The Social Organization

New Research: Communities in 2016 - Quantifying the Value of Community

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:

1. Don’t lose sight of the basics.
2. Continue the dialog with those that can benefit from your community.
3. 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.

 

The State of Community Management 2016 from The Community Roundtable

 
You can download the full report here:

 

Defining Social CRM - Altimeter's Take

Altimeter recently published a report - written by Ray Wang & Jeremiah Owyang - called Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management and it is an ambitious attempt to define Social CRM and place and rate vendors according to 18 business use cases they have defined.

I am a big fan of frameworks as I think it helps people segment and define their needs so despite being a bit of a mouthful, the Monitor-Mapping-Management-Middleware-Measurement breakdown is a great way to look at the role of different technologies within the SCRM landscape. I also thought having concrete definitions for each use case is a really helpful approach to guide the conversation between IT professionals and business professionals.

Jeremiah & Ray also evaluate the maturity of the technologies that support each of the 18 use cases. I loved this approach but I did find the criteria and presentation a bit confusing although still think this is an immensely useful first step in separating out what companies should focus on from an IT-enablement perspective.

One thing that I am sure we'll see more conversation about is how Altimeter defines Social CRM - which includes collaboration and product innovation/development. I don't have a particularly strong opinion one way or the other (not being a CRM expert) but from my perspective it does expand the boundaries of what was traditionally considered part of CRM.

Overall, it's a great document in assessing the social software landscape and determining where to focus one's energies given the current maturity of the market - and paired to the business use cases which is critical for companies.  I highly recommend a read:

Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management

View more documents from Jeremiah Owyang.

In related news, Radian6 just announced its Engagement Console which greatly helps to consolidate some of the fragmentation between information on the open web with internal CRM data structures.  I expect to see a lot more technology deployed in this area to help companies rationalize and respond appropriately to the highly unstructured data coming into the organization from the outside.

Content Bonanza... Just Not Here

I've been busy lately... but just not on this blog. But if you are interested, here are some of the things I've been thinking about and doing:

• Measure, But Measure Wisely
• Consistency & Translation in Community Management
• Community Is A Management Approach, Not Just A Role

I was also asked recently to contribute on Radian6's, Helpstream's & Adam Cohen's blog

• Helpstream Interview
• Radian6: Online Communities Are Like Dinner Parties
• Radian6: It's Not All Mindless Chatter
• A Thousand Cuts: Marketing Hot Seat

I was thrilled to be asked to participate in Valeria Maltoni's annual eBook project, particularly since she pulled together such a fascinating group of people - Jason Baer, Olivier Blanchard, Danny Brown, Mark Earls, Rachel Happe, Gavin Heaton, Jackie Huba, Jonathan MacDonald, Amber Naslund, Shannon Paul. While I know of or have met many of them, this is my first time collaborating with them. The result was a great combination of perspectives on Marketing in 2010 (post & eBook).

Lastly, there have been a couple of webinars that I've participated in:

• Awareness - The Community Maturity Model with Adam Zawel of The Palladium Group
• Social Media Today - Adding Value with Online Community panel discussion with Maggie Fox, Francois Gossieaux, and Neil Beam. (Recording coming...)

Plenty of things to peruse, or not, over the holidays.  I believe I'll be eating gingerbread :)