Did you know Jan. 23, 2012 is the third annual Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD)? How are you celebrating the community manager in your life?

Just a bit of background. CMAD was started in 2010 by Jeremiah Owyang, a California-based web strategist. It is “a way to recognize and celebrate the efforts of community managers around the world using social media to improve customer experiences,” according to the CMAD Wikipedia page. In the last few years, the event has grown from just an idea into physical meetings across the country. Last year saw the first CMAD meetups, with ones held in Boston, Texas and New York.

There are lots of ways to say thank you to your company’s community manager(s). Here are nine ways we came up with to celebrate CMAD.

• Send a tweet expressing how much you value your community manager. I like this one: “I <3 community managers! #CMAD” Just make sure you use the #CMAD hashtag;
• Attend a meetup. There are ones all over the country;
• Write a blog post highlighting the fabulous work done by your community manager;
• Send him a nice thank-you note;
• Bake her some cupcakes, take the team out to lunch or buy a round after work;
• Join Dell’s CMAD-themed Google+ hangout;
• Hire a new community manager;
• Make a video;
• Create a slideshow with your community managers’ tips, like Edelman Digital did last year.

Did you do anything fun for CMAD? Let us know about it in the comments section below or on Twitter!

Image courtesy of Flickr user woodleywonderworks.