AMA: Reddit Director of Community Product Marketing, Rachel Weber Callaway on Community Product Marketing Career Path

When showcasing your experience, consider the elements of your past roles most relevant to the product marketing job you're applying for. Is it a particular audience or segment you have a lot of experience with? Does it require a strong background in story-telling? Is it a product area that solves a problem you've tackled in another capacity? My team is comprised mostly of people who had not done product marketing before their role at Reddit but who all had deep experience working with communiti ...Read More

I believe presentation skills are vital for most marketing roles, especially PMM. The PMM's job is often to bring many different cross-functional stakeholders on board with their marketing plan, and the best way to do that is to sell them on it—and the best way to sell is with a great presentation.The best way to develop these skills is simple: practice and present often. It's also important to remember that every time you present your work or GTM plan, you're effectively message testing. How is ...Read More

Here are a few tips for new grads looking to get into product marketing: Keep an eye out for when you encounter product marketing in your life. I promise you're seeing it all the time. Don't just dismiss that tooltip the next time it pops up! Ask yourself why you're seeing it, what it says, if it's getting you to take the action it's supposed to, etc. Similarly, try to reverse-engineer campaigns you see out in the wild. After seeing an ad or other marketing material, ask yourself: who were they ...Read More

Diversity is incredibly important in tech. If we want to build products that have value and appeal to a wide audience, then all audiences have to see a home for themselves via that product or platform. The best way to build inclusive products is to have inclusive teams. When I'm hiring, I make an effort to focus not only on the diversity of the candidates and the interview panel but also on the candidates' professional backgrounds. It's important to remember that not everyone has the same opport ...Read More

The short answer here is (unsatisfyingly): it depends. I believe that a successful community-driven product launch is likely not marked by a traditional "pop" in metrics. If you really want a product to succeed long-term and drive growth in your community, it needs to develop over time so that it becomes a part of the community's fabric. I've seen products launch with a ton of fanfare, lots of marketing, and even a strong uptick in community engagement—only to fall off quickly because there was ...Read More

Community Product Marketing puts the community at the center of everything we do (duh). The main difference is that you have to think about your audience both as individuals and as a collective community. What motivates an individual can be (and often is) very different than what motivates the entire community. An example from Reddit was when we launched a new product, "Images in Comments." This product gave individual commenters the ability to upload images in addition to text in their comment ...Read More

I mentioned this in another answer, but I think a big one is community stability. At Reddit, our platform is entirely dependent on our community. In order for our users to have a good experience with every visit to Reddit, they need to trust that the community is secure and stable. In fact, they need to trust it so much that it never crosses their minds. If a product rollout has an adverse impact on the community, it doesn't just affect the success of that product launch; it can undermine the in ...Read More

I love this question. In no small part because I've had to do this a lot. Here are some of my top tips: Don't run away from crises or say when you're wrong. It's PR 101, but addressing the problem head-on and honestly is always going to be better than trying to sugarcoat it and pretend it's something it's not Listen to your community, and don't gaslight Wherever you can, adjust course based on community feedback and reference that feedback in your new messaging If you feel confident in your path ...Read More

This is a great question—and the answer is that it is a unique blend of art and science, particularly at Reddit. We partner closely with other cross-functional teams to deliver our insights, most notably UXR and Community Programs. UXR brings a more data-driven research approach, and our Community Programs team provides insights from our most tenured and trusted community members. PMM then blends those inputs with our own observations and analyses of conversations on and off Reddit, competitive ...Read More

I believe that product marketing is increasingly just marketing—especially for B2C marketing. Consumers are more savvy and informed than ever, and their opinions of a brand are more likely to be formed by the summation of small opinions formed by the value that the brand offers them via its products than by one overarching broad message.At Reddit, we pioneer an "outside-in" or "inverted funnel" approach to community marketing. This means we're always starting with our core audience and thinking ...Read More