Jeremiah Owyang initiated this international event in 2010. People are encouraged to send sincere Thank You notes to their online community managers. People using Twitter include the #CMAD and #CMGR hashtag in their tweets about this event. Many online community managers and vendors in the social media marketplace post blogs in appreciation of their community managers. Cities with large concentrations of Social Media focused businesses, such as Boston, Austin, and San Francisco hold in-person meetup events to celebrate and honor those who represent and support their online communities.
In 2011, Africa’s first Community Manager Appreciation Day took place in Nairobi, it was facilitated by iHub Nairobi, hosted by Mark Kaigwa and Soud Hyder. The Nairobi meetup was attended by leading community managers, digital media as well social media experts and practitioners.
Europe’s first Community Manager Appreciation Day was organized in 2012 in Tampere, Finland. The gathering of Finnish community managers was facilitated by SOITA, a project led by the Tampere University of Technology focusing on social media as a tool for customer service innovation. About 10 people participated in the first CMAD event. The following year, the CMAD2013 event saw a huge growth in popularity attracting over 150 social media professionals – and tens of online viewers via live stream.
At this regards, for the 2014 edition, Social Media London had the awesome idea of creating the hashtag #CMADselfie in order to post it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine or G+ and appear in their #CMADSelfie Hall of Fame.
How did this go on Twitter? Below you can see a chart showing all tweets using the hashtags #CMAD, #CMADselfie and #CMGR.
On 27/01/14
- #CMADselfie 219
- #CMAD 10,993
- #CMGR 1,354
Also the Social Media Team in the European Commission took a great group selfie.
#CMADselfie w/ @AmyJColgan @CaroleBxl @marcoRecorder @veru_s @PabloPerezA @kwinlambrecht @GavrilaBxl for #CMAD pic.twitter.com/lUa3oEkIBF
— Waltzing Matilda (@EC_MatildaBlog) January 27, 2014