Chapter 2 - CIO to Marketing Person

In the first installment in this series I introduced the concept and how I was brought into this evolving role as Marketing Guy. Just for clarity I have not abandoned my role as CIO type, I have added the marketing to it.

I started with 3 major challenges;

• Learn to be open to social networks versus my typical IT thought process that all social is bad, block it.
• Marketing is not always an obvious skill, it goes way beyond know your customer and create the next selling pitch.
• IT and Marketing have nothing in common

The first item was easy for me to overcome as my history in IT has shown that I am typically an open guy to start with and I see more value in looking at technology that isn't obvious in solving business problems. e.g.: Linux in the enterprise over 10 yrs ago, Virtualization in 2003

The second item took me a few months to let my guard down as my instinct was to block and avoid. I started into facebook just to monitor my Son and from there I haven't looked back. In July I was starting to get it so I posted this piece as a response to "Why Twitter users Give Up". I haven't looked back since

The last item was only overcome in the last 2-3 months. It now is very easy for me to see why CIO types should be involved in business development/marketing, although not necessarily leading the charge. They should be at the table contributing to the organizational ability and understanding, I see that as the role I play.

Thanks for listening...