The Laid Off Chronicles – Marketing Evolution

Week 4:

As I was pursuing the online blogs last week, I came across an article on TalentZoo– Marketing’s Future and What It Means For Advertising by Mike Ogden. Mike’s article talks about how advertising/marketing professionals are needing to adapt with the times or get left out in the cold. What is it that advertising/marketing professionals need to change? They need to integrate themselves using traditional media (tv, radio and print) and mix in digital. Marketing campaigns need to take on a life outside of traditional media now more than ever. Advertising/marketing professionals that can intelligently plan a media strategy that uses TV, radio, social media, smart phones and other digital elements will provide a service that will be invaluable to an agency.

Some agencies may have advertising  professionals still trying to play catch up and learn the digital side of the business. I feel fortunate that I was able to get ahead of the crowd and  was able to immerse myself in social media and SEO a couple of years ago.  In my opinion, the most succesful advertising professionals will be the ones that have knowledge of how to integrate traditional and new media together.

Out in the job market, I am seeing job posting that look for advertising professionals that have both traditional and new media qualities. If you are in the advertising/marketing field and need to make a job change, make sure you understand digital advertising/marketing. In order to keep up with the marketing evolution, expertise in  digital marketing will enable you to be a become a needed asset to any organization  instead of being as extinct as the dinosaur.

In order to get well versed in digital media, my suggestion is to get hands on experience using it. My first suggestion, is to start using social media -create your own Twitter, Facebook and YouTube channels. You should start using smartphone apps like FourSquare and TriOut to learn about GEO targeting apps. With all of the various social media channels out there you will need to learn how they can all connect with each other to help build a strong social media presence. Make sure you also learn how to monitor your social media channels. More and more clients are looking for people who have a grasp on social media analytics. My next suggestion is to learn SEO. You can learn SEO on your own by taking a course in SEO or if your agency employs a SEO professional go and learn from them. My last suggestion is to learn how to incorporate new media into marketing campaigns. Social media should be used to complement the overall campaign. All points of the marketing strategy should be woven together to create a campaign that reaches your target audience.

Lastly, continue to evolve. Read industry publications and blogs, try out different types of social media channels and  see what works for you and what doesn’t. The more you know, the more you can stay relevant.

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Related Articles

• The Evolution of Marketing in a Digital Age (penn-olson.com)
• 360i Report on Social Media Calls to Action in Traditional Advertising (360i.com)
• 8 Reasons Why We Love Social Media (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
• Digital Search Marketing Agency Intrapromote Names James Gunn as Director of Integrated Search (prweb.com)
• Jack Myers: Digital Advertising is Driving Growth of Traditional Media (huffingtonpost.com)
• TAG’s Social Media Marketer of the Year: Jamie Turner (prweb.com)

Social Media Case Study for QdobaNC

Yes, I am back! It’s been quite some time since I’ve written a blog post. Yes I have been busy but I also have been a little lazy. 🙂

So what have I been up too? We’ll I have a new client and they have let me and my agency start to handle their social media outreach. I even get to play director and videographer, more on that later.

The client is Qdoba of the North Carolinas. They have a modest number of restaurants in Charlotte, Raleigh and Triad . Qdoba of NC or QdobaNC wanted to establish social media channels to engage with their existing customers. We have started Facebook pages for all three NC cities so that we can talk directly to that customer base. Along with the Facebook pages we have a central Twitter feed called @QdobaNC. This feed is geared to engage all the Qdoba fans in the North Carolina area. Along the way we have found a number of Qdoba Brand Evangelists. Click on the hyperlink to see one said fan.

One of the things I am really excited about is the QdobaNC YouTube Channel. This is the first time I have shot video content for a clients channel. QdobaNC has a weekly Tailgating Tips episode that talks about well….tailgating. So far we have 4 shows up on the YouTube Channel with more slated through the tailgating season. The Tailgating shows have talked about how to grill and marinate chicken to how to make pico de gallo.

In upcoming episodes we will be taking the QdobaNC Tailgating Tips show on the road. One destination is Raleigh where we will have a fan co-host an episode with us. Speaking of co-hosts we had a fan send us her own tailgating tips and we have asked her to help co-host an episode as well.

To date the QdobaNC YouTube Channel continues to grow at a moderate pace. One thing that we have seen is that QdobaNC is starting to get referrals off of YouTube searches. With YouTube being the second most used search engine the QdobaNC Channel should see more growth over the next several months.

Modest QdobaNC YouTube Stats

QdobaNC has great content coming this fall. From more Tailgating Tips episodes to Twitter parties (Qweetups). I will keep this blog updated with new Q news as I get it.

Enjoy!!

Related Articles

• Qdoba Mexican Grill Launches National Campaign to Help Cure Burrito Boredom (eon.businesswire.com)
• Qdoba Mexican Grill Invites Guests to “Craft 2” (eon.businesswire.com)
• Qdoba Tailgates in a Big Way at Seahawks Games (partnershipactivation.com)
• Qdoba Mexican Grill Adds Even More Variety to Craft 2™ Menu (eon.businesswire.com)

Beware, Mad Scientist At Work

Hard at work!

I have been busy in my laboratory the past couple of months working on a social media experiment that is  getting ready to launch (with help from my colleagues).  I can’t divulge to much of the experiment.

The one thing I can say is that it will use a ton of social media applications. I will be using the normal cast of characters in the  experiment. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and WordPress will all be used in unison. The purpose of the experiment is to see if all these social media applications working together can truely benefit a brand. Oh, dear…I may have said to much.

Sorry, I can’t let you know exactly what I am doing. I will however give updates on how things are proceeding from time to time. At the end of the experiment I will let you all in on the secret.

My main question in all of this is….. Will this experiment work or will I have created a monster?

Image via Wikipedi

Only time will tell….

PSA – Public Social(media) Alert!

Image via CrunchBase

I read an article on Yahoo (see below) this morning warning about viruses and worms invading social media sites. While this is probably old news the frequency of these types of problems is rising. For new social media users this could be very problematic since some won’t be able to tell what is and what is not a legit social media outlet.

Just be careful out on the social media highway. It is a fun place to interact with all kinds of people. However, there are others out there that look to prey on users that are niave.

Yahoo Article:

As Facebook works to make itself more relevant and timely for its growing member base with a profile page makeover, attackers seem to be working overtime to steal the identities of the friends, fans and brands that connect though the social-networking site.

Indeed, Facebook has seen five different security threats in the past week. According to Trend Micro, four new hoax applications are attempting to trick members into divulging their usernames and passwords. And a new variant of the Koobface worm is running wild on the site, installing malware on the computers of victims who click on a link to a fake YouTube video.

The Koobface worm is dangerous. It can be dropped by other malware and downloaded unknowingly by a user when visiting malicious Web sites, Trend Micro reports. When attackers execute the malware, it searches for cookies created by online social networks. The latest variant is targeting Facebook, but earlier variants have also plagued MySpace.

Koobface’s Wicked Agenda

Once Koobface finds the social-networking cookies, it makes a DNS query to check IP addresses that correspond to remote domains. Trend Micro explains that those servers can send and receive information about the affected machine. Once connected, the malicious user can remotely perform commands on the victim’s machine.

“Once cookies related to the monitored social-networking Web sites are located, it connects to these Web sites using the user log-in session stored in the cookies. It then navigates through pages to search for the user’s friends. If a friend has been located, it sends an HTTP POST request to the server,” Trend Micro reports.

Ultimately, the worm’s agenda is to transform the victim’s computer into a zombie and form botnets for malicious purposes. Koobface attempts to do this by composing a message and sending it to the user’s friends. The message contains a link to a Web site where a copy of the worm can be downloaded by unsuspecting friends. And the cycle repeats itself.

An Attractive Face(book)

Malware authors are investing more energy in Facebook and other social-networking sites because that effort pays off, according to Michael Argast, a security analyst at Sophos. Facebook alone has more than 175 million users, which makes it an attractive target.

“Many computer users have been conditioned not to open an attachment from an e-mail or click a link found within, but won’t think twice about checking out a hot new video linked to by a trusted friend on Facebook,” Argast said.

Argast called the Koobface worm a mix of something old and something new. The new is using social networks as a method to spread malware. The old is using fake codec Trojans linked to a saucy video to induce the user to install the malware.

Argast said people can protect themselves by running up-to-date antivirus software, restricting which Facebook applications they install, thinking twice before clicking on links from friends and never, never installing a codec from some random Web site in the hopes of catching some celebrity in a compromised situation.

“I would expect to see more attacks on Facebook,” Argast said. “As long as this is a successful propagation method, the bad guys will double down and invest more. They are entirely motivated by financial gain. If it pays, they’ll continue to romp in your social playgrounds.”