Where should your community manager live? In support?
One of the most debated things about hiring a community manager is which department the community manager should work in. Common consensus among community managers seems to be the engineering department even though most of them report into marketing. Bernard Golden suggests that they should be in the support department:
Do not make the mistake of placing your community relationship in your sales organization. Marketing is a problematic home as well: because it is typically based on a one-way “broadcast” communication paradigm, the new community orientation of interactive communication may conflict with usual practices. Support may be a better location, although you should be prepared for new modes of user interaction no matter where you locate the community relationship group.
I thought this was particularly interesting because at OpenLogic the people with the most day to day interactions with the community are our support staff. I assumed that it was because OpenLogic is in the support business but I could see how it would make sense for a community manager to report into the support organization even if the company wasn't in the external support business.
If I had to pick a place I would say that having them as the bridge between support and the product organization is the best place, but reporting into product. That way you can always advocate with the decision makers. Rarely is a support department in the right place in an organization to actually make decisions on direction and what a community manager really needs to be able to do is advocate on behalf of that community.
Christopher has the right idea. The lines between community liaison and quasi product manager can change over time. It takes a flexible approach and good timing to provide support and structure that the project AND the community are prepared to utilize.
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