Interview with Dirk Shaw: Vignette's Social Media Strategist

During economic times like these, most companies are looking to cut costs rather than invest in the newest trends in technology. Vignette is an organization that has had its share of tough times, but those setbacks are not keeping the leadership of the company from dedicating one of their most talented resources to the booming world of social media.

Dirk Shaw spent the better part of a decade helping clients to realize the value of user experience design. Just over three years ago, Dirk traded clients for customers and joined the product world as one of the first members of Vignette's Digital Strategy team.

Dirk's path through the technology and content management industry recently took another turn as he has taken on a new role — Accidental Spokesperson. CMSWire was fortunate enough to sit down with Dirk and discuss his new role as Vignette's Social Media Strategist.

CMSWire: Tell us about your background and how it has prepared you for this new role.

Dirk Shaw: My whole career has been spent helping to educate customers and develop strategies for how to best use new technology for marketing and communications and customer support. This started all the way back during the dot-com days. I have always been in this role of trending what is coming next and how can it be applied [to business problems].

I've been Twittering and blogging for quite some time just for my personal networking efforts. Couple that with an understanding of [Vignette's] product suite and working with our customers. I've been working with customers for over three years now, not to mention the time spent at Macquarium working with customers pitching content management and personalization.

CMSWire: Give us an idea of why this role was created.

Dirk Shaw: One reason for creating this position it to help [Vignette] explore new methods for listening to the community at large — the community being our customers and analysts and employees. But also listening to people who don't really know who [Vignette is], learning about customer preferences and interacting.

We will interact with the community across multiple social media platforms. Our blog will be launched any day now on Vignette.com. [The blog] will be a primary point of information sharing.

The approach we will take is: we will listen, we will learn, we will interact, and we will share.

The interaction is going to span multiple touchpoints ranging from Vignette.com, to our developer's community, through Twitter, plus leveraging FriendFeed for aggregation of information. I will be rolling each of these aspects out and ultimately I will be measuing all of this stuff. If I find that the tools aren't working then I will dump them.

The real reason [for creating the position] is to connect with our customers. I will give them new ways for [Vignette] to better serve and communicate with them. Today [corporate communication] is all very traditional. We want communication between [Vignette and its customers] to be more real-time in nature. We want to share insights and be more of an active participant in the conversation. Alot of things are said and comments are made but we don't go out and give our point of view to help shape the perception of our brand.

CMSWire: How have you been spending your first few days in the new role?

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Tags: dirk shaw, interviews, social media, strategy, vignette, web cms, web content, web publishing

During economic times like these, most companies are looking to cut costs rather than invest in the newest trends in technology. Vignette is an organization that has had its share of tough times, but those setbacks are not keeping the leadership of the company from dedicating one of their most talented resources to the booming world of social media.