Digital Marketing, Media, PR Analysis And Insight – The Future Buzz

The fictional character Jack Bauer of 24 was indispensable as an agent for the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU). He ignored orders. He went off protocol. That didn’t matter, he was critical to the success of the agency and the safety of the country as a whole within the context of the show.

Recently, Eric Friedman published an EarlyStager approval matrix I found quite interesting. Taking inspiration from that I decided to create a modern marketing and PR professional fluency matrix. See below for a breakdown of my perspective on the current state of marketing and PR pros. Since this is, of course, a view from my own experiences – I’m curious what you think?

While at the SES conference in San Francisco last week, I noticed the above sign in the front of the session hall. And I had to stop and snap a picture to share with you here – because I think this messaging is misguided.

Last week I was in San Francisco for the Search Engine Strategies conference covering the event for Online Marketing Blog. Last year we put together the different digital pieces, from creating a web analytics culture to turning the social web into real ROI. This year was no different, and I tried to liveblog a variety of sessions that cover the spectrum of digital marketing. Be sure to check them out:

You would have to be crazy to completely yield your digital presence to services owned by other people. There are so many reasons you should maintain an independent presence, and most of those who have been active digitally well before the popularization of privately (vs. independently) owned web services know this.

The number stops them in their tracks every time. When I tell people that the New York Times has more than 700,000 fans of their Facebook page, they say something like, “They have THAT MANY?” Yes they do. There’s a whole lot of hullabaloo these days in the social media world about Facebook fan pages – and with good reason.

The other day, I wrote a post on the fact that most marketing and PR agency blogs are unreadable. In it I shared my observations that this bothered me – but didn’t provide any real reasons why (pretty much just a rant on the situation).

Not everything is new (or even true) on the Internet, we know this. Yet still, yesterday TheChive.com – a site which if you clicked around you’d realize was not the most trustworthy – ran a story that suckered the whole internet. A few people called it out for being fake initially, but even less picked up on the fact that the concept behind it (a stream of pictures with someone holding a white board) was not even an original idea.

One of the reasons I was compelled to join TopRank Online Marketing more than one year ago was the agency’s A-list blog – Online Marketing Blog (and I’ve enjoyed writing more than 40 posts there since joining the team). Prior to joining TopRank I had regularly been approached by other digital consultancies and turned them down. One reason why?

Recently, a small bakery in Salt Lake City called My Dough Girl received a legal threat from General Mills. What was the threat exactly? As reported by KSL.com:

The owner of My Dough Girl received a legal “cease and desist” order from Pillsbury in May, stating she had to change her business name or face a lawsuit.