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

A few weeks ago, I shared 50 blogging lessons to help out those who are new. It sparked quite a few discussions external of this blog – and one particularly interesting thread by book review blogger Jackie Bailey.

Something popular web publishers have latched onto – that differentiates from many (but not all) traditional reporters – is the power of understanding your audience.

I’m not talking a shallow understanding of the genres your audience is interested in. I’m talking about an innate understanding of the content archetypes readers react to, the motivations behind readers as individuals interacting with media, and the steps necessary to develop an interested, activated community.

As participation by companies and individuals explodes, social media is fast losing shiny new object syndrome. Even those who ignore the social web probably realize that at this point social media is not new.

The advantage of being early is probably gone for most industries. Yet, if you’ve got the right strategy which plays into the fact that many are now participating, you don’t need to be first. More people participating means more potential conversations, more potential subscribers, and more potential paths to set your brand on fire.

At Online Marketing blog, I explained why subscribers are a vital element of your site’s growth strategy. The reasons listed in that post include:

Peter Kim recently wrote on the plague of plagiarism. I don’t really see it as a plague, having your work copied is merely a byproduct of producing digital content. Many fight it. I’ve put it to work for my music and I do the same for the words I write.

Steal this blog post. I’m not joking. Copy-paste this post onto your own blog or site. You can credit me if you want to (this blog is registered under a creative commons license meaning you’re encouraged to do this) but if you don’t want to, that’s just fine.

The embrace of content marketing by businesses and marketing agencies has exploded. Already most professionals and companies that seek to be found have blogs, the ultimate content marketing tool.

Yet most get content marketing or pull marketing (in its purist form) dead wrong and are destined for perpetual obscurity.

By all accounts, video blogging should have taken off big-time by now. Consider:

• Digital video cameras are dirt cheap
• Video hosting is free and high quality
• The platforms are simple to use
• High speed internet access is common

It seems like all the elements are in place.

Developing popular content once in awhile is one thing, but how do you keep your blog as a whole in demand?

There isn’t a single winning answer – there are many strategies and methods which can be effective. Regardless of the path you choose, keeping your blog content in demand is vital to keep your community growing itself organically over time.

Social media comments are the new trackbacks.

Enabled by a slew of tools, there is an increasing trend of bloggers aggregating comments about their content from around the web right on their blog. In theory, this is a nice idea – bringing together bits of conversations in one spot – under the original content.

Looks like some of the early adopter crowd are waking up from their Twitter-induced dreams.

There are several conversations around the web about it this week, but I’ll sum the reasons you should blog and not just Tweet simply: microblogging (or any social platform where you don’t control the rules) doesn’t replace the power of an independent web publishing platform where you control the vertical and the horizontal. Rather, if used properly it actually makes your independent outlet that much more powerful.