As reported earlier this year, we, i.e., a project group from the (German) Association for Community Management, ran a social media and community management survey over the summer of 2015. Our goal was to gain a better understanding of the working conditions of social media and community professionals in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. We were also curious about the organizational context in which these practitioners are embedded and how their communities contribute to organizational performance. We have presented the results at several practitioner conferences, namely the Social Business Club (part of IBM Business Connect) in Cologne and the CommunityCamp in Berlin. Following these presentations, we published the report, entitled ‘The Status of Social Media and Community Management in the DACH Region’. You can find our conference presentation and more details regarding the content of the study below.
The study results are reported in seven sections:
- Demographics of community professionals
- Community details
- Individual tasks
- Activities at the organizational level
- Organizational conditions and processes
- Strategy and performance measurement
- Group comparison according to maturity
We emphasize that the study is carried out by and targeted at social media and community professionals, as the project team was assembled accordingly. We want to be of value to practicing community managers and support individuals, groups, and organizations at different levels. For example, individuals may benefit from a comparison of their remuneration and tasks against those of professionals in other organizations. Teams may find it interesting to benchmark their priorities in terms of time and resources, but also to compare the sophistication of their community programs against others. Last but not least, organizations may find the study useful to better understand the typical community use cases, design jobs ads and career paths for community professionals as well as to devise community budgets.
Below you can find the presentation we gave at the CommunityCamp Berlin.
The full report can be downloaded from the Association of Community Management’s website.
Here’s a short video, summarizing the results of the study. In case you don’t speak German, you may use YouTube auto-translation feature.
In the aftermath of the release, we were lucky to be approached by and featured in several media outlets, e.g., Horizont, t3n.de, and Zukunft Personal. We’ve also written a chapter, which is forthcoming in Rossmann et al.’s book ‘Enterprise Social Networks’, as an extension of the report. The book will be published in early 2016. Ultimately, we’re planning to continue the study in 2016.
References:
Wagner, D., Schnurr, J.-M., Ellermann, B., Laub, T., Enke, S., & Lämmer, S. 2015. Zum Status von Social-Media- und Community-Management in D-A-CH. Nordkirchen: Bundesverband Community Management e. V. für digitale Kommunikation und Social-Media.
Wagner, D., Schnurr, J.-M., Enke, S., & Ellermann, B. 2016. Auf dem Weg zur vernetzten Organisation: Ein Plädoyer für professionelles Community Management in der digitalen Transformation. In A. Rossmann, M. Besch, & G. Stei (Eds.), Enterprise Social Networks. Wiesbaden: Springer-Gabler.
