Chappaqua Expert Makes the Most of Social Networking
For some, technology and social media is viewed as a necessary evil. But for Christopher Dessi, the 21st-century advancements have been a boon to his livelihood.
After close to a decade of working in direct marketing and sales, he was at a point in his career where no matter how impressive his job performance, there was always the threat of him being laid off. If Dessi wasn’t faced with imminent job loss, being stuck in a position where he was limited by boredom or lack of growth potential was nearly as frustrating.
So he started blogging in 2007, figuring he was going to get creative with his next job search. Dessi launched his own website and began communicating some of his views on the marketing and digital media industry since entering the workforce in the late ’90s.
“I started doing it, and all of a sudden people started to read it and talk about it,” Dessi recalled. “I said, ‘Well, I do know more than I thought I knew,’ and I’ve been doing this for a few years. It’s been really interesting. By doing that, I believe, it helped me parlay the next job offer, which (was) to be vice president, my first VP role.”
Although Dessi, 36, didn’t stay long at the job he snagged through the blog, it eventually led him to bigger and better things. He is currently a managing partner at Drive Action Digital, a Tarrytown firm that combines social media and search engine marketing to help clients identify their brand.
Dessi has also emerged as a social media expert. In the past couple of years, mainly through his blog, he has become a regular go-to guy for talk shows and media outlets to get his take on social media issues.
While some people may be leery of putting out too much information, Dessi said knowing how to use social media properly can be a difference maker. He advises college students and clients to maximize its effectiveness by letting their personality shine through when connecting with others, whether that be a potential employer or customer. It has increasingly become the new way for prospective employers to differentiate one resume from another.
“Social media allows you to have that comfort before you meet somebody,” explained Dessi, who lives in Chappaqua with his wife, Laura, and two young daughters. “You have a conversation on Twitter; I can read their blog. If you happen to read my blog, I just don’t talk about digital marketing and social media, I talk about my father’s illness. I love singing the praises of people I admire, and it could be anybody from my mother to the a.m. network guy.”
He and his co-managing partner at Drive Action Digital, Anthony Zarro, have used their social media savvy to launch a new initiative, The Athletes Network. It connects the roughly seven million high school varsity athletes with a database of 25,000 collegiate coaches. The Athletes Network isn’t for the elite athlete being actively recruited, but to familiarize students with schools they may not have considered and to connect colleges with good students.
“We are betting that there are college coaches at Division III and Division II schools that want to build programs and their legacy and have a program that means something with good kids dong the right thing,” said Dessi, also a co-founder of Westchester140, a cutting edge tweetup group.
While Dessi might now be a social media guru, he didn’t envision his path after graduating from Mahopac High School in 1993. In fact, it was a friend who suggested that he get his first e-mail account while he was a psychology major at Loyola University in Baltimore, when Dessi barely knew what e-mail was. He studied abroad in Belgium his junior year, returned and wanted to change his major, but his father, who spent his career in marketing and sales, advised Dessi to graduate in four years.
Dessi initially worked at Four Winds Hospital in Katonah as a psych rehab therapist, but soon realized that wasn’t what he wanted to do. He got his master’s at NYU and hooked on with a series of sales and marketing jobs.
Interestingly, it was his father who first advised him to blog. It turned out to be sage advice. Not only does he still have the blog, but soon he will be a first-time author with his book “Social Light” about what he knows best.
“We all have something to offer,” Dessi said. “We all have a take on things; we have an idea about things, and the ‘Social Light’ is that I believe that we can share the way social media connects with people.”
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/