Back In School

Someone once told me that after you leave school, you still mentally operate on a school schedule for a few years in that by May of every year you're ready to take three months off and come September & January you're ready to hit the books again. Apparently, after 19 years of schooling and despite the fact I've been out of any formal institute of higher learning for a few years, I'm still at that stage and with the new year I've got a whole bunch of education lined up for myself. Or maybe it's just that whole New Year's resolution thing.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was focusing on Social Networking as part of my marketing plan this year. That however, means I have to learn something about Social Networking and how to apply it in a business sense. Interestingly enough, depsite a degree from what's typically considered the best graduate business school for marketing, this was not something that was ever discussed. I learned tons about how to create and execute marketing plans that relied on "classic" marketing techniques such as advertisements and pr but didn't touch on anything web based (perhaps they had a class and I never took it? Always possible!)

I've learned a lot in the short time I spent over the holidays focusing on the issue. For example, those in the "know" consider social networking and the like to be InBound Marketing whereas classic marketing is considered OutBound Marketing. The difference is that OutBound Marketing relies on "interrupting" the target market to get their attention. For example, television ads are always trying to become funnier or more outlandish in an effort to tear your attention away from the show you were watching or make you stop from running into the kitchen to grab a snack during the commercial break. InBound Marketing however, at least based on what I've read thus far, is about helping your brand/product become part of a conversation with people. In a sense it's a giant word of mouth marketing campaign which is obviously one of the hardest to create and you have to be willing to give up all control over what ultimately is said about your product/brand. But if people are happy then what they say can carry far more weight then anything you yourself advertise.

So how am I going to execute on this? Like I said, I'm learning, and so far I've got the following lined up for myself:
1. Books - I'm a dork, what can I say. I went ahead and bought two books on social networking. Granted, I realize that by the time the books are printed they are likely already out of date but they seemed like as good a place as any to get started.
2. Webisodes - "ockeghem" commented on my previous post about social networking and recommendeded a webisode on Twitter put on by HubSpot (http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-webinars/twitter-archive/). It was great - see Twitter bullet point below. Turns out HubSpot has a bunch of other social networking/e-marketing webisodes so I plan on working my way through those as well.
3. SEO - I need to SEO my website. Yep, I'm so cool and in-the-know that I know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization (and I appreciate that you don't make fun of the fact that I'm the last person in the civilized world to realize that). I have a fantastic web guy who can make it happen but went ahead and bought an e-book so that I can hopefully learn a little bit about what I'm asking my web guru to do. I haven't read it yet but it was $25 and is about 20 pages so can hopefully be easily digested over a cup of coffee and a cupcake - yum! (http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/articles/how-to-do-seo-ebook/)
4. Newsletter - I signed up for the WOMMA (word of mouth marketing association) enewsletter "ockeghem" recommended. Haven't received one yet so can't comment on the content but it's free so why the heck not!
4. Twitter - Thanks to the Twitter Webisode that "ockeghem" mentioned in my previous post (http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-webinars/twitter-archive/) I learned enough about Twitter to sign up for an account and have tenatively started posting under the company brand. If you Twitter stop by and see us @petitfourlegs. I promise to follow you back. :)