Latest Trends in Online Marketing

Yesterday was a great day. At 8 am I attended the Los Angeles PR Newswire morning breakfast networking event, which is starting up again. In the afternoon I helped a collegue by being a guest speaker at his Cal State Northridge class of 30 graduating PR students. They have a great understanding of traditional PR but they had NO idea what I was talking about insofar as some of the online marketing and PR tactics that I shared, and they were fascinated.

The breakfast event speakers included the new executive editor of the LA Times website, Kate Coe, Editor of Mediabistro.com's Fishbowl LA, and Coco Conn, who is manager of social media for LiveDigital.com. As I listened I realized that what my associates and I have been doing over the last year or two is so far ahead of the "curve" in online marketing, that we need to start teaching it. Key word analysis and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) done right, is critical. It was amazing to hear that some people still do not know what an RSS feed is, many don't get SEO and most have not heard of search engine marketing.

The new trends are pretty cool though - like the use of short videos that tell a story. The more raw the better, and definitely not commercial looking. You Tube is changing the way people interact about the news -- and the media are now picking up on it. It is changing the way we will guide our clients. We are already busy scripting a video campaign series for T.S. Wiley.

A year ago my associates and I were thinking that blogs were on their way out. But now it would appear that blogging is here to stay. The number being tossed around yesterday was 71 million bloggers out there. And one thing that I learned that bloggers like IF you pitch them, is to write short pieces that they can lift and use. No press releases. Many bloggers prefer to find and write about their own perspectives.

My goal is to continue to share some of the tactics and ideas that my associate Mike Keesling and I are using for our clients. It's a an exciting time for marketers -- but it's a learning curve, and we now realize people out there need help.