Digital Marketing And Social Media PR – The Future Buzz

This is long, so I will start it with the Cliffs notes version per the request of a friend – but please take the time to read all my thoughts before commenting.

Summary:

• Cash for blog post companies potentially disrupt how search engines can properly attribute organic SEO.
• Search engines will find out about illegitimate cash-for-link disruptions and take corrective action.
• White-hat PR and web marketing initiatives may be called into question due to misinterpreting the intersection of marketing and search engines as more sponsored conversations occur alongside organic.
• Traditional linkbait campaigns may one day be worth less if search engines are forced to devalue links from bloggers (this is only speculation at this point).
• Bloggers and marketers engaging in outright cash-for-play are involved in risky behavior even with no-follow links due to halo effect of linking in viral promotions.
• Marketers/PR practitioners should not fear continuing to engage in honest, organic and ethical web marketing and PR that respects both users and search engines.

image credit: aussiegall

Both personally and professionally, I’m a huge fan of Creative Commons. It actually goes beyond being an advocate – I license all my art under Creative Commons and encourage other artists and creatives to do the same, at least for some of their works. I’ve written up some of the tangible benefits before, and for it that post received coverage on Techdirt (which has more than 800,000 RSS subscribers) as well as on the Creative Commons official blog.

All the great imagery I use in my blog entries is from talented people adding their works to Flickr under a Creative Commons license. It’s all free PR for those artists taking advantage of the open nature of the system, and concurrently helps my blog content be visually appealing – it is a symbiotic relationship where everyone wins.

Whether you’re a marketer, blogger, PR professional or all of the above your success hinges on your ability to produce strong writing. And while there are plenty of people writing for a living, truly great writing is rare.

Written words have the ability to move us emotionally as much as any other form of self-expression. Outstanding writing produces a similar emotional response for me as I experience from music or visual arts.

Smashing Magazine is a white-hot web publication that frequently publishes lists. They’ve gone from approximately 300K VPM to nearly a million in the last year. How? Simple – they found a formula that worked and just kept using it. Their formula in particular is acting as an aggregator of useful, interesting or inspirational content and using lists as the format.

A lot of people shy away from lists since some view them as cliché, but Smashing Magazine noticed their users responded incredibly well to them and just keep driving that formula home time and time again. It worked incredibly well, inspired their users to repeatedly share their content, and led to explosive growth.

There exists an ever-deepening problem in our world: the fact that systems evolve to grow more complex over time. When a majority try to do or say too much, you have an opportunity: be the most clear and concise option.

More features, more selling points, more options – none of these can defeat a competitor that does the best with the essentials, has a simple formula and drives it home consistently.

Learn the art of holding back and focusing on what matters and you will be the favored option time and time again.