Today is Community Manager Appreciation Day, known by the hashtag #CMAD.

Why are community managers so important? Do they really deserve their own day?

Community managers are the people your customers first meet online, they are the ones;

solving the offbeat questions your customers ask with humour and good sense
building relationships with customers and other stakeholders through supporting discussions online
providing reputation management, particularly during a crisis
embodying your brand

“It’s more than posting cat videos” as one of our community managers put it. I believe the role is important as social media becomes the way our customers want to reach us. So important that I announced last week that we would do more this year to help our community managers build their knowledge in 2015. We’ve also created some little “thank you” messages for them to share online (as shown above). See if you can spot them on twitter.

Done well community management builds your company’s reputation, it doesn’t seem too much to ask to thank them once a year. Please take a moment to thank your community manager today.

It’s the time of the year to contemplate what happened last year, predict what will happen this year, make your resolutions and plans. Here’s my take on the retrospectives, predictions and resolutions I’ve found around the web.

Restrospectives

If we are what we search, then Google has the answer.

The lead stories include some interesting conclusions; apparently we’re optimistic, searching for “MH370 found” 14 times more often than “MH370 lost”.

Other sites focused on images of the year, Time produced their top 10 images, while CNN could only limit itself to 147 – it’s a sobering look back at the year with shocking photos of thousand of Syrian refugees, Gaza, riots, ebola victims, Boko Haram and ISIS. It’s been a tough year. There were some positives; Malala Yousafzai, a child rescue, Rosetta the comet.

Predictions

There’s always a danger in making predictions, particularly as this is the year we were supposed to be getting hoverboards according to the movie “Back to the Future”.

For some digitally relevant predictions

Econsultancy sees advances in online sales, increase in apps and mobile, and the rise of analytics.
V8 predicts the rise of analytics and the downfall of smart watches.
Social Media Examiner thinks that video will be the content format of choice (I’ve heard this before, many times, maybe this time it will be right), growth in slideshare for business and there’s a rise in niche social networks.

Resolutions

The other tradition at New Year is the “New Year’s Resolution”, that promise you make to yourself to improve your life. Apparently the most common relate to weight loss, saving money, quit smoking, and falling in love. Apparently only 8% of people keep their resolutions.

You can increase the chances of keeping any resolutions you do make by picking realistic goals, and by taking small steps that keep you motivated. The Greatist has some great ideas for inspiring wording of a resolution you can stick to.

Personally I don’t wait until New Year to make resolutions, if I want to change something I start working on it right away, and I aim for incremental, sustainable change. But this year I’ve taken the chance to affirm two professional resolutions I’m working on, and one personal one. I’m not going to list them here – it turns out disclosing your goals tricks your mind into thinking you’re going to succeed and you don’t try so hard as Derek Sivers explains in this TED talk.