Meet Kerri Lewis, Marketing Director for El Gaucho Restaurants (part of the Mackay Restaurant group).  When we first met Kerri, she was like most of the people we meet in marketing – knew something about Social Media but hadn’t spent enough time with it to know the best ways to use it.  This is very typical of what we see in both the audiences we speak to and our consulting clients.  McCann Erickson Bristol found that 65.6% of the marketing professional said they did not know how to use it for the purposes of marketing.

However, there is one big difference between Kerri and most of the other marketing professionals we meet – she knew what to do about it!  She realized this was powerful and that her organization could benefit from having a strategy and deploying it.  So rather than letting her ego get in the way, she jumped in with both feet and embraced some assistance rather than deflecting it.  Way to go Kerri!!

Do a self-evaluation of your own organization – is your marketing leadership friend or foe – do they get it or are they threatened by it?  You be the judge.  If they are like Kerri and Mackay Restaurants, you are part of the minority but fortunate companies and you will most likely reap the benefits.  If you are like the majority, your marketing people will do whatever they can to protect their ignorance and egos – not allowing you and your company to reap the many benefits Social Media has to offer.

You be the judge – is your marketing person or group your friend or your foe.  Let’s just hope their more like Kerri than the other 65.6% of the population.

Blaine

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When clay and I first started doing seminars on “What CEOs need to know about Social Media, it was to address a real issue we were seeing in small and middle-market businesses. The CEOs and owners were clueless to what Social Media was all about and completely unaware of this Tsunami in communications heading toward them and their business.

What is interesting to me today is that after giving almost 30 speeches to close to 500 people, the percentage of top executives that are clueless remains over 80% – that is shocking to me. So while we continue our journey to help “educate” and “enlighten” as many as we can, we hope to reduce this number as rapidly as possible.

However, at the same time, what is also very encouraging to me is how many of the “deer are getting out of the way” of oncoming traffic and starting to do something about it – way to go! They are moving from the “experimental” and “enlightenment” arena to the “mainstream” – doing something about it and “engaging” in the Revolution. I would encourage anyone that has considered doing something to just do it (with a plan of course) but GET IN THE GAME.

This can’t be learned from the sidelines – only with active participation. And participation by top executives, owners, CEOs and others – not the 28 year old marketing person that happens to know Facebook really well. This is your business and livelihood – make the investment and get out of the way of the headlights and you will reap some massive rewards – faster, deeper and cheaper than you could ever have done before. Don’t be the deer that gets caught in the headlights…we all know how that story ends.

Blaine

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