http://ow.ly/hsc9k, Each year, we check in with some of the top community managers in the industry and ask them about emerging trends, and business value to their company. Thanks to all the professionals that participated. Let’s start with an overview:

1. Community Manager
Insights 2013
Community Manager Appreciation Day 2013 #cmad

2. Happy Community Manager
Appreciation Day!
Each year, we check in with
some of the top
community managers in
the industry and ask them
about emerging trends,
and business value to
their company. Thanks to
all the professionals that
participated. Let’s start
with an overview:

3. Who’s participating in your community?
Real engagement means
breaking down the silos
1-10 and letting any employee
2More than employees work with a customer to
40%
26 listen, troubleshoot, or
38% brainstorm.
10-15 15-25 In 2013 we see a big
2% 20%
increase in employees
participating in the
community.

4. What are you measuring?
Phone call
Email volume Ticket volume
volume
Proving ROI and
Traffic to Participating Participating engagement is
community users employees
critical. Here’s a
Sentiment,
Customer Sat
Time to
resolution
Support cost few of the
metrics being
Peer-to-Peer
engagement
Net Promoter
Score
Ideas added
to roadmap used to measure
community
Topics
answered
Leads
generated
Contact
deflection success.
Shares to Votes for new Inbound
social web features search

5. What trends are on the horizon for
community management in 2013?

6. Social media adopts a
Community approach
“The blurring of social media and
community will continue. While
social media is widely accepted
as part of the marketing mix, the
approach on social media will be
to create a more integrated
community feel, rather than
simply use the channel to push
product.”
Lisa Barnett
Online Community Manager
eModeration
Photo: Karen_roe, Flickr

7. In 2013, a lot
more noise.
“There are "only" a billion
people on FB- still another 6
billion who have yet to join. As
more and more people begin
to connect to the multitude of
platforms, how will
companies/consultants cut
through the clutter to have
their message heard? Biggest
challenge but also biggest
opportunity: more people to
engage with!”
Ephraim Gopin
Community Manager
fring

8. We'll continue
to work on
growth
“We'll also focus on creating
active users; making the
most of the community.
How to engage people, how
to make the community
their preferred resource,
etc. ”
Kristen Gastaldo
Community Manager
Blackbaud, Inc.

9. More Traffic
More Success in 2013
“We have just moved our
community from a private
community to a semi-public site.
I am excited about this change as
this should help us reach more of
our customers, improve
marketing SEO, and allow us to
plugin the widgets into our
products. We also gain the Twitter
feed which is cool. ”
Lee Roquet
Bitcentral

10. Nurturing Can Start to Bring
Around Big Rewards
“With such huge savings in support
costs using the Get Satisfaction
platform we are now going to start
in 2013 giving our SMEs (subject
matter experts) "spiffs" if the
"problem" status in a post on GS is
resolved within a specified time-
frame which either leads to better
customer satisfaction or
subscription revenue at Cazoomi.”
Clint Wilson
Cazoomi
Kriztofor, Flickr

11. Fostering Community
Champions
“We just launched our champions
program, that will provide our
customers with additional training,
hardware to test, one on ones with
product management, and may
play an integral role in a product
certification process and customer
advisory board.”
Kristen Gastaldo
Community Manager
Blackbaud, Inc.

12. What benefits has your company
seen as result of your community
management efforts?

13. Staying Engaged
“We have been able to engage at
least one user from 75% of the
organizations using our
product. We're focused on
integrating the community into
our implementation process, so
it's a resource from the
beginning.”
Kristen Gastaldo
Community Manager
Blackbaud, Inc.

14. Community
Provides Leads
“Customer engagement - Community
provides Q&A, troubleshooting and
customer service via social media.
Users get answers to questions quickly
- keeps them informed, engaged and,
most of the time, happy (unless they
don't like the answer.
Community provides Leads, leads and
more leads (thank you LinkedIn!).”
Ephraim Gopin
Community Manager
fring

15. Time is of
The Essence
“Since I've been working in the GS
community earlier this year, we've been
able to improve our response time to
community topics. Now customers
typically get a response from an
employee or Champ within an hour
(during the business week), which
ultimately leads to happier community
members, and that's something I'm
really proud of!”
Caty Kobe
Community Manager
Get Satisfaction

16. Double Dare Ya
“Our community size
of active SyncApps
subscribers doubled in
2012 to over 525 with
some of the best
software enhancement
ideas coming from our
Salesforce.com
SyncApps users.”
Clint Wilson
Cazoomi
- Via Get Satisfaction
Community

17. Value Your
Relationships
“The community provides
something no other product at
Blackbaud has - access to every
level of our team. Even our VP keeps
up with the community. Most
customers don't experience that.
Overall, our customers and entire
team see the value!”
Kristen Gastaldo
Community Manager
Blackbaud, Inc.

18. Go Ahead
Brag a Little
One of my favorite things we've done in the last
year to engage our community is showing them
off. We do this three different ways:
1. "Loyalty in Action" tweets using their twitter
handles and links to their sites.
2. Showcasing amazing loyalty program designs
on our Pinterest account.
3. Spotlighting creative implementations of Sweet
Tooth on our blog.
Our community has been super responsive to this
because who doesn't like to show off their hard
work and success?
Sherrie Rohde
User Experience Manager
Sweet Tooth

19. Responsive Savings
“We use our community to
improve the customer
experience and reduce
operating costs. Both Badgeville
and Get Satisfaction have
helped us achieve significant
savings with 72% Peer-to-Peer
Response Rate.”
Nathan Roth,
Community Strategist
Koodo Mobile

20. getsatisfaction.com