Building strong, genuine connections is at the heart of successful community leadership.
I'm Jeni Asaba, Head of Community at Jamf, with a background in journalism and a passion for bringing people together. My journey has taught me the immense value of empathy, creativity, and the power of connecting customers to each other and to your organization.
In this article, I'll share insights and practical advice on what it takes to build and nurture a thriving community that not only enhances customer experiences but also drives organizational growth.
Prefer to listen? Check out Jeni's appearance on the Community-led Convo podcast.
A journey into community leadership
Like many people, my career has been a bit of a winding road. It all began back in middle school when I first dipped my toes into journalism by preparing content for local newspapers.
Thankfully, this early experience eventually led to full-time, paid positions as a newspaper reporter. I worked in various locations, including Iowa, Wisconsin, and New York, honing my skills in journalism.
However, the long hours associated with journalism led me to pivot into copywriting—a role that offered much more manageable hours. It was through copywriting and leading our organization's global case study process that I found my way into the world of community management.
Today, I oversee community initiatives at a technology company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My responsibilities include managing a customer advocacy program, a partner advocacy program, and our large public support community. I've been in this role for several years now, and I genuinely love what I do.
Transitioning from copywriting to community management
The shift from copywriting to community management was somewhat unexpected. As a copywriter, I was involved in various styles of writing and interacted with many different people. This experience naturally led me to community management, which our organization hadn't previously explored.
My leadership team noticed how well I worked with customers and suggested that I spearhead a customer advocacy program. At the time, I had no idea what that would entail, but I was excited by the challenge.
I embraced the opportunity, and from there, things just took off. The transition has been incredibly rewarding, and I've found a real passion for building and nurturing communities.
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What my day-to-day looks like
Given that my "product" is people rather than something hard-coded like software, my day-to-day responsibilities can vary greatly.
My primary focus is on adjusting and responding to the needs of our community members, which means that each day can look quite different depending on what our customers and partners require.
My main responsibility is to find ways to better connect our customers and partners with our organization and with each other. The goal is to enhance their experience with our brand and support them in their own roles.
On a typical day, this involves a lot of customer communication, strategic planning, and problem-solving. Much like in journalism, you never know what's going to come up, so I always need to be ready to pivot quickly and address whatever needs arise.
Being agile, keeping an open mind, and expecting the unexpected are essential skills to ensuring our community members get what they need.
The leadership qualities necessary for community management
Leadership in community management is a unique challenge, and it's something I'm often asked about, especially by leaders looking to start advocacy programs or hire for similar roles. The question I hear most often is: What do you look for when hiring someone to manage a community?
For me, the number one quality I hire for is empathy. It's not the easiest trait to measure, especially through just a few phone calls during the hiring process, but it's absolutely crucial. Empathy is what allows someone to genuinely connect with and understand the needs of the community.
Beyond that, I look for creativity and strong communication skills. When these three qualities—empathy, creativity, and communication—come together, they form the foundation of a successful community leader.
The technical skills, like learning specific software, can be taught. But you can't teach someone to be a good human who interacts well with others. That innate ability to connect with and help people is what truly makes a great community leader.
Community building: A professional and personal passion
My passion for community building started early in life. When I began my career in journalism, writing for a local newspaper as a seventh grader, I truly believed that everyone had a story worth sharing.
That belief is at the heart of community building—getting to know the people around you, understanding who they are, and finding ways to connect and support them.
This passion naturally evolved when I moved to New York City and worked at a community college, where I oversaw hunger and homelessness projects. One of my first initiatives was collecting and distributing prom dresses to girls in need in the Bronx. Despite some scepticism from my interns, who doubted we'd get donations, I remained optimistic.
We gave it a shot, and it led to the creation of a nonprofit, Project Prom, in 2007. Since then, we've given away over 3,000 prom dresses, and the project continues to grow each year. This success is a testament to the power of community and the importance of getting buy-in from those around you.
Hannah Wesson
My community-building efforts didn’t stop there. In 2019, my husband and I started another nonprofit, inspired by his roots in Uganda, East Africa. After visiting several times, we decided to build a school, a dream we had nurtured since the early 2000s.
We didn’t know exactly how to go about it, but we took the leap, founded the nonprofit, and began construction. I'm thrilled to share that the school was completed and opened for the 2023 school year!
Through these experiences, I've learned that the best community leaders are those who genuinely care about people and have a passion for bringing them together. This passion extends beyond the workplace and into every aspect of life. It’s what drives successful community initiatives and makes them sustainable.
People often ask me how to start such projects. The truth is, you never know exactly how things will turn out, and there’s no perfect roadmap. The key is to take that first step, have faith, and build a community around your passion. With the right mindset and support, everything will come to fruition.
Convincing stakeholders of the value of community management
One of the biggest challenges in community management, especially in the B2B space, is getting the necessary resources devoted to it. While I have a deep passion for bringing people together and fostering community, convincing stakeholders to share that passion can be tricky.
The challenge lies in proving the value of community. Unlike customer success, where you can point to NPS scores, or sales, where revenue numbers speak for themselves, the value of community is less tangible. How do you quantify the impact of bringing people together and creating meaningful connections among customers? This is something we've grappled with internally, and to be honest, we're still figuring it out.
However, I believe that more and more leaders are starting to understand the value of community. They're beginning to see that when customers come together and form a tribe around your brand, it creates a heightened sense of loyalty and passion for your product. This leads to real, measurable outcomes like higher retention rates and faster, larger renewals. These are the monetary benefits that can be tracked and reported.
But beyond the numbers, a happy and engaged customer is far more valuable than one who is simply using the product without any emotional connection. While proving the value of community will always be a challenge, it's one that I find exciting.
I think as we continue to demonstrate the impact of community on customer satisfaction and business outcomes, more leaders will start to appreciate its importance.
The true value of community for organizational growth
Happy customers are the foundation of any successful organization. I was reminded of this when I read a note from our CEO, who expressed gratitude for our efforts in making customers feel special, especially as we prepare for our large customer event. His message was clear: We wouldn't be where we are without our customers. At the end of the day, no organization can grow, thrive, or generate revenue over time without its customers.
The true value of community lies in making customers feel valued and appreciated. If customers don't feel this way, they won't stick around. Community is about showcasing our customers, demonstrating appreciation, and providing them with value first, before expecting anything in return. This is where community thrives—it’s the process of giving before taking, of investing in relationships rather than just seeking to extract value.
Unfortunately, this is also where some communities miss the mark. When organizations try to extract value from their customer base without first putting in the effort to show appreciation and provide value, it often leads to failure and negative experiences for customers.
But when done right, showcasing the value of a community creates happy customers, which in turn drives organizational growth. It’s a cycle where everything works in tandem: happy customers lead to a thriving community, and a thriving community leads to a growing organization.
Learning from mistakes in community engagement
One of the first mistakes I made when building our community and advocacy program was focusing too much on what the program could bring to our organization. At first glance, this might seem like the right approach—after all, isn't the goal to drive value for the organization?
But the reality is that no program will deliver value to the organization if it doesn’t first deliver value to the customers or members of the advocacy program.
Initially, I was too focused on metrics like how many customers I could get to do a certain number of things for us. While these metrics are important and eventually become a piece of the puzzle, they shouldn’t be the starting point. It took me a little while to realize that the foundation of any successful community or advocacy program is to drive value for the members first.
If customers feel that they’re only being used as marketing or sales tools, they’ll disengage. No one wants to feel exploited; they want to feel supported and successful in their own roles.
Once I shifted my focus to delivering value to our community members—helping them succeed in their own roles—the rest followed naturally. When customers feel valued and supported, they’re more likely to give back and engage with the community.
The success of the organization becomes a natural byproduct of a well-run advocacy program that prioritizes the needs and success of its members first.
Where does community fit within an organization?
The question of where community fits within an organization is a fascinating one because the answer can vary greatly depending on whom you ask.
Traditionally, community management has often been housed within the marketing department, and that's still the case in many organizations. However, we've also seen growth in placing community under customer success. At my organization, our community sits within the product department, which I particularly love.
Positioning community within the product department helps to remove the stigma that sometimes comes with community programs, especially those focused on customer advocacy.
Often, when community sits within marketing, there's a perception that customers are simply being used for reviews, references, or other marketing activities. This can make customers feel like they’re being exploited rather than genuinely engaged.
By placing community within the product team, it shifts the focus. Our customers see that we treat them as integral to our product development process, learning from them and using their insights to grow the organization. This approach helps customers feel valued as partners in the product lifecycle rather than just tools for marketing.
That’s not to say that community programs can’t thrive within marketing—of course, they can. But it really depends on the leadership in that area and how they choose to guide the community.
If the focus is too heavily on marketing activities rather than on delivering value to the customers, the community can suffer. Marketing should be a byproduct of a well-run community, not the primary focus. When you get this right, customers feel the difference and engage in a more empowered and meaningful way.
Advice for aspiring community builders
Looking back, if I could give advice to myself from 10 years ago, when the concept of community was still relatively new, I would say this: Always stay connected to the people. No matter what organization you're working for or what role you're in, it's crucial to remain deeply connected to the end users. Understand their wants, needs, and how you can best support them.
That connection is the foundation of everything in community building.
Specifically within the realm of community management, if I could go back five or six years, I would tell myself to connect customers to each other much earlier. During the early days of my work, I waited too long to create spaces where customers could connect and build relationships with each other. This was especially evident during COVID when customers explicitly asked to be connected with one another.
In hindsight, fostering those connections and creating spaces for customers to build a tribe from the very beginning is absolutely essential. It's something I would encourage anyone in the community space to focus on—help your customers connect with each other early and often. Those connections are what build a strong, thriving community, and they should be nurtured from the outset.
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