Digital Marketing And Social Media PR – The Future Buzz

The social web and search results support each other and are inexorably linked. It goes beyond a mere passive connection, the two create an active, virtuous cycle growing more powerful daily. I mocked up a quick version of what I view the cycle as:

As the pace of content being added to the web increases, the value of aggregating the best of it goes up. If you’re a content producer of any variety, researching, collecting and then putting together the best material you can find is huge, especially if you’ve got an eye for top content in your niche.

For this post, I am not talking about scripting content, I am talking about manually collecting it and being a human aggregator of the best, editorially chosen material. I know that’s not the usual definition of aggregation on the web, but I think the actual, not buzzword definition of the word works to describe this strategy.

In a fragmented media society, where attention is a scarce resource, the value of good marketers and marketing agencies just keeps increasing. At the same time, competition for marketing jobs is fierce and while the industry itself is hot, there is still as much a need as ever to stand out.

With that in mind, I was thinking today it might be helpful if I share some things new marketers could do when entering the industry to give themselves the edge against the competition. These are of course in addition to doing an outstanding job on client work and gaining experience over time – this is all about going the extra mile personally.

Unscientific observation: most bloggers use Twitter, but many Twitter users do not blog.

Twitter is popular because it is easy. It is easy to setup, easy to copy-paste links into, and easy to write 140 character bits. But, having your own blog remains the strongest platform if you’re serious about sharing ideas and having a continued dialog with the world. Blogging is the antithesis of easy, however it is far more rewarding.

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.

image credit: addicted eyes (modified under cc 2.0 license)

Many marketing bloggers are swooning over Twitter, FriendFeed, and other instant, fast-paced social communities lately. It is easily forgotten the blogosphere is still the single best place to build a well-trafficked home for yourself or your business on the web. Blogging is alive and well, despite what the cynics say – look around at all the people creating new content and the millions reading it daily.