In order to highlight some of the great people working behind the scenes at salesforce.com, we decided to launch an In The Spotlight series. Our first guest is Community Manager and Social Media Command Center rockstar -- Nathan Freitas. Read on for bits about Nathan’s background and his take on managing the vibrant salesforce.com online community.

When did you start working at salesforce.com?
September 2007 was the day my life changed ha ha! Seriously though, working at salesforce.com has changed my business and personal life. The people I’ve met and relationships I’ve built have helped guide me in a direction I would have never thought possible 5 years ago.  

How did your career progress?
I started in our corporate sales department as a Sales Rep, qualifying web leads. After close to a year, I was promoted to an EBR (Enterprise Business Rep) role. For some, this role was really challenging since we were cold calling A LOT! For me however, it was exhilarating to be part of large deals and learning how companies worked from the inside out. Next stop in my career was as an Account Executive.  

How did you decide to switch from sales to social media?
This was a very big decision for me. I had spent the majority of my life moving towards a sales career. I had waited tables, done door-to-door sales, insurance sales, inbound, outbound calling, and finally prospecting. It turned out, however, that I wanted to do more messaging, solution selling, public speaking, and social media. Those needs were not going to be filled by a sales role as much as a marketing one, so I worked hard and was able to make the transition. 

What is the saleforce.com Social Media Command Center? Where did the idea come from? 

The Social Media Command Center is the hub from which we manage our social media communication. There we monitor Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and so on. The idea for the command center came from the collaboration between Jamie Grenney, VP of Social Media, and Radian6. Jamie analyzed carefully how Radian6 managed its social media presence and transferred this model to our salesforce.com team. The specific name was a group collaboration and essential in messaging our focus on being the center of all things social for our organization.

What is a day in the life of a community manager at salesforce.com?
My day starts off with community engagement via Radian6 mobile on the train. I live about an hour away from the office, so being able to work on the move is a huge must! Once I get into the office, I turn on all our screens that help us tell the story of our command center. We've got the Radian6 Engagement Console running live on one 60' TV and our social metrics and Radian6 Dashboard on the other TV. Once the day gets going, I'm focused on continuing to lock down the process by which we run the Command Center. On some days, that process focus means I'm heads down working on escalations matrixes, training resources, or meeting with other departments to ensure we're on track to achieve our goals as a social enterprise.  

What is your vision for the command center?
 I envision a world-wide, fine-tuned command center that does the following extremely well:
- Brand engagement
- Proactive industry though-leadership and engagement
- Empowering all of salesforce.com to become active in social media
- Consistent and helpful content

What’s the biggest lesson you have learned working in this role? 

How do you grow and nurture your community?
To be honest, we've had the benefit of having a community that is very vocal and active. Prior to me joining the team, Marcus Nelson was our one-man social media command center and set the stage for a lot of what we do.

We strive to have a conversation with our community that fosters growth and engagement. The analogy Marcus always uses, and that I've adopted as well, is this: "Social Media is like a cocktail party. The person that you remember from the party is usually fun, helpful, and responsive. They are not overly confident, repeating compliments from others, jumping into conversations without adding value, or just talking about random things that neither help nor amuse." We focus hard on that analogy and it's been key to helping humanize our brand.

A fun fact about yourself?

Want to hear more from Nathan? Follow him on Twitter: @NateSpeak

Stay tuned for more spotlight features from around our office. If you’d like to learn more about working at salesforce.com, check out our Careers page.