Smart marketing with Ryan Caligiuri

I agree with your stance Ryan. I know many may not agree with you but I think if marketing professionals can begin to think more like CEOs and put themselves in their shoes they will realize that marketing is about growing the business and not about tweets. For my own purposes I’m wondering how you evolved to think this way. Would be helpful to understand how you go to this point.

When I first started to experiment with social media I like most people just started to use it. After using it for a month I realized very quickly that the CEOs I speak with would ask the same questions they ask of all marketing - "How does this drive business value and impact my bottom line."...

If CEOs like measurable results why don’t they like metrics such as number of likes or retweets? If I can demonstrate we’re gaining more won’t that appease them?

Yes you can report on the number of RT's or Likes but all of that data has to be secondary. That data will show that people are responding to you and your efforts in the social space, which is important to know!...

What I usually do is I WILL report on those metrics. In fact, I do it first. I lead the reporting by show how many RT's, how many Likes, how many comments we get, etc. Now, I know the CEO doesn't care about that very much until I tell them what that means - it means our content (White papers, articles, posts) are being consumed more often. But I NEVER stop there...

Next time you give your presentation to your CEO, try that approach. Report on the status of your social media activity then tie it back to what that means for the business and how those translated into leads and meetings.

I think that your article was very good for marketers but not so much for the lone entrepreneur. Sorry, let me rephrase that. I KNOW I need to do what you suggested today, but I don't know if it applies to me in my start up? Do you have some ways that might get people into my store during lunch hour using social media?

A great question! Yes the principles I shared this morning in the column were meant to provide the foundation to how you should approach using social media or any marketing tactic for that matter but if you're looking to drive people into your store you're looking more at a solution right now...