Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

Why CMOs Don’t Engage in Social Media

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I did my first Utterli in a week or so this morning. My topic was “Why CMOs Don’t Engage in Social Media.”

http://www.utterli.com/fp/embed_aud.swf?1224515848
The actual podcast version was pretty short but I just expanded my point in text format (cross-posted on Utterli). Here are the three main reasons:

  1. With a team reporting into you, you spend A LOT of time making sure everyone is coordinated and getting the support they need. Fortunately, my new team rocks!
  2. Lots more meetings. There’s CEO Staff, marketing staff, one on ones, weekly status meetings, etc.
  3. Overseeing a function within an organization requires a lot of planning, strategy, measurement and execution. I’ve spent many hours this week just reviewing PPTs.

With that said, there is NO excuse for CMOs not to participate in social media. In fact, it’s more important now than ever. At the end of the day, it’s about discipline and MAKING the time.

LinkedIn Goes Facebook

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Got this e-mail from LinkedIn today (see below). I’ve know this was coming for a while but it was nice to see that LinkedIn is realizing that social networking and is ultimately about engagement. While LinkedIn was good for a while at serving as place to connect online and create an online resume, it was not a good place to really engage with one another. Now they are taking a page out of Facebook’s playbook and adding some “social” features.

Today we’re announcing many more ways to interact with your network on LinkedIn. Whether it’s a new way to create projects and collaborate, share information, customize your profile, or gain key insights, the new LinkedIn Applications deliver.

Click here and you’ll be able to add applications that enable you to:
Work collaboratively with your network.

  • Box on LinkedIn: Share files and collaborate with your network.
  • Huddle on LinkedIn: Private workspaces to collaborate with your network on projects.

Share information and keep up to date with your network.

  • Amazon on LinkedIn: Discover what your network is reading.
  • TripIt on LinkedIn: See where your network is traveling.
  • SixApart on LinkedIn: Stay up to date with your network’s latest blog posts.


Present yourself and your work in new ways.

  • Google Docs on LinkedIn: Embed a presentation on your profile.
  • SlideShare on LinkedIn: Share, view and comment on presentations from your network.
  • WordPress on LinkedIn: Promote your blog and latest posts.


Gain key insights that will make you more effective.

  • Company Buzz by LinkedIn: See what people are saying about your company.

If you want to check out these features, here’s the link.

How Yammer Helps New Employees

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Yesterday I started at my new company, Powered. My first day was mostly spent filling out paperwork, getting set up on my computer and meeting my new colleagues. However, one simple little tool is already helping me get up to speed 10x faster than normal – that tool is Yammer.

If you haven’t heard of it, it’s like Twitter but for the enterprise. If you haven’t heard of Twitter, watch Common Craft’s video so that you’ll have a better understanding of why it’s so powerful.
Along those lines, the reason Yammer is (and will continue to be) so helpful to me as a new employee is that:
  1. Almost everyone at Powered is already on
  2. Out of the 72 (out of 75) people that are on, almost all have a profile pic and a job title
  3. Once you sign up, you can go back in history to see what people have talked about
  4. I can immediately get a sense of who the internal subject matter experts are
  5. My boss (our CEO), our head of sales and our CFO are all on Yammer and they use it
In reference to point number 4 in the list above, I was able to look through my colleagues streams yesterday and find some valuable statistics that will help make my job as the CMO here immeasurably easier. I can also get a better sense of the culture, what people talk about, how they converse with one another and what they’re reading.
This post is apropos given a guest post I recently co-authored with my friend, Joe Cascio, on Mashable. The title of the piece was Is the Enterprise Ready for Microblogging Tools Like Twitter and the focus was on the value of Twitter to business. Jumping in and being able to experience some of that value first hand is priceless.
Is your company using a microblogging tool? If so, let me know what your experience has been.

Podcast with Zach Braiker of Quiverandquill.com

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I recently did a podcast with Twitter friend, Zach Braiker of Quiverandquill.com fame. Not only is Zach a talented writer but a great interviewer. His questions (below) were well thought out and did an excellent job drawing me out:

  • Tell us about your background and how that lead you to social media
  • You wrote a blog post on October 20th, on your company Mzinga’s blog, announcing you were leaving. Do you feel it’s unusual that your company provided you the forum of its business blog to share that message?
  • I imagine, over time, your personal brand become deeply associated with Mzinga’s brand. Will your leaving affect Mzinga more deeply than the loss of a marketer in different type of company?
  • Tell us about your new company.
  • Now that you work with companies do you still consider yourself a citizen marketer?
  • Where can one hire citizen marketers?
  • Who is your favorite company using social media right now and why?
  • What are some criteria a company should use to decide whether they should be on twitter?
  • What’s the best marketing advice you’re received?
  • If our listeners want to find more about Aaron Strout online, where should they go?

If you get a chance, head on over to his site and take a listen to our podcast on tying customer conversations into business goals.

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