Community management in the past 1-2 years has exploded as an industry full of “experts.”
It’s hard to tell what’s a legitimate resource, who’s actually handling community in an organization, and who is merely managing social media platforms. Even harder is finding out where seasoned community managers live on a day to day basis since the majority of the best ones are people so entrenched in their own communities, they’re hard to find.
We created this list of top CMs out there a few weeks ago, so that’s a good place to find specific individuals, and hopefully you know that there’s the weekly #CmgrChat every Wednesday at 2pm EST. However, there are plenty of places to discuss community with those who are doing it on a day to day basis.
Here are 24 communities you can get involved in on a variety of platforms:
Linked In Groups
2. Online Community and Social Media Managers
3. Community Manager, Advocate, Evangelist
Quora
6. Community Management Boards
7. TheCommunityManager.com on Pinterest
8. Community Manager SubReddit
Brazen Careerist
Twitter Hashtags for Community
10. #Cmgr
11. #CmgrChat
12. #Octribe
13. #Cmnl
14. #CMMeetup
15. #CM (International)
Slideshare
16. Community Favorites by @RHappe
Blogs on Community Management
18. Online Community Management Links Roundup (by @BlaiseGV)
19. The Online Community Guide by @RichMillington
Conferences/UnConferences
20. Community Leadership Summit (Yearly, upcoming)
21. CMMeetup – NYC (Monthly)
22. Community Manager Meetups (Ongoing around the country)
23. CM Conference (Yearly, upcoming, Germany)
24. Virtual Community Summit (Yearly, already passed, London)
Which networks are your favorite?
Jenn is a Co-Founder of The Community Manager and the Editor-In-Chief. She’s also an adjunct professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. You can find her almost anywhere online, but specifically on #CmgrChat every Wednesday from 2-3pm ET.
Thank you for mentioning the CommunityManager subreddit!
Hi Jenn – these are great resources. I’m still fairly new and trying to figure it out so this list of resources is really helpful to outsource questions. Thank you for pulling these together.Â
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Kadee
 @kadeeireneÂ
Thanks for the mention. I appreciate it.
I am sort of surprised not to see the Community Managers Group (http://www.communitymanagersgroup.com/) which has been serving those in the community field within the game industry for quite a few years (since 2006). Granted I may be biased since I originally started the group (but handed management over to others) but spans over 100 companies and over 600 members. It may be only for those in the games industry (to include press) but it is a well established group.
Forgot the LinkedIn version:Â http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=27208
 @SeanDahlberg I hadn’t heard of it before.  Thanks for sharing…
 @DavidSpinks No problem. And, like I said, it’s geared specifically for the game industry so I can see why its probably an unknown outside of it (to the general public). But I know I’ve talked to a lot of individuals outside of games about Social Media and Community Management these last few years who have been interested in learning more about the guidelines, mechanics, and headaches in dealing in such a large industry (last year the video game market was valued at $65 billion). Especially now that I work outside of it (but still in community management), people are looking to find parallels and lessons learned from those who have been doing this for over a decade.
 @SeanDahlberg I joke around that online gaming was how I first gained experience in community building (= Â
Hi Jenn. For those of us Down Under can you please add the Australian Community Managers’ Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/australiancommunitymanagers/). We hold semi-regular roundtables for CMs in different cities in Australia. There is also the annual swarm conference which is for Aus Community Managers and is being held in Melbourne in September. Many thanks for your article! Alison
Really useful list, and thanks to the other commenters for chipping in their additional resources. Looking forward to meeting more CM’s across these various communities and figuring out that age old questions: who community manages community managers?
There also is a big community management unconference in Germany the communitycamp http://communitycamp.mixxt.de . It takes place once a year (last October weekend) in Berlin.Â
I love to see so many groups/meetups/websites/hashtags …you name it for Community Managers!Â