For the third year in a row, the Community Roundtable has released it's State of Community Management report. Sponsored in part by IBM, the report is a must read for all community managers and those responsible for social business in their organizations.
What I like about this year's report is how it is organized into patterns of community maturity. Each pattern is associated with a list of resources (books, additional reports, and other references) for community managers to learn more. For example, if you are the community leader for an emergent community (as described in the report) you are given a list of initiatives to pursue to make sure you are following recommended practices.
For those of you who attended my session at SXSW 2012, you might recall that I referenced the 2011 State of Community Management report. And if you have read my recaps on SXSW, you'll see that a lot of my favorite sessions were on community management. I've definitely noticed an increased visibility on community leaders and how important they are as part of a social business strategy. And we can definitely see its effects (as big as they are) all over the world. From the site:
This year the primary difference that we see is in scale of initiatives and the impact of online conversations. It is no longer just about what one community leader can do but about how we can teach our organizations to operate with a community-centric perspective. We have also seen online collective action that has helped topple governments in Tunisia and Egypt, change the policies of major institutions like Bank of America and the Susan G. Komen Foundation and change the decisions of the U.S. Congress. Online communities have become a way to mitigate the risk of groundswell surprises as well as providing an opportunity to innovate more quickly.
The 64-page report in its entirety has been embedded below:
You will probably also be interested in this video interview done with Rachel Happe at Lotusphere 2012 earlier this year:
To learn more about the report, check out the blog post published last week.