The 2011 State of Community Management Report

Key findings from the report include:

• Social business is realized through the combination of social software, process change, and a change in general management approach to a more community-centric perspective.
• Community management is evolving to include more variations and has become both an explicit role and a discipline of general management.
• Community management excellence requires the understanding of human behavior and psychology, the community management discipline, business, and the organizational context.
• Community approaches to marketing, support, innovation, and collaboration have gone mainstream. If you are just starting out now, you will find you have some catching up to do.
• Executives are overwhelmingly positive about social approaches with 59% perceived as either ‘cautiously optimistic’ or ‘enthusiastic’ about it.
• 67% of surveyed organizations have community managers.
• Organizations with community managers have cultures that are less resistant to information sharing and more likely to have enterprise-wide governance structures.
• Education and cultural change are critical to success in social business.
• Organizations are still working through how to measure the effectiveness of social and community initiatives.

Inside the report, you will find survey results, qualitative lessons learn, our analysis of how the community management discipline is changing, and a list of experts and references for further learning.

Read more (and download the report) here.