Online Publishing & Marketing

The way I see it, online publishing and marketing are more closely related than ever before. Although, digital marketing seems a lot different than traditional marketing. Digital marketing has a lot more to do with search engines, keywords/tags, and links. Online publishing is slowly evolving towards a model of customized content based on personal interests and preferences. It’s a slow transition because the publishing industry doesn’t want to give up their printed products. Think about it: control over printing has been a coveted ability since Gutenberg invented the first printing press in 1439. That’s almost 600 years of tyranny over the power to publish. Whoever could print had significant power to sway public opinions and beliefs.

I believe the Internet will bring an end to that. It’s gonna seem messy for a while, but eventually it will pan out to a better system than the one we had before. One example is the New York Times, who have utilized comments, sharing buttons, audio/video content, and cross-categorized articles. Readers will have an easier time finding content, and content creators will have an easier time publishing and distributing their work. Companies won’t be able to sell audience attention to advertisers without simultaneously giving that audience exactly what they require.

I’m also hoping that Arbcamp will be instrumental in teaching me about these subjects. The weekend conference takes place in Ann Arbor, MI, over the weekend of October 18-19, 2008. I think it will be a great way to establish connections between online publishing and marketing.

Web 2.0 Overload

We got busy in our internship right away, and it looks like we’ll keep a steady pace throughout the fall “semester” (quotes included because I may be finished with school for good). During our first session, Derek Mehraban (of Ingenex Digital Marketing) helped us create a profile and content on many different social media/networking websites. Some I had already done myself, like Facebook, LinkedIn, and WordPress blogs. Some I had never even heard of before, like AboutUs.org (click here for my new AboutUs Ingenex profile), ZoomInfo.com, and Naymz.com. Others I had caught wind of, but hadn’t yet grasped the purpose: Twitter and Technorati.

You might be thinking what I’m thinking. With all those sites to maintain and coordinate, doesn’t it get a little confusing or overwhelming? Coincidentally, there was a New York Times article published this week addressing this very issue. The article posed the question, “How many is too many?”

One solution offered was FriendFeed, a site indented to manage different web tools and services. I had seen the widget on Derek’s Facebook page. I set up my own feed — which shows up on the FriendFeed website AND my Facebook page — that automatically lists my posts on two blogs, and updates from Digg.com, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I think that’s a pretty useful way to organize what I’m doing online, and a convenient way to share those activities with others.

Another concern expressed in the article is that, at the current pace of development, even Web 2.0-savvy individuals will have trouble adopting new technologies and web tools. In other words, we’re entering a very confusing time, bent on finding the best way to use the Internet to do…whatever it is we need to do. By this time, I’m pretty used to the confusion. I’m a huge music fan, and the world of music has been in a state of mass confusion since peer-to-peer networks emerged in the late ’90s. So I figure that this moment of web tool confusion will segue to a stable moment, and of course that moment will be defined by some other kind of confusion or transition.

For now, I’ll be using FriendFeed to coordinate the madness.

Finding Digital Marketing Blogs

I’ve been trying to find three blogs that discuss digital marketing topics. After some web searching, I located a few. Two seem to cover general online marketing: mobileStorm’s Digital Marketing Blog and the Australia-based Online Marketing Banter. The third is focused more on environmentally friendly business practices: Marketing Green.

I think it will be interesting to follow specific blogs on a consistent basis. That’s something I’ve never done before, partly because I’m so busy keeping one of my own blogs or creating other web content. But it’s also because I’m not the type of person who pays attention to one source of content. With the way the Internet has evolved, it’s really easy to jump back and forth between various sources, and use the content that is most timely, valid, or interesting. That’s why I like the concept behind Digg.com, where the audience can essentially vote to say which content is most valuable, and those articles will appear at the top of their lists. Unfortunately that sometimes means that the most popular items resemble clips from America’s Funniest Home Videos.

It still hasn’t quite hit me that I’m participating in a marketing internship. Until I saw the posting for Ingenex on Ann Arbor Spark, I hadn’t considered something like this before. I think that’s mostly because I had been trying so hard to stick to journalism, when in fact digital marketing is probably the best direction at this point.

In case you were wondering where my blog’s banner came from, it’s a photo of windmills posted on Stock.xchng (sxc.hu) and available for open use:

Eco-Friendly Internship at Ingenex, day 1

This is the first session of the Eco-Friendly Internship at Ingenex Digital Marketing in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’m hoping to build my knowledge of digital marketing, and incorporate that into my experience in journalism and web development. Given my science background and my history of environmental journalism, I think that an eco-friendly approach is an appropriate way to break into marketing.

We’ll be meeting once a week, each Wednesday morning, and then doing 10 hours of work at home. I already have one blog that I write on consistently (at my website Supraterranean.com), but that one will focus on topics such as books, film, and art. This will be a place to keep track of my progress in the internship.