Digital Marketing And Social Media PR – The Future Buzz

In epistemology, the theory of knowledge, the prefix meta is used to describe about (its own category). For example, a metablogger would be a blogger who writes about blogging.

As someone who spends a great deal of time as contributor, participant and observer of a pretty diverse array of web communities, I find the meta aspect fascinating. What I mean by this is without fail, every community enjoys having discussions about itself. It’s something not usually stated directly within the communities, but it’s a reality.

Jeremiah Owyang recently outlined the future of the social web: in five eras

The Five Eras of the Social Web:

1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share
2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system
3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social
4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content
5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services

Mitch Joel argues print is not dead. Perhaps not yet – but it is mortally wounded.

I may be treading beaten ground here, as I’ve written before on living artifacts – but Mitch got me thinking on this subject again and I think I can present an even simpler viewpoint on why things like print newspapers and CDs are relics of the last century. The reason is simple: digital is now the master copy.

The truth is that the tangible versions of media are temporary and less useful copies of their digital masters. You’re paying for the medium, not the message – and there’s no logical reason for that when there are more efficient ways to get (and share) the message.

TopRank recently ran a survey of the top digital marketing tactics marketers plan to implement this year. They also published some great insights on the fact that social media marketing tops digital marketing tactics for 2009.

Three recent, cautionary tales…

Kmart was slammed by the blogosphere and debated intensely due to unartfully paying popular bloggers for placement through IZEA, a company which Michael Arrington, the most influential blogger says is:

The blogging world’s pariah and are fairly routinely trashed for, as I put it, polluting the blogosphere.

(See my previous thoughts on paid blogging)

Motrin, a brand essentially invisible to the social web previously, sparked massive controversy due to an ad which proved highly offensive and demonstrated their marketing department was out of touch with real moms.

FedEx was recently put front and center stage when an agency person from Ketchum, their PR firm, made a negative remark on Twitter about Memphis (where FedEx is based) on a trip to visit the client. Actually, the drama happened not from the Tweet itself but from FedEx’s response. 140 characters can do a lot.

Bloggers have been fired up all week due to a bit of controversy over the idea of paid blogging, a situation where a company pays a blogger directly for coverage. I’m not linking to any people or companies involved as I do not think the participants warrant any link love – if you want the full background go here.

That specific situation completely aside – I would like to discuss why the idea of having a company directly pay someone cash to blog about them is a situation where nearly everyone loses.