Now that's out of the way I can get to the good stuff. I am thrilled to announce that today I began my new professional adventure with Jive Software (NASDAQ: JIVE). I have been a fan of Jive and their community platform and collaboration software since I was a strategist and external community manager at Intel back in 2008. This was before Jive expanded from their corporate offices in Portland to the bay area and before the excitement of their IPO back in 2011. And, even though I haven't necessarily been an active user of their tools all this time, I have remained an ardent admirer of their software and an outspoken advocate of the importance of social collaboration and community marketing for business in general.
After having been in marketing for nearly twenty (cough) years, I have spent the last six years or so learning, experimenting, failing, succeeding, and overall cultivating deep knowledge and a true appreciation for how businesses use social media--specifically community and collaboration--to transform the way they engage with their customers, prospects, partners, and peers. And what excites me so much about this new opportunity is that it allows me to pull from all I've learned and discovered in this area and utilize that knowledge and those experiences to help Jive customers realize concrete business value from Jive software. (Sorry, buzzword alert).
What that really means is, as a Senior Strategy Consultant my job will be to sit down with some of the greatest and most innovative brands around and help them craft business strategies that make the most of their investments in the software and in the practice of social engagement/collaboration itself. Sounds glorious, right? I know!
Those of you who know me well know that I am nearly singularly focused on abolishing what has come to be known--even if only by me--as "checklist marketing." That's the practice of checking off marketing to-do lists, instead of focusing on the business results of your efforts. (Facebook page....check! Twitter account...check! Blog...check! Sound familiar?) So you can be certain that I will pay great attention to the results Jive customers will see by adding external communities to their marketing toolkits.
I have a lot to learn. Over the past few years Jive has attracted some of the sharpest brains and social media do-ers in the business within their proverbial walls--perhaps better known as "spaces" in Jivespeak. And I'm ecstatic to join such an impressive team of social super smarties committed to helping Jive customers succeed. So from where I stand the future looks very bright, even if it doesn't include a trans-Atlantic swim.
