The changing face of online marketing.

Keeping up with the latest online marketing trends is enough to give you a brain ache. Seriously, if online marketing is not your core business, who has enough hours in the day to keep up with the constant changes and shifts in thinking when it comes to online marketing? No one. In my humble opinion, those who seek to understand the nuances of every new Internet "flavor" are missing the forest for the trees. A better goal for a business marketer is to seek to understand the big picture of how online marketing differs from traditional marketing and how they can embrace that to enhance their overall integrated plan.  

Here is a great article that speaks directly to that point. www.socialdesire.com/2008/08/15/how-many-businesses-really-'get'-the-social-web/

Fresh content has never been easier

Remember the days where you had to dedicate several hours of your workweek toward updating news, features, announcements, etc on your company web site in effort to keep it fresh and dynamic? I do. In fact a portion of our business was dedicated to helping clients do just that. Let me tell you,  extracting fresh content from clients for the web was right behind calling clients with past due invoices on my "fun" list. The same clients who could talk passionately for hours about their latest product or service become the proverbial deer in headlights when asked what is new at the company that I can add to the web site. 

The good news is that with the proliferation of blogging, RSS feeds, superior content management systems and other forms of dynamic content, the job is of keeping web sites fresh is getting easier and easier. Once I can get a client comfortable with the idea of a blog, the freeflow of fantastic relevant and marketable ideas is incredible to watch. With some guidance we then flow this information into various places on web and Wow! instant updates! It's very gratifying to watch clients realize the power of constant open communication with their target markets.