My Digital Media Secret Sauce...or How Do I Keep Up?

Recently there has been a plethora (yep a bunch) of blog posts highlighting the "Top [insert no. here] People to Follow" on Twitter. Here's a few of them:

@PRsarahevans "Top 50 Tweeples to Follow"
@InkFoundry "20 Social Media Marketing Leaders on Twitter"
@iancapstick "20 Leading Women in Social Media" (this one is a response list to the InkFoundry list which had only TWO women in the list).
@jasonhiner "Techies: The Top 10 People You should Follow on Twitter"

And then, of course there are several lists by @kenthuffman:

Top Marketing Professors to Follow on Twitter (I'm currently #8 'cause I don't have 2,000 followers yet)
Top Marketing Authors on Twitter

In my Internet Marketing class in addition to the required reading for the course I include both blogs and twitter id's on a "must read for current events" list. All students in the class must have an RSS feed reader set up by tomorrow (Friday) and have subscribed to a certain list of blogs/twitter accounts. Many of my recommendations below are on the list for students.

So, not to be outdone by the above lists and warning of some overlap, here is Elaine's Recommended List of People to READ (both blogs AND tweets) for Students:

This list is based on overall VALUE to me as an educator. Where do I learn the most and who keeps me up to date the most so I can pass that information on to my students. So folks, these people make up my Digital Marketing Secret Sauce (for all the people out there wondering how I keep up on it all):

Oh, and this is in no particular order just a mashup of greatness if you will.

Beth Harte via Twitter and #pr20chat: She works at Marketing Profs, is an adjunct faculty and an all around smart, strategic thinker. Must follow for anyone in communication.

Marketing Profs (Ann Handley) via Twitter: All around good info - knows her stuff, great RT of others. Value, Value, Value!

Conversation Agent (Valeria Maltoni) via Blog AND Twitter: Excellent point of view about all things MarComm. Makes you think, makes me think.

Brian Solis via Blog and Twitter: Talk about critical thinker! Looks at PR and what makes it tick, rips it apart, builds it back up. Visuals describe it all.

Avinash Kaushik via Blog and Twitter: Web Analytics Evangelist at Google. If you are NOT following him you miss out on the keys to Data Driven Decision-Making.

Danny Brown via Blog and Twitter: The nicest Marketing person on the web hands down -- great point of view, relevant info and all about social media for good with his 12for12k Challenge.

Sarah Evans via Twitter and #journchat: Twitter stream of value and fun, great retweets, good links and runs Journchat. Always thinking about intersection of journalism, blogging and online communication tools.

Danny Sullivan via Twitter. Edits Search Engine Land. Been following Danny via his search work since before I was teaching. Solid gold info on all things Search. Must. Follow.

Andrew Keen via Blog and Twitter: The anti-social media person on my list (although he uses social media). Makes you think about all the social media hype and frenzy and questions the value. Cult of the Amatuer is a must read.

dana boyd via Blog: Academic. Researcher. All over online communication tools and environments. 'nuff said. Really.

Diedre Breckenridge via Blog and Twitter and the new #prstudchat: PR2.0 Strategist, writes books, connects PR/Marketing and Communication. Excellent info grounded in experience.

Rohit Bhargava via Blog and Facebook and Twitter: You want personality? Author of Personality Not Included (a required text in my MKT111 class), his book is great and his blog RAWKS. Really. Great insight, important point of view and experience beyond all reason.

Ambercadabra (Amber Nasland) via Twitter and Blog: She's with Radian6 (Community Manager) and her Tweets...well....they be good. Really, really, good. And then there's those e-Books. Just might end up as required readings in some classes of mine.

SkyDiver (Peter Shankman) via Twitter and Blog: Brains behind HARO (Help a Report Out) and all around interesting PR person. Lot's of energy and one of the few people I have Poken'd (now that's another story). Fun tweets and important social media perspective.

Barbara Nixon via Twitter: Aside from the occasional NASCAR tweet (grin), Barbara, a PR Prof from Georgia Southern University, provides great info on teaching PR, using different tools in the classroom and current issues.

Robert Scoble via FriendFeed. Yes, the world follows him and so do I. I friend feed because of him and I learn about all sorts of nifty things from his Tweets and FF. Follow, Listen, Learn.

and now...a special shout out to #BTV:

Joe Mescher via Twitter: The Social Media Commando is a prolific vlogger and provides great tips. Works at Dealer.com.

Nicole Ravlin via Twitter: Local PR Maven with emphasis on FOOD. Great clients, great energy, good info and retweets. Works at People Making Good, great PR firm in BTV and one of the founders of the Social Media Breakfast.

Ryan Mercer via Twitter: Part of our local news media at the BFP -- Photo Journalist. Pushing the edge. Always trying new things.

Rich Nadworny via Twitter: Owns local shop Digalicious, big part of the BTV social media scene and one of the founders of the Social Media Breakfast.

So there you have it. Another list.

Free as a book choice in my Fall 09 Internet Marketing class

I heard about Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson while I was at SxSWi last spring. I'm a Chris Anderson fan and reference the Long Tail concept often in my classes, so I was intrigued as I heard Chris talk about his theory about pricing and how a service or product that is free might very well drive stronger profits for items that are connected to that service or product. His point that the three pillars of technology: storage, processing speed and connectivity speed are so abundant and so cheap that products and services that rely on those could change their whole pricing approach seems more than plausible to me.

Disclaimer -- I'm a Marketer NOT an Economist.

I decided that Free would fit in nicely into my supplemental book list for my Internet Marketing class.

Scheduling being what it is, I made that decision BEFORE I READ THE BOOK. The bookstore wants the Fall book list by the end of the spring semester so I went on faith.

It was the right decision.

First let me point out one of the highlights of my Internet Marketing class. All students are REQUIRED to read one book for the course: DigiMarketing: The Essential Guide to New Media and Digital Marketing (please don't judge the book by the website which suffers from GSNFI or gratuitous stupid non-relevant flash idiocy). This is the one book that actually works well for a course that is almost impossible to use a traditional text book for. Besides the content challenge of the course itself, many different majors take the course. It is required for Marketing and PR majors. Business majors who are interested in Marketing take it. I get some graphic design students (which I got more of these), an occasional web development student (more of them should take it too!) and International Business majors. Because of the disparate nature of the majors I came up with the idea to also have the students read a second book -- they would have a choice from a list of five that I provided -- all chosen based on their potential relevancy to the major so that students could gain a field perspective and context for why the Internet Marketing tools and techniques we are working with are important in their chosen field.

Free fits in well for Business and International Business majors. The economic emphasis along with the examples that Anderson provides and the breakdown of "how can ? be free" visuals really hits a home run...and Anderson does a great job of connecting all of this to the main topic of my course -- the Internet as a full-blown communication tool.

Overall I found the book an interesting read and one that brings forth a theory that I would like to see more explore. Great research for economists in higher education!

I am, however, disappointed in the approach both Anderson and his publisher took when it came to vetting sources and more importantly citing his sources. As the Virginia Quarterly Review pointed out in a June 23, 2009 post, Anderson did not appropriately cite his sources of historical information -- he used a lot of Wikipedia entries but didn't identify them as such nor cite the authors of the entries. While he did respond in a post and explain what occurred it is clearly an issue that I face in my classes all the time -- how do you accurately cite your sources? What are the different levels of plagiarism? How do you appropriately utilize community generated content information such as Wikipedia in research and information gathering? It's a challenge that will become even more difficult and one that has shown up here. Because of this I did think about pulling the book, however I have decided not to because the focus for me in the book is the theory that Anderson brings forth and his ideas around the impact of free pricing on products and services.

As even the author of the VQR blog post, Waldo Jaquith, wrote in response to comments:

While we’re on the topic of plagiarism in the form of ideas, I must note that I did not find any evidence that Chris Anderson’s thesis contained any plagiarized ideas. That’s an important point. All ideas that form of the core the book are credited, and his own thesis that he builds upon that showed no signs of being anybody’s but his own.

Hopefully other book authors and publishers will think about this issue, which can have a decidedly negative impact on the book, and not loose site of good editing practice in the rush to publish.

On a side note, Anderson made corrections to all the DIGITAL copies -- because he can. The hard copy editions won't have those corrections. Now isn't that an interesting dilemma that the digital age has brought us.

All my students have to write brief summary and analysis papers on the supplemental book they selected. I will look forward to reading their takes on Free.

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....