Tango Bango

jessoteric:

I came across an interesting discussion on LinkedIn - what department is a Community Manager in? I found this post helpful - it parallels what I think about community management. It’s somewhere in between support & marketing & PR.

You serve the community and champion their causes when appropriate… but you also want to get the word out, and promote the cool stuff that’s coming up! There’s a fine balance - you don’t want to come off as though you’re spouting propaganda. In my opinion, a good community manager or team will be able to share the info their users want, without going overboard into “TL;DR” land.

What’s your take?

I don’t actually think anyone can answer this without any certainty, because as a role, the Community Manager is still so varied.  Not only from company to company within an industry, but also from industry to industry.  Game community managers have often completely different roles than web community managers.  B2B community managers are different.  Each company has community as a different part of their organization, and I think any of them can work fine.  Whether they’re in marketing, PR, or development/design - all depends on the company and how their organizational structure works.

Or, they could work at a startup and not really fit anywhere/fit everywhere.