Online Marketing Bootcamp

Keeping up with it...that's one of the biggest challenges a full-time professor who teaches internet marketing has. The changes that keep on coming since I originally developed and taught my first section of Internet-based Marketing here at Champlain are astounding!

I began teaching the course in the Spring of 2001. Since that time, the course has evolved and the tools have changed dramatically and we'll be changing the course again this summer in order to accomodate the right blend of tools AND theory.

All this is a world where social media (check out the consortium!) is now the big buzzword (it didn't exist last year!) and "experts" in the field are figuring it out on the fly as it develops! It's fascinating to read other blogs (such as Influential Interactive Marketing and BizNology and Occams Razor to name a few) about the field of interactive marketing and how the professionals are spinning what is happening and how to take advantage of these new opportunities.

What is interesting to me is that many of these professionals are not talking about the challenge of EDUCATION. How do I, as someone who is responsible for educating future marketing and e-business professionals ensure that I am truly preparing these students for what is to come? They are the ones who are living the social media as "fun" and who I find are often surprised that they could be hired because they know how to "friend" people in MySpace, and send event invitations in Facebook! They are also the same students who were STUNNED by SecondLife and even had negative reactions to the whole thing. So where does that leave us?

Here at Champlain we've got not only an Internet-based Marketing course that students are required to take, but we also have instituted a series of one credit courses in Internet Tactics that the students take in their senior year -- it's the only way to ensure they have the cutting edge tools that they will need in the workplace. The Internet Marketing class is for sophomores and juniors -- by the time they graduate there is already a host of new tools and tactics that weren't there before! Frankly, we aren't teaching Shakespeare and history here -- it's changing so fast that there aren't textbooks that really get at this (for more on that, see my other blog!).

So this summer Google and Champlain and Epik One are teaming together to offer an online marketing bootcamp. Yours truly will be in the classroom learning so she can pass on what she has learned in the fall to her students. And of course I read every blog I can and follow as much as I can.

However, the key is not just to know the tactic, but more importantly, is this something to focus on? Does it have staying power? And...will it help you to better reach your audience? That's the tough part, and where I need to be better than any of the experts -- because I have to take what they are doing and bring that into my classroom and help my students to know not just the tactic but how to apply it -- and when not too!

More from Online Marketing Bootcamp and classroom application next week....