Social Media Marketing Agency | The Lines Blur Between Publishing, Pr, It, Advertsing And Consulting
In the last two years (much faster than anyone imagined) the advent and mainstream popularity of blogging, Social Media, and online video technology have turned the advertising and publishing worlds upside down.
Until very recently:
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PR was done by a select few with connections to and relationships with mainstream publishers and media;
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Most advertising dollars were placed through mainstream advertising agencies;
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Prime-time TV, print, and radio got the lions share of advertising revenues;
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The Internet, although growing, controlled only a token of total ad revenues.
According to this article in Advertising Age magazine: http://adage.com/images/random/lna2007.pdf.
Those ratios are shifting quickly, with syndicated TV dropping 18% from 2005-2006, and network radio dropping over 25% during the same period, while Internet advertising has raised over 46%, and Spanish-language TV over 45%. The fact that you must download a clumsy PDF document to access information like that above tells you how slowly the advertising world is adjusting, and the fact that Google has found a way to access and rank that type of document (which was formerly invisible online) shows how fast Google is moving forward!
E-pro Classes And Social Media Training
As a professional, my original interactive marketing experience started out in the recruiting industry working for the largest interactive ad agency in the world at the time- TMP Worldwide. As I progressed through corporate life and learned my lessons, one of the critical items always found lacking in numerous large businesses was up-to-date training.
Training however, is critical at all points of development. We cannot fail to realize that. In an industry I am very familiar with (the real estate industry), the National Association of Realtors has a program it endorses called E-Pro.
From their description “The e-PRO Certification Course is an educational program unlike any other professional certification or designation course available, comprehensive and Interactive. It is sponsored by the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION of REALTORS® and is specifically designed to help real estate professionals thrive in the competitive world of online real estate. In addition, the e-PRO Certification Course is geared to ensure continued success in online real estate after the course has been completed and certification earned, by online participation in the e-PRO Community and the e-PRO Referral Network.“
I found a mixed review of the program, ranging from harsh critiques to glowing testimonials. Like all certification programs in a big organization there are all sides to consider.
One quote I found online by the Jim Cronin at the Real Estate Tomato “The e-Pro class is so far removed from what it takes to be competitive in the internet marketplace, that ‘graduates’ deserve nothing but a tinfoil badge for their efforts.”
While programs like E-Pro may not be the cutting edge of the internet marketing art, professionals of all backgrounds and experience levels need to be brought up-to-speed about online technology. As a marketing savvy friend to many start-ups in the Northwest, it is my belief that everyone has a place in the realm of social media and it is our responsibility to assist and nurture everyone into an understanding of the benefits they may be missing.
Unlike Cronin, who goes on to say things like “If you are having to drag you agents into the 21st century with a class like E-Pro you are not only wasting their time, but it’s too late to help someone who needs a ‘beginner’s guide’ to grasping the internet. Let the dinosaurs sleep.”
~I ask myself, perhaps we can take the dinosaurs out of the past and leverage the incredible strength they have?
In the real estate realm, I am on the younger side of the audience. I understand the technology on a fundamental level, I “get it” and I even wake up in the middle of the night thinking about fantastic new ways of changing the industry. Yet I do not have the thousands of relationships that a 25 year veteran of an industry has… I do not have the experience of seeing true depressions in a market… I do not have the knowledge of a great number of things.
That is were the partnership of strengths becomes greatest.
I do not need to take the assets of those who have gone before me, I merely need to help them understand the new community they interact with. I need to focus on what I do best, to strive for a way to help everyone become something better than we are as individuals. I need to accept that I am best at what I do, and for everything else there is someone I must turn to.
This is the very nature of social media: of collaboration and community. Perhaps the military figured it out before everyone else did: it is the idea that no one should be left behind. There are no dinosaurs in my world, merely some of us who may be weak in one area, and stronger than Goliath in another.
Perhaps, when no one is looking and my youthful insight fails me… I will fail.
I should be grateful enough that one of those dinosaurs that were left behind by other people repays me and picks me up.
Google Is An Ad Agency, Not A Library
So many companies view Google as an impartial entity that serves up the best information on the net… but when you sit back and ask yourself the hard questions, a peaceful mecca of online prosperity is the last thing you find.
Google is about domination, acquisition, subterfuge, and even sabotage. I am not saying Google is evil, in fact it is far from evil, but the big boys of the search industry are corporate businesses that have a singular goal: profit (call me a little jaded!)
So when you ask anyone in the realm of search engine marketing, if you have a really good trick in your bag of goodies… it is only a matter of time before they either stop working or actually become assimilated by the Googleborg.
This past month Google “recalculated” part of it’s algorithm to affect a large number of blogs, in an attempt to reduce the number of SPAM blogs (splogs) that have been popping up… and to tighten it’s reign on profits.
In a post today over at WebProNews, I read a piece about Pay Per Post and how Ted Murphy (the guy in charge of that service) has been a “lightening rod for criticism” since it was created. Murphy has a blog covering how Google had tweaked the PageRank of some PPP bloggers to a big whopping ZERO.
Murphy ~“It is no coincidence that Google has gone after some blogs that utilize PayPerPost and many of our competitors services. We offer a very attractive alternative to AdSense and are leading a charge to provide real monetization for everyday bloggers.”
I agree whole-heartedly.
While I would like to think that the big players in the search industry are making these sweeping changes to preserve the wonderful information they collect and to help our ability to find worthwhile information, I can only be left with this gut feeling that they identify worthwhile information based on quarterly profit statements.
Creating A Local Business Networking Group Online
photo credit: yummyporkyIt never ceases to amaze me how poorly planned Business Networking websites are: most do not have profiles for their members, or the ability for the members to create content or participate. If they sell advertising, the prices are rediculously high like print advertising prices used to be when someone actually read print.
In the weeks and months to come, you will observe this club:
Seattle’s Exclusive Networking and Business Club: Seattlenetwork.net
Online Video Distribution And Syndication – Veoh, Youtube, Google, Myspace
Video discusses online video sharing sites and syndication.
