Paul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’ success in generating demand and creating awareness for leading technology, consumer products, financial services and professional services organizations.
Paul is the global vice president of marketing for Maxymiser a leading web optimization firm, 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 marketing has led to recognition of Paul 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.
Buzz Marketing for Technology, Paul’s blog, has been recognized as a Top 20 Marketing Blog for 2009 and 2008, a Top Blog to Watch for 2009 and 2008, and an Advertising Age Power 150 blog in the “Daily Ranking of Marketing Blogs.”
Paul has shared his marketing thought leadership as a featured speaker for the American Marketing Association, BtoB Magazine, CMO Club, MarketingProfs, Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), and ITSMA. He has appeared on Fox News, and his articles have been featured in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, BtoB Magazine, MarketingProfs and MarketingSherpa.
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.
Here is why people yawn at twitter..allot of people including myself about a month or so ago are like whets the use? They don’t get it. Until someone holds them by the hand and leads them to the promise land they will not use twitter. I tried using twitter on my crack berry for a while and was like whatever, it wasn’t until I put a gadget like “betwittered” on my igoogle home page did I begin to see how awesome twitter is.
While speaking to my wife about it, she did not even want to hear it, didn’t have time as she was messing with her “MySpace” page, It’s like you have to hold their hand and say this is what you do to make this work and then the light bulb goes off in their heads and it’s a whole new world.
So, until more people get the word out about how to effectively use twitter, it will take longer to take hold. I think the teen crowd would freak out with it if they would just take a minute to really see what it’s about.
Follow me at http://www.twitter.com/plochman I’m a huge cycling fan and I follow all the big name riders like Lance Armstrong and others, could not live without Twitter anymore. ( I could just wouldn’t want to see it go).
@plochman
It defies expectations, but With respect to social media, Twitter seems to have drawn users from an unexpected demographic: people ages 45-55 are the top users, while the coveted 25-34 year old market comes in at a close second.
See the fifth bold point on my post here: http://swordandthescript.blogspot.com/
It's refreshing, at long last, to see a technology achieve massive adoption without 'fad' status.
I find it reminiscent of the internet ca. 1996, it just appeared in the mass market one day and we never looked back.
Twitter is an evolution in global communications. Where else can you message the world and get answers?
It is a paradigm shift.
It is changing PR. It is clearly impacting news media, marketing & customer service.
And perhaps most important – it's a brand new playing field for global collaboration & innovation.
We're all early adopters, and need to keep that in mind. Folks are still learning how to tag & search (the magic sauce is effective use of the 'hashtag'), and the word needs to keep getting around. I'm amazed that Twitter can grow like it has and still be stable .. well, most of the time. As long as Twitter can keep up with growth, I see good things ahead.
No one ever said change would be easy, especially on this scale.
Expect more bumps.
But I don't think the habits of Hollywood stars will be the drivers on this one –
Based on my recent followers/following experience, Frank’s comments about the demographics appear to be right on the money, specifically: “an unexpected demographic: people ages 45-55 are the top users, while the coveted 25-34 year”. It seems to me that these demographics would be more coveted by various companies than the teen market.
I would suggest that Twitter could take another 2-3 years to find a way to reach the teen market and not lose any momentum.
As for news, events and information, whenever anyone brings up a topic, more than 90% of the time I had already heard about it via Twitter and those that I follow.
I like that information comes to me un-edited, un-censored, and in many cases less-tweaked; the immediacy of the news is excellent. I can use my own brain to decide what the real reality is.
It is also entertaining as the spin via the traditional sources is even more obvious than it use to be, thanks to Twitter.
@cbemerine
@plochman – you raise a great point – it took me quite some time to find how I could integrate Twitter into my own life – sometimes it does take some hand holding to get that adoption
@ Frank – thanks for the link – you have some great points on your blog – will follow you going forward
@ Chris – I agree it is refreshing that Twitter did get adopted without a teen fad status
We are seeing not only PR but Analysts who dont accept email anymore – only twitter DMs!
Are there any possible benefits to Twitter’s lack of younger users? Or perhaps is it less appealing because it has been adopted by the older demographic? This just makes me think about how Facebook started as a site for students and now everyone and their Mom is using it. Maybe the younger generation views Twitter as Facebook for old people.
@ ali – there is nothing wrong with it – but if it never gets adopted by the youth market – eventually we will all die off and so will Twitter
Twitter's biggest problem is that it's so bloody hard to describe to someone who has no concept of what it is… but I've never heard of anyone being creeped out or repulsed by it. Some people just think that it's a waste of time. (They are wrong.)
-K
Latest developments on Twitter growth nicely captured and commented on here: If the Twitter Frenzy Is Over, Where Does It Fly From Here?
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107698
Now, in my humble opinion, Twitter is a phenomenon in online communications, and will transform business – way beyond marketing – for a long time. Independent of what will eventually happen to the company, it introduced the concept of micro-blogging and achieved mass adoption, which is fairly remarkable all by itself. My bet is that it will establish itself as a category in communications technologies, just like blogs, wikis, social networks, and such.
http://twitter.com/Britta_SF
@ Britta – thanks for commenting and thanks for sharing the MediaPost article with my audience
Very interesting Post indeed.
back at Bloggersblog.com I have read a post about MySpace lay offs due to internal and external factors. One external being the rise of Facebook in the US and worldwide. I made an additional comment mentioning the rise of Twitter on the backround of Facebook without failing to mention the open end of twitter since its still unclear where the revenue is to come from.
At my start-up social network for young baby boomers http://www.activagers.com members openly say that they love to be here because we have a clear focus on them and their needs.I just say plain ol school niche w/ 2.0 tech.
Allan
One external thing which I noticed is the rising of Face book in US and worldwide. It is also entertaining as the spin via the traditional sources is even more obvious than it use to be, thanks to Twitter.