CMOs Have Never Heard of Twitter, Are You Really Surprised?

On Friday a short post was published on media bistro saying that it’s shocking that CMOs have never heard of twitter ( at the ANA Conference, Association of National Advertisers).  Is it really that shocking?  I mean most people have never heard of twitter let alone know how to use it.

The post went on to say:

“The conference attendees were asked: Which social network do you consider for your marketing campaigns? Results:

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

and a couple of other social networks were listed

Yet, more than 50% of attendees replied “NONE of the above”

Facebook received 18%

YouTube got about 20% of the votes

Twitter? Just 3%!”

Yes these responses are pathetic, but shocking?  not so much.  Most of the CMOs out there are traditonal marketers who have been in the field for years, they didn’t grow up with youtube, twitter, facebook, or social networking.  I know what you’re thinking, they are marketers and they need to stay on top of their game…true, but why don’t we help them out by asking different questions?

If I asked you if optimized your site map priorities, created a robots.txt file, researched your co-occurrences, and triangulated your keywords you would probably look at me like I’m crazy right?  But if I asked you “do you want to get found better in search engines?” then all of a sudden things make sense right?

So instead of asking the CMOs and other executives out there if they have heard of twitter or if they are using facebook to create fan pages why don’t we ask them the following:

• Is it important for your organization to interact with its users/customers?

• Is it important for your organization to find an efficient cost effective method of interacting with your customers/users?

• Is it important for your organization to receive direct feedback from your customers/users?

• Is it important for your organization to allow for brand evangelism from your users/customers?

• Is it important for your organization to have an online presence?

Of course there are probably tons of other questions you can think of, the point is that most CMOs and executives would say yes to all of the above, THEN you can begin to educate them and show them the tools to make it happen, such as twitter.

If you’re going to speak to a senior level executive (especially a marketing one) make sure you speak on their terms not yours, that way things will make a lot more sense 🙂

What other questions would you ask a CMO or company executive?

Thanks for reading and thanks for your time!