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

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:

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).

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.

Until I was approximately 25, basketball was my top priority. Since the 6^th grade I played the game nearly year-round, my teenage years a blur of traveling summer teams, after-school practices and early morning workouts culminating with a college scholarship and a brief stint on a Bay Area semi-pro team.

As a digital marketing consultant, I work with marketing teams at a variety of different software companies across industries. Today I was pondering some of the common qualities behind what makes the best teams successful, and jotted down the following list. If you’re at a software company of any variety, stop and ask yourself – which of the following does my marketing team embrace, and which am I lacking?

Donna Farrugia, Executive Director at The Creative Group (a staffing agency) wrote a post over at iMedia Connection this week on finding social media talent. Some of what she wrote makes sense, however there are a few items that as a practitioner, I disagree with.

I’m currently reading a fascinating book: The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us. You’re already familiar with the invisible gorilla experiment if you’ve watched the popular “awareness test”
video that got passed around in 2008 (and has been viewed nearly 10 million times). That test was essentially a clone of the original experiment.