Matt Granfield

Matt Granfield’s online marketing career began at age 11 when he wrote a computer program on an Amstrad CPC to track inventory of Christmas trees he was illegally cutting down from the pine plantation out the back of his parents house to sell on the road out the front during the holiday season. A multi-national wood-chipping corporation shut the operation down after two yuletide seasons, but not before he had made enough cash to buy a new surfboard. Matt subsequently dropped out of the business world to work on candy strategy before cashflow problems forced him to consider further education.

A University degree in arts (with a few communications, music, marketing, advertising and PR subjects thrown in) followed before Matt graduated in 2001 with a job as a newspaper reporter for a local tabloid owned by R.Murdoch. A marketing position at Australian National Yoof Broadcaster Triple J was thrown into the mix, but in reality, Matt spent most of his time there pilfering T-Shirts and sending stickers to teenage fans. He still likes to include it on his resume because working at Triple J sounds cool.

Matt’s career trajectory took a giant leap sideways when he left the heady world of journalism to become a partner in e-CBD. Matt built websites for a couple of years and then decided he was much better at marketing than designing and figured that if he put his efforts into that, he could afford to pay a team of people to do all the pretty stuff. It worked.

Fast forward a little while and Matt is now Marketing Magazine’s online marketing guru, an award-winning writer, recognised by B&T Magazine as one of the top 10 marketing bloggers in the country and a respected authority on online and social media marketing strategy. Matt has worked with every imaginable industry during his career, but has had a particular focus on the banking, FMCG, political and non-profit sectors. As the brains behind Dialogix, Australia's premier social media monitoring tool, Matt spends more time than anyone looking at how online conversations happen around brands. He is also one of the few people in the country who have a legitimate, professional reason for spending the entire day on Facebook.

When he's not spying on the interwebs, Matt can be seen playing guitar in renowned Australian rock band Black Market Rhythm Co. and running around the Brisbane River in an effort to, one day, complete a Marathon in under four hours.

Quick Questions with Matt

What projects have you been working on lately?

A government department that people actually like has just asked us to start helping them understand what's being said about them in social media, so that's some thing I'm pretty excited about. It's a nice change from monitoring conversations about fizzy drink. We also helped another musical client debut in the top ten of the ARIA album chart; that was a hell of a lot of fun too.

What Cool websites have you been visiting lately?

I'm pretty much just a sucker for Facebook, News.com.au and RealEstate.com.au - I don't get time to play!

What's your favourite blog?

I'm in love with the people on Tumblr. It's such an inspiring community of people who enjoy living on the fringe and expressing the joy they find there.

What do you like most about working at e-CBD?

No day is ever, ever the same as the last. After 10 years at the helm I still get excited about going to work, and it's nice being able to choose the beach office or the city office!

What have you been listening to lately?

The Beautiful Girls, Volcano Choir, The Dead Weather, Whitley, Bon Iver, Triple J and News Radio, I must be getting old. I am very much a Splendour junkie as well.