The State of Community Management 2016 provides a snapshot of the progress and changes in community management, based on research of more than 300 communities from organizations large and small, which span a range of use cases, sectors and industries. Every year we continue to build upon the past research and explore more deeply topics that TheCR Network members highlight as crucial to building a better understanding of the power and impact of community approaches.
Our three key findings, driven by your answers, were:
- Strategy: defining shared value drives success.
- Operations: empowering members accelerates engagement.
- Tactics: measure what you want to see, not what you have.
The full report also dives into the need to measure ROI, offering insights and a formula for communities to capture their ROI based on a simple metric – the answered question.
The State of Community Management report is one of the most important online community research projects that takes place on an annual basis. Lead by Rachel Happe, Jim Storer and their Community Roundtable team, this report summarises responses from managers of 339 different communities worldwide, to provide data that provides an exception set of benchmarks against which your own community can be measures. In addition, clear trends are extracted in terms of the directions that internal and external communities will take in 2016 and beyond, and strategies outline that should be employed to maximise growth and value.
If you only read and digest one piece of industry research this year, it should be SOCM 2016.