But, while all good community leaders within an organization hold these core values close, when business stakeholders start asking for hard ROI metrics, most community teams get a little nervous about how to prove value and define success. So, when the "what has community done for me lately" question get launched, panic sets in and people start to make dashboards and spreadsheets and charts galore. Community managers send reports off to leadership with fingers crossed and a heavy heart because they know the data isn’t truly indicative. MORE >>

The enterprise community manager position is sometimes termed a "jack of all trades" role. Over the past few weeks I have participated in a suite of webinars and talks about online communities and their growing role in functional areas such as customer care. have listened to, and debated with, countless community management specialists about community management best practices. I've heard a lot about keeping business strategy and community management aligned. Let's look at the role of online community strategy. know -- I've said it myself. Full stop. MORE >>

In July 2012 we added gamification into our own online community,  Topliners. With the launch of the gamification module came a “leaderboard” on the  home page  that allowed users to see their rank in the community of 7000 users and who their nearest competition were.  We also launched the concept of badges: little image icons that appear on a user’s profile page in the community as they complete a series of activities. But check out the 55% spike in average active users in mid-July: that was the week that we launched the gamification changes on our community. MORE >>

by Jesse Noyes | Tweet this The term “community manager” no longer lives in the realm of buzzwords. As social media, online communities and even in-person events have become a regular part of the modern marketing mix, community managers have been getting hired up. If you want proof, just look at the who’s who of brands that have added community managers assembled by Jeremiah Owyang.). Despite the number of community manager positions popping up on LinkedIn though, many organizations still struggle to understand just what community management means today. MORE >>

One recent morning I saw a post in one of my LinkedIN groups asking "what is the difference between a social media manager and an online community manager?" Social media managers bring the guests (clients, prospects) to the table and community managers welcome them in!" Among the first mentions I came across was a CMSWire which discussed the confusion between social media and online community management, and suggested the two roles have become blurred. Thank you for reading Building Online Communities for Business by Leader Networks. MORE >>