A NON-TECH PERSONS PERSPECTIVE IN A TECHNOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT.
Are you a non-tech person working in an IT environment? We bet that your life was a little bit complicated at first, as it was for our colleague in the Marketing department. In order to find out how she managed to stay alive all these months working with us and learning lots of new things, we asked her a few questions. If you find yourself in her situation we highly recommend that you read this and share it with others. There might be some people out there looking for advice on how to deal with technology enthusiasts like us on a daily basis.
Q: How did you get by in a technical environment as a non-technical person?
A: It is not easy to fit in a technical oriented group of people as a "non-tech" person, but during the months I have spent at Spyhce I have learned some tricks and gathered some valuable experience. I think the most important thing is to be willing to listen and understand as much as you can. You can't say "I'm not technical," but you can say you're not a programmer or not a developer.
I try to keep up with their field by reading the blogs they write or read. At Spyhce we have an internal Tech channel and I try to keep myself updated and read what it is daily shared there. It's good to understand their excitement when an important release comes out, for instance. I think it is good to have a private conceptual framework in your head that allows you to understand technology.
Q: Give us some examples of tasks you liked working on. What about the opposite?
A: I like all my tasks, but I’ll admit that I have favorites. It would be odd if I didn’t. For example I enjoyed searching for new Social Media Networks where we could promote the company and our work. I liked this task, because I found some sites with approaches that made me think, gave me some great ideas and broadened my perspective. Actually I liked every task related to social media and searching on the internet because in this way I could learn so many interesting things that could come in handy while facing other duties, such as writing articles.
The most challenging “mini project” I had to do is the Smartfeedz website. Smartfeedz is one of the company's products, a social media aggregator that aims to collect Social Media messages from several different sources and present them live during an event. My task was to wireframe a presentation site for it. As a beginner I didn’t know how to imagine a whole site, so this qualifies also as the most frightening task I was assigned with.
From every task I had something to learn, every task enriched my knowledge and this makes my job interesting.
Q: What can you offer to a tech-person and how you, as a marketer, can help them?
A: I think both sides have something to offer to each other, so this collaboration can be easy and effective if the most important aspect, the communication, is fulfilled.
A marketer’s and a web developer’s work can intersect in many ways. As an example I can give you the web analytics. A marketer could analyze a website’s potential audience, search for buzz words and investigate the behavior of the actual visitors. Another great example of how a marketer can help a tech-person interested in web development is the search engine optimization. A marketer can find what people are searching for and the search terms they use. These conclusions help the web developers adjust the HTML to increase the websites likeliness.
Q: Tell us a few DOs and DON’Ts that you would share with someone that wants to do marketing in IT?
A: Marketing is everything these days. You can have the best technology and expertise, but if customers don’t know you exist, or they don’t know how your technology solves a real problem for them, your company can fail.
Don’t fall for the temptation to make big claims, empty promises, and mind-boggling jargon. Learn to speak a new customer-specific dialect based on current research and homework. Go directly to the source – your real live customers, and get their priorities, issues, pressures, and challenges.
Don't talk only about your products, talk more about the passions of your audience, share with them interesting theme related articles, discuss current issues and topics and ask for their feedback on any current issue. It is important to share your knowledge and encourage people to discuss.
Know in detail what your company has to offer and stay alert, inside and outside your working environment. Keep a close eye on what your competition is doing. Be organized, keep track of everything and structure all your knowledge because every piece of information might be useful. Use smart tools to help you analyze and adjust your posts, articles and campaigns. Spot everything that can be an asset and make a story out of it. Request constant feedback and adapt. Be agile!
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