Digital Marketing And Social Media PR – The Future Buzz

In 2008, I wrote the fact that paid blogging is a lose-lose situation. I stick with everything written in that post. Upon noticing a slew of new services – including those which allow companies to pay for Tweets (it’s laughable in-and-of itself that anyone is gullible enough to pay for that) I’ve been reflecting further on the idea of sponsored conversations.

If you read no further in this post, just consider this point: you can’t commoditize something as organic as a conversation. The second you do, the people having those conversations cease to be people and transform into shills. You might trick some users but it’s not authentic and there is zero trust involved. It’s manipulation, not conversation.

It’s been a busy few months, so I wanted to circle back and share the latest content I’ve published at Online Marketing Blog with The Future Buzz community. Follow the links below for my 10 latest articles published there. If you enjoy what you’re reading here, you’ll also find these useful:

While the business digital divide – at least in the marketing and media industries – feels to be closing, there’s another rift less discussed: a divide between those with digital influence/share of voice and those without. And it’s a rift that grows wider daily.

Many businesses and individuals who embraced content marketing years ago are seeing strong returns and are way ahead of those starting today. I started pondering why this is and jotted down the following list:

You should probably try it. There’s a reason you’re unsure. Perhaps you’re unsure because it involves taking a chance or you don’t think it’s perfect. Yet the ideas – especially the creative variety – that you’re unsure about are probably the most interesting. They’re also probably interesting because they are imperfect.

Perfection isn’t as pleasing to us as imperfection because it’s not natural. This is where so many get the web wrong: ideas which are overly polished don’t resonate with people, they resonate with marketers.

Something strange has happened. It’s more than just your marketing being dated, although that happened too. There is a deeper shift that has occurred and few have caught up with it.

It’s that marketing itself was disrupted. We need something else. And what’s next is going to look more sociology-driven than something taken from a marketing best practices book.

Everyone is buzzing about social media marketing. You can’t turn your head without hearing about it at a conference. Marketing and PR professionals are either engaged today or thinking about how to engage tomorrow. Everyone is suddenly claiming expert status (by the way: you don’t need a social media expert, you just need a good marketer).