The CIO/CMO relationship has long been complicated by the fact that both groups often forge their own relationships with vendors for marketing technology projects.  Complicating this situation is the fact that virtually every major IT vendor has now added social elements to their base product lines, as the ‘C’ in CRM is quickly changing to mean ‘conversation’ instead of customer.  CIOs who want to stay in this fast-paced game of enterprise social media must act quickly to better understand how to deploy these platforms as Weapons of Mass Discussion™ for competitive advantage. 

Unfortunately, only a very small percentage of senior level IT executives embrace or engage in social media in their everyday lives.  They largely limit themselves to LinkedIn as a professional network and CV distribution platform.  In the meantime, social media in many industry segments has developed to the point where conversational media listening technology and analytics are core components of global CRM rollouts.  In some cases, Social Media has its own seat at the table along with the CIO and CMO.

This is especially pertinent within governmental organizations where Weapons of Mass Discussion™ are used not only to communicate internally and with a variety of constituents, but as perhaps the most critical 21st century intelligence gathering mechanism on a global scale.

In this next volume of the well-received Growing Out of the Socially Awkward Phase:  Leveraging the Co-Evolution of Marketing and IT report series, Frank Cutitta will cover key issues and challenges in IT's evolving relationship with emerging social and conversational media platforms.  The report will present case examples to identify practical strategies for building partnerships with marketing and emerging social media organizations to maximize the value of social media deployments.  It will cross-reference cases that permit best practice sharing and worst practice avoidance across business and governmental sectors.

Read Frank Cutitta's latest blog post on this project's initial findings here.