Digital Marketing | Social Media | Online PR – The Future Buzz

I’ve made it no secret how much of a fan I am of Digg and Reddit and how much there is we can learn from these networks. In terms of horizontal sharing communities, they’re especially interesting because the entire community gathers around the same content. What this creates is a tribal culture due to the normalized experience everyone has.

Platform-specific communities can be a challenge to grow. It’s daunting because you’re probably already growing a voice for your brand on something like a self-hosted blog. But if you can spark rapid growth in a network external of your own, it can be a consistent organic referral source to the places you’re really interested in funneling traffic. Essentially, it’s a valuable outpost.

A stunning statistic: 70% of surveyed HR professionals in U.S. (41% in the UK) have rejected a job candidate based on online reputation information.

Individuals are beating your entire marketing and PR department online. Not by just a little – they’re running circles around it.

Guest Post By Dayne Shuda of Hunting Business Marketing (follow him on Twitter)

“Innovation without imitation is a complete waste of time.” Mike Rowe – Dirty Jobs

In December 2008, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs took the stage at TED to talk about his outlook on the state of work in the United States. He discussed his experiences working in over 200 jobs that most people find gross, despicable and downright inhumane. It’s an entertaining and enlightening lecture, but the point I want to focus on is where Mike states that “Innovation without imitation is a complete waste of time.”

I’m a fan of Rebecca Thorman, career/lifestyle blogger and PR pro for start-up Alice.com. Her thoughts are usually spot on. However her post last week: bloggers are not writers, gets enough wrong it’s worth dissecting.

Social media is not new. At this point, you don’t need a social media expert, you just need a good marketer (all marketers should understand social media by now). The term – once meaningful – has been overused to the point it has become nothing more than a buzzword in the hands of most. Social is simply what the web does, and as a net native who has watched the abuse of the term social media over the years, I’ve slowly become adverse to its use at all.

But unfortunately we have to use it. Too many businesses and clients are enamored with it, or perhaps feel if they don’t start throwing it around they will be viewed as passé.

(Note from Adam: this is a guest post from my blog designer – Michael Martin at Pro Blog Design. If you’re reading through email or RSS, you’ll walk to click through to the site to read today’s post and check out the new look.)

You’ve hopefully already noticed that The Future Buzz is looking a little bit different these days (And even more hopefully, you might even think it looks a little better these days!).

We’ve been exploring digital marketing strategy over the past few weeks and fleshing out potential answers to common problems digital marketers, PR professionals, bloggers and SEOs experience. Let’s continue this series with an element which is deceptively simple, yet in reality difficult to execute: cohesion of content. The problem I stated originally:

Today’s post is a bit personal. If you’re only interested in reading my marketing content, feel free to skip this one. I want to try and answer a question I’m asked repeatedly: many people I talk with wonder how I am able to do so much. The answer is simple: I’ve learned to balance multiple interests. It’s not really that difficult and there is nothing stopping you from doing the same.