Paul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’ success in generating demand and creating buzz for leading technology, consumer products, financial services and professional services organizations.
Paul is the Chief Marketing Officer of Networked Insights, a leader in social media analytics, and author of four “Dummies” books: Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley 2009), Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies (Wiley Custom Publishing 2010), Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley 2010) and Facebook Marketing for Dummies 2nd Edition (Wiley 2011).
His unique approach to integrated marketing has led to his recognition as a BtoB Magazine Top 25 B2B Marketer of the Year for 2010 and 2009 and winner of the DemandGen Award for Utilizing Marketing Automation to Fuel Corporate Growth in 2008. He is also a finalist for the last six years in a row in the Marketing Excellence Awards competition of the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), and is a 2010 and 2005 gold award winner in Driving Demand.
Paul holds an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Computer Science from Ithaca College.
Today, we are happy to have Paul share his expertise by answering the following questions.
1. How did you get your start in the industry?
I got my start in marketing at a very young age helping my father promote his designer brand of fine jewelry to retail stores. I did trade shows and direct mail for him as a teenager. This got my love of marketing, branding and advertising going – so it was only natural for me to end up at an agency doing strategy work for a whole host of firms. While at the agency I found my love for Technology mixing with my love of marketing so I started to specialize in Tech marketing on the B2B side rather than the B2C side. I felt there was more opportunity to innovate on the B2B side rather than the B2C side since this area was really just emerging. I became a big advocate of social media early on – starting my personal blog as a “sandbox” to learn blogging for myself which then became a staple at many of the firms I worked with. Now having written 4 books on Social Media, I just keep getting convinced that this collection of technologies and media will be the ultimate transformation of marketing.
2. What is the biggest challenge facing your industry?
As I said I am convinced Social Media is the gift that marketers have been waiting for their whole life. Its often said in many PowerPoint decks that “companies need to get more customer centric”. It’s almost an evergreen statement in every corporate mission – but really Social Media is the opportunity to do just that! There is no better way to make your brand more customer centric that to engage with them on Social Media. Now having said that what I think is the biggest challenge is how to you mine all the data being said about your brand, about your competitors, about your products, and about your market space on social media? Many companies struggle with this concept – thinking that monitoring for mentions of their brand name is the way to get there. And in reality it is one way to “react” to things being said about your brand but just defending your brand won’t help you. You need to think about how to take this data to help you make better, smarter, more informed marketing decisions.
3. What is the secret to your social media success?
The key to my success in Social Media is having modeled my ideal customers using my own technology at Networked Insights to inform all of my marketing efforts. For example – what content is trending with my audience? I can use that to help me decide what to write in my blog, what keywords do they use to describe my products? – informs what keywords I buy on Google, what sites do they visit most often? – informs the digital media I buy, and naturally what events do they talk about the most? – informs what events I speak at or sponsor. I can’t believe the wealth of data that I now get that I never had before as a marketer. I will never go back to marketing the “old” way – you have to see what you have been missing!
4. What do you think is the future of social media?
I think Social Media and Social Data will go on a whirlwind tour of your organization from Product Development and R&D, to Billing and Finance, to HR and Recruiting, to Customer Service and the Contact Center. Social Media is not like the dotcom rush to build a website and have a group of long haired people running it in a corner of your organization. Social is a process that has the power to transform your entire organization. It’s time to start to embrace it!
5. What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out?
I always suggest that you find an area like Blogging or Twitter or Facebook that really works for your company and OWN it. Once you have one area that you really know and area doing well with – start to branch out. You always have to keep experimenting to know if a new Social Media technique will work for your company.
6. Where can we find you on the web/on Twitter/Facebook/etc.?
Well of course you can find me in all the popular places like:
- http://www.facebook.com/pauldunay
- http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauldunay
- http://twitter.com/#!/pauldunay
- http://pauldunay.com/
- And of course the emerging Google + … http://gplus.to/PaulDunay
“Social is a process that has the power to transform your entire organization. It’s time to start to embrace it!”
I agree completely, since social is more than just opening a Twitter account and involves working with HR, Project Development and more.
“I felt there was more opportunity to innovate on the B2B side rather than the B2C side since this area was really just emerging.”
This is a very true point, and I wish you could elaborate more on B2B social marketing, since right now the B2C social media landscape is crowded with many sites, while there does not seem to be any B2B social networking sites. We’re working to solve this issue and I’m from MyTradeZone.com, a B2B social network where companies can create their profile free, post their products and follow other companies to generate leads.
Paul Dunay,
What skills are required to become a Social Media Analytics expert who would find work? Programming skills?, Analytic quantitative skills, modeling or projecting BI programming skills? Please advise how someone who is not a quant can be involved in this growing industry. And make a living at it?
Thank you and regards, John
Paul,
Will each business soon be hiring a Chief Social Media Officer,
to take the lead in the field of Social Media Analytics and Diagnostics for their business or industry. Would