It’s an exciting time to be in the community field. In the past couple of years, communities have gained the executive spotlight. It’s currently shining pretty brightly. But the spotlight brings its own challenges and pressures. There are more vendors, a wider range of understanding and expectations, and more pressure to produce and articulate value. That is at best stressful and distracting, and at worst it can undermine existing efforts to cover the basics.
In short - you may need shades.
It’s time to prove we deserve that attention and can deliver on the promise of a community approach. We have to tell the stories of our community value and articulate the resources we need to get there. We are at an inflection point, and it’s a challenging time to be a community program owner. As with any inflection point, chaos comes before consolidation around the new normal.
The good news? Executives are excited about the potential of communities and community management skills are in demand.
The bad news? All the attention and expectations can distract us from the things that have made us successful so far, and at the same time, we need to learn new lessons in scaling. Budgets are growing, but they are not keeping pace with the demand for our time, which is our scarcest resource.
Why is this all happening now?
- Community leaders have done a great job communicating the potential of communities and demonstrating they can deliver high engagement rates.
- Social media value is crumbling as social networks turn into social ad platforms. While they do deliver value, they have not fulfilled their potential for deep engagement.
- Organizations need to adapt to the pace of change and innovation is a strategic priority. Communities are the most effective way to deliver agile learning and change.
It’s rocky out there because a lot of people are feeling unsettled and there is no clear, correct path to changing our organizations. In the current environment, it's easy to question or second guess ourselves, but one thing I feel strongly about is this: a community approach can help navigate these issues in a way that brings along customers, prospects and employees. It is the best way, and maybe the only way, to keep our organizations in sync with themselves and with their markets.
As community professionals, we need to keep our focus on the fundamentals and continue to reinforce value and success:
- Don’t lose sight of the basics.
- Continue the dialog with those that can benefit from your community.
- Develop an ROI model: define the specific business value that is generated from the community.
The 2016 State of Community Management report is a great opportunity to sit back and take perspective on where communities are going, where your organization is headed and how you can deliver on the promise of community.
You can download the full report here:
The Community Landscape in 2016
It’s that time of year. Time to reflect about what has happened in the past year and where things are headed next.
It's an exciting time for TheCR team - as we end the year we are welcoming two new team members, soon to be three, one of whom is a VP of Sales. That takes us from 7 employees to 10 - a pretty big leap for a small organization. For many reasons, this signals that both TheCR and the community industry is growing up. I watched my five-year-old head off to elementary school this fall and it feels like we’re on the precipice of a similar milestone with TheCR.
At TheCR and more broadly, we are no longer figuring things out or incubating ideas. We know how to run communities effectively and the market is ready to get things done. Here are some of my observations about what we can expect.
The Community Landscape in 2016
We know from our research that 70% of community budgets are approved by VP- or C-level executives. The community opportunity is now strategic, rather than a tactical mechanism of execution. That visibility is awesome - but I also believe the window to act upon it is limited. Community program owners have to reward that strategic interest with new revenue, effectiveness or innovation. If community programs cannot demonstrate value in terms the business cares about, executive attention will wander.
The time to scale community programs is here and it’s a huge opportunity for those of us in the space.
However, as communities go mainstream and more dollars are allocated to community initiatives, more players get involved. There is chum in the water and sharks big and small want a piece of it. The community market is attracting a lot of different players with solutions and services to sell. That’s a good thing - many of these players have a lot to offer and organizations will need them to scale. However, many of them don’t really understand the space - and that is a risk.
This happens in every market - it’s not unique to the community industry - and it can be a treacherous time. The CRM market went through a bumpy growth path as organizations and the vendors that served them made mis-steps, fought for attention and figured out what worked. The better the choices organizations make the more the community market will thrive. If organizations fumble about without clear direction and thoughtful approaches, achieving some hits but a lot of misses, the community market will suffer.
How fast will the community market develop? That will depend on a few things. Whether:
CIOs and their teams develop a sophisticated understanding of what software, infrastructure and integrations are needed to really succeed. (Hint: having a social stream is not sufficient. If social does not integrate with other communication, collaboration, content management, analytics, CRM and HR systems it will limit its potential value). The value of community architects is growing as this sophistication grows - people who can design the ecosystem in ways that maximizes value and minimizes confusion for individuals as they navigate it.
At The Community Roundtable, we obviously have a self-interest in seeing the market succeed because we help our members and clients address some of these issues. However, I also have a personal passion in seeing this approach succeed.
By evolving our organizations to adaptive networks, individuals have a great degree of choice in how they work and with whom. Communities provide individuals with both support and challenges, in a way that enables their potential. This is my passion - to help individuals define work on their terms, in a way that fulfills them and makes them happy. A networked approach to organizations is the way to deliver on that potential.
Here’s to an exciting 2016!