This is the eighth in our www.www series in which guest contributor Michelle Corsano talks with Cheryl McKinnon, Chief Marketing Officer, Nuxeo.
What impact is the proliferation of digital content having on marketing?
Marketers are still finding the right balance of risk and reward. It means smaller or newer companies can find an audience more rapidly and economically if they know where their target audience hangs out online. But these new channels and types of content can’t be the end game.
Companies still need to do their homework and learn where to engage – social media channels don’t replace customer segmentation research or product marketing collateral. New tools and channels are wonderful to explore – often less is more – too many corporate brand-bots, difficult to navigate web sites and shallow online communities mean marketers are still finding their way.
Which online tools and sources of information do you rely on?
Nuxeo is an open source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) player, so I need to keep on top of trends and debates in the ECM world, as well as in the open source technology space. In the ECM space, there’s an incredibly rich global network of professionals who share the best information sources across our social marketplace.
Most of my daily/weekly reads are from blogs and articles written by tech journalists, consultants, industry analysts and even a few competitors. I get this info hot-off-the press through a combination of RSS feeds, E-mail subscriptions, and of course Twitter. I love the community-filtered content I get through Twitter – if something is really critical, someone in my trusted community will flag it and make sure I see it quickly.
Where do you go online when you login in the morning?
A year ago, I subconsciously flipped to using Twitter as my ‘news feed’ of choice, and I rely less on alerts and RSS to know when my favourite writers have produced something new. The Twitter stream is the first thing I look at. Right now I’m following some 1,500 people/sources – so in a few minutes I get the high level picture of what is going on with my colleagues, tech trends, world news and local buzz in the 3 cities I spend time in. The second place I often go to is the analytic tools we use to track website and blog traffic patterns.
Who do you follow online?
Professionally, I like to follow the hands-on practitioners – people who are doers, not just pontificators. In the tech space this means product experts, deployment consultants, customers, developers and analysts who really dig into technology and business processes.
I prefer to follow people who show a little bit of personality. I actually do care what people have for lunch – it brings an element of humanity and exposes common interests. Humour and thoughtfulness keep my attention. I’m always a bit leery of those who go overboard in search of ‘personal brand’ and tweet like a bumper sticker.
When and how do you measure digital marketing success?
Different measurements for different end-goals. As an example, Nuxeo is starting a new educational webinar series and announcing its first global user conference. Digital marketing gives us a new set of channels to let our target audience know what we’re offering. We have far better reach to find the curious prospects who aren’t on the usual E-mail contact lists. Web analytics, trackable URL shorteners, lead and contact management applications that capture the content flow from click-through to meaningful engagement are essential. Success means visibility into that flow and being able to make informed decisions on how/where/why to fine-tune our approach.
Why are some companies reluctant to embrace social media?
It’s fear. Fear of not knowing what to say or where to say it. I’ve delivered a social media 101 workshop several times to groups of marketing peers. Step 1 is always to refresh the corporate appropriate-use policy to ensure that it covers all forms of electronic communication – not only E-mail; but also social media. Step 2 is to spend time educating the public-facing bloggers, forum participants and tweeters on what is OK and what is not OK to say. The boundaries may be different depending on industry sector and external regulatory issues, especially for government and publicly traded companies. Once those fundamentals are in place, the company needs to find interesting, thoughtful communicators – NOT only in the marketing department. Customer service, development, product management and distribution are all areas customers care about…it’s not only about the spin.
Michelle Corsano is a Web and social media marketer with 15+ years experience in business-to-business technology marketing. She is President of 
This is an interesting interview and point-of-view. Realistic, truthful, relevant and by a woman. Way to go!