grow....but that's just me.

The biggest takeaway from the report, though, is that community management matters. Remember the old 90-9-1 rule? With effective community management, those numbers are a thing of the past; survey respondents reported an average engagement profile of 55-30-15, and the most engaged communities reported more creators than lurkers at 17-57-26. 

There's a ton of great information in the report, so I won't spoil it all--do yourself a favor and read it to learn about what standards are emerging, which program elements are most important, what metrics you need to be tracking and reporting, and why your organization needs to develop a community playbook.

Summer Fun

Summer is always a tough time for me when it comes to blogging. This year is even worse than usual, what with me still getting up to speed in my new job, freelancing on the side, and trying to grasp the fact that I"m now the mom of a high school senior/kid who can drive. It's all a bit much, to be honest, which means that I'm doing my best to distract myself with other things. The upside is that I'm reading a ton and it's summer movie season; the downside is that it's depressing to know you have a blog just sitting there, doing nothing and feeling pressured by something that's supposed to be a fun hobby.

Anyway, now that I've overshared, how about some summer fun suggestions?

Movies: Have I mentioned that I love Letterboxd? I plan to obsessively plow through the summer movies and review them in my Letterboxd diary, so if you're wondering whether the blockbuster you're thinking about seeing is worth the price, chances are I've already seen it. In short: The Purge sucked; The Internship rocked despite the critics mostly panning it.

Books: I'm loving my new Kindle Paperwhite (Patrick is the best birthday gifter ever). I'm reading The Painted Girls and A Week in Winter (on Audible during my commute to/from Bethesda). Also loved The Storyteller, even though it isn't exactly light summer reading and is depressing as hell. For all the books I read, you can check out my Goodreads profile.

Outings: Despite the longer commute, I'm loving working in Bethesda. A billion restaurants--so far, my favorites are ramen at Satsuma (although it could be cuter looking--my kids and I are obsessed with the ramen in the movie Ponyo and were hoping it looked just like that), grape Fanta Zero at California Tortilla (sorry but ever since they stopped offering the greek chicken burrito the food just doesn't do it for me), and pizza at the Corner Slice. And I love Reddz Trading--it's like an upscale Value Village within walking distance of my office. Score! For weekends, I'm obsessed with Hillwood and will definitely be checking out Living Artfully and the French Festival.

TV: I'm making Patrick's life a living hell by insisting we obsessively go through all eight seasons of Weeds at once. We're almost done; after that it will be on to Game of Thrones--I"m curious to see what all the hype is about. The iPad/Netflix/treadmill thing is still working for me as a carrot to regular exercise--I'm obsessed with House of Cards and can't wait for season two. Lately I've been watching Blue on YouTube, and think it's interesting that while network TV seems to be fixated on reality shows which are losing steam, IMO, YouTube and Netflix are the ones putting out really high quality scripted series. I will say the YouTube iPad experience leaves a lot to be desired when trying to watch a series of episodes--navigating to the next episode while on the treadmill is a chore and I hope they move to a more Netflix-like navigation at some point.

So that's all that's thrilling about me lately...what are your summer plans?

Is it Time for Foursquare to Die?

It's been almost three years since I wrote about "Foursquare fatigue".....yet I confess I'm still using Foursquare just as much as ever. Why? I honestly have no idea. Habit, I suppose. Competition with my husband over which of us will be mayor of the places we frequent together. Vain hope that one of these years either AMC Theaters or Regal Theaters will recognize how frequently I go to the movies (answer: at least once a week, usually twice) and bestow on me a free lifetime pass. Because even after using Foursquare all this time, I can count on I think one finger the number of free or discount things I've gotten out of the deal: a free medium coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. Once. That's it. 

So why do I keep checking in? Who knows. Do I think that Foursquare will ever up the game and make it worth users' while to check in places? Maybe. And I'm not talking about stuff like attaching my Amex card to my Foursquare account--thanks but I've already had my identity stolen once this year and had to switch credit cards; I'm not interested in the promise of a statement credit of $2 30 days after a transaction. But a few things they've added in the past year or so give me hope:

• Connected apps like After Credits, which tells you if there's something cool in the credits after a movie ends, or Eat This, Not That, which tells you about healthy menu options at the place you've checked in. Also Lanyrd looks cool for events, but given that most conferences still don't even use Twitter, I doubt they'll be using Foursquare much anytime soon.
• The ability to check in to a specific movie at a theater as opposed to just the theater. Could be very cool, especially if something like Letterboxd became a connected app so Foursquare checkins and Letterboxd movie diary entries could be synced. 

Ok, those are the only things I can think of....but I suppose it's enough to keep me checking in for a while longer.

If you use Foursquare, what are the reasons you keep using it? Or did you use it in the past but give up on it?

Is Bullying the New Black?

I'm a somewhat reluctant watcher of Chopped (Patrick watches it and I admit I get sucked in...but it's no Property Brothers!), so last night I figured I'd give Top Chef a try. It was fine--until the insults started. I watched as two of the judges (I know--bad TV watcher--I don't know their names) ripped into several of the contestants, hurling insults and food that wasn't up to par in their opinions. Honestly? It just made me sad...because it's clear to me that while we talk a good game about teaching kids not to bully, reality TV clearly promotes bullying, and lord knows we love us some reality TV in this country.

Not to be all over-analytical about crap TV, but seriously--think about it. What are the most-watched shows now? Reality shows. Who are the most popular, talked-about reality TV stars? The mean ones. Simon Cowell.  The nasty housewives who fight and pull hair and insult each other constantly. Snooty chefs who tell amateur chefs that they're useless and dump their food in the trash. Why is bullying cool when every week it seems we read another heartbreaking story about the consequences of teen bullying? 

I know I'm not the first one to have this thought, but honestly--where does it stop? When do we stop making bullying the new black and do more than pay lip service to telling teens that bullying isn't ok? 

I know one thing....I definitely won't be watching Top Chef ever again.

Could Pinterest's Rich Pins Help Your Organization Sell Products?

If your organization has members who use Pinterest (i.e. females) and sells products via an online store, you might want to look into Pinterest's new feature, Rich Pins. Rich Pins allow businesses to include real time pricing, availability, and information about where to buy the item pictured. There are three types of rich pins right now: products, recipes and movies (yay!). 

One of the products on Pinterest's "Products We Love" board. Click the pin to see how rich pins appear on Pinterest.

To make it work, you'll either need to be techie enough to know either oEmbed or semantic markup, or be willing to pay a developer to code it for you. It's not entirely clear to me whether or not any business can add any product, recipe or movie pin to Pinterest and whether or not it's free. They list a bunch of companies for each category, including brands like Target and Anthropologie and Netflix, among many others, and invite business users to "prep your website with meta tags, test out your rich pins and apply to get them on Pinterest"(emphasis mine). This leads me to wonder whether this is a paid offering or what--I read a bunch of articles but don't see anything clarifying this.  

Coupled with Pinterest analytics, it could be a cool way to track and encourage product sales. The good thing about rich pins is that they are not static; so, say, the price changes over time, that new price will be reflected in all repins. Coupled with Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann's remarks during an interview at the Conversational Marketing Summit yesterday, it seems that rich pins may be one of Pinterest's first forrays becoming an ad platform. With almost 50 million global users who are notable for their buying power, Pinterest could definitely be worth the effort when it comes to driving sales of your organization's products.