I had the pleasure of interviewing Jen Falasca, who is currently the community manager at SmartBear Software. She’s been managing online communities since “Mark Zuckergerg was in diapers,” for such companies as Cisco, Discovery Communications and Amadeus Global Travel. She specializes in building communities and bringing people together for a common goal. She describes herself as: a social media strategist, a community planner, a customer service foot soldier, a blogger, a vlogger, a tweet-writer, a speech writer, a marketing cheerleader, a low-cost guerrilla marketer, and above all, she helps folks communicate in every format possible.
In this interview we cover a wide range of topics around community management:
- What is community management?
- How does a company go about building an online community?
- Why would a company want to do this in the first place?
- What happens when/if people say mean things about the company?
- What happens when/if an employee says something stupid/inappropriate/offensive?
- What does a community manager do? What sort of skills/qualities/experience do they need to have?
- What are the risks/dangers of social media automation tools?
Enjoy the interview!