Where can I learn more about Digital Marketing?
By Adam Boettiger
NOTE: This article is being updated with new resources and additional information and will be a living document. Last updated: 29 FEB 2008. If you’d like to be notified when new links or information are added, subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog. What’s RSS?
In general there is a plethora of information available online for learning more about Digital Marketing. Before I go into specifics, one thing worth touching on is the importance of professional development. Most people say they simply do not have the time to learn or read or keep up.
The reality is that none of us “has” time. We “make” time for the things that are most important to us. If you have no time for professional reading or learning, then it is because other things are more important to you. Even though the amount of time in our day is finite, we control what we give our attention to.
One easy way to be sure that you make time to learn is to use Outlook or whatever flavor calendaring program you happen to prefer to schedule time with yourself. Understand that if you don’t block out time on your schedule, someone else or something else will.
One great way to ensure that you do make time to learn is to schedule a recurring block of time with yourself on Fridays each week. One hour, two hours or even three hours per week. Block it off, call it “Learning”, “Professional Reading”, “Sharpening the Saw” - whatever.
What you call it is not important. What is important is that you schedule a recurring appointment with yourself and that you keep that commitment to yourself. During this time, turn off your cell phone, close your email program and eliminate interruptions so you can focus on one thing.
The five types of resources I’ll outline here for learning about Digital Marketing are:
* Podcasts
* Sites and Email Newsletters (also called “Ezines”)
* Email Discussion Lists
* RSS feeds
* People
A Word of Caution
One word of caution before we get started. It’s really easy to sign up for a lot of newsletters and RSS feeds and become completely overwhelmed with it. There’s actually a term for this now called “Information Paralysis”, where you have so much stuff you just don’t know where to begin, so you don’t get any of it done. Many of the problems we have with this are actually self-created problems. We don’t need to sign up for 50 newsletters or 500 RSS feeds. Doing so is like trying to drink from a firehose. You just can’t do it.
The best way to get started is to start slow and begin by beginning. If I were to pick one or two to get started with, they would be the sites and newsletters of ClickZ and MediaPost below. And do explore RSS. More information on that below. It is a great tool and superb timesaver. Just understand that if the flow gets to be too much you can stop the madness by unsubscribing or paring down what you’re reviewing. It’s easy to digest too much information when your eyes are bigger than your stomach.
Podcasts
Podcasts can be either audio or video, free or fee-based. The advantage of learning via an audio or video recording is that you can do so on your own schedule, at your own pace, while in front of your computer or on the commute in to the office via an iPhone or iPOD. In order to access podcasts, you’ll want an MP3 player like an iPOD or a mobile phone like the iPhone that also allows you to play videos and audio on a mobile device. Most folks already have this so the next logical step is to just locate some podcasts that interest you, listen to a few and subscribe to the ones you want to listen to or watch on a regular basis. One of my favorite is DishyMix, where Susan Bratton interviews digital marketing experts weekly. A good source for locating podcasts is the iTunes player, which can be downloaded for Mac or PC here. I’ll be updating this article with direct links to other podcasts in the future.
Sites and Email Newsletters
Here are a few good sites with email newsletters that you can subscribe to. Worth mentioning is that your email program has a wonderful filtering system and a folder system that you most likely have already discovered. You can right-click (CTRL-click for Mac users) on your Inbox and Create a New Folder called “READ ME”. As you start to receive email newsletters, you may find yourself quickly becoming overwhelmed with information as your Inbox becomes even more cluttered. One way to fix this is to separate newsletter and “READ ME” email from “real” email (communications). Do this by creating a filter in your email program that reads messages as they arrive and looks for character strings in the TO: address, the FROM: address or the SUBJECT line. Create a filter for each newsletter you subscribe to similar to this:
IF the FROM: field IS (email address of newsletter)
THEN move the message to READ ME folder
After you do this, go into your weekly professional reading appointment that you made with yourself on your calendar and insert a reminder to yourself to check your READ ME folder. If you do this, fewer messages will go into your Inbox and you can have a single place to go to when it comes time to do your weekly professional reading or learning. It’s much easier than letting newsletters sit in your Inbox for a week cluttering it and then trying to find them again when you have time to read them.
Here are some good places to explore for learning about Digital Marketing via Newsletters. Many of these sites will offer newsletters on multiple topics within Digital Marketing, so select the ones you wish to learn more about:
* i-advertising.com - i-advertising blog
* twitter.i-advertising.com - i-advertising twitter feed (what’s Twitter?)
* ClickZ
* Mediapost
* iMediaConnection
* Sphinn Internet Marketing Discussion Forum
* http://www.upstreamhabitat.com/
* eMarketer
* MarketingProfs
* MarketingSherpa
* MarketingVOX
* JackMyers.com
* www.iab.net
* www.conversionchronicles.com
* http://www.conversionchronicles.com/Online_Target_Marketing_Articles.html
* http://www.MarketingExperiments.com
* www.laredogroup.com - read the site, download everything and sign up for the course
* www.upstreamgroup.com
* http://kelseygroup.com/
* http://Screenwerk.com
* http://Searchengineland.com
* http://LocalMobileSearch.net
* http://www.sphinn.com/
* http://www.marketingcharts.com
* http://www.searchenginewatch.com
* http://www.bnet.com
* Mediabuyerplanner.com
* Adrants.com
* Pewinternet.org
* Paidcontent.org
* Ecommercetimes.com
* HighRankings Advisor
* Bruce Clay Newsletter
Email Discussion Lists
An email discussion list is a virtual community of people who interact by email and share a common interest or theme. There are thousands of email discussion lists on every topic imaginable. There are also a few good ones that focus on Digital Marketing.
RSS Feeds
RSS feeds are a fantastic way to stay current on all aspects of any industry or topic. If you do not know what an RSS feed is, I’ve written an article that discusses it in depth here.
After you’ve read the above article about what RSS is and how to use it, here are some RSS feeds that focus on Digital Marketing:
http://www.i-advertising.com/?feed=rss2
http://www.adotas.com/feed/
http://feeds.feedburner.com/adrants
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Adverblog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/MitAdvertisingLabFutureOfAdvertisingAndAdvertisingTechnology feed-row
http://feeds.feedburner.com/AdweekBreakingNews
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Adweek-InteractiveNews
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Beyondmadisonavenue
http://feeds.clickz.com/clickz
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ducttapemarketing/nRUD
http://www.jaffejuice.com/atom.xml
http://feeds.marketingvox.com/marketingvox/rss
http://www.mediapost.com/omdrss.xml
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ImediaConnectionMediaStrategies
People
People are perhaps the best source of first-hand knowledge about digital marketing. Be sure you have created a LinkedIn account and a Facebook account so you can network with those more experienced than you are. Explore Twitter.
NOTE: i-advertising has it’s own Twitter feed: iadvertising
Set a goal to identify and introduce yourself to at least five new people a week. Give them a reason for spending time with you. People are busy. Their attention is an extremely rare and valuable commodity. Create a list of questions and instead of sending them by email and creating yet more work for the other person, consider treating them to a nice lunch at a place of their choosing. Use the phone - it’s faster than email and doesn’t put the burden of drafting a response on the other person.
“Give…then take.”
Start by asking how you can help them. Then do it. Find out what they need or want and give it to them in exchange for their time and attention. Give them a reason for wanting to help you. Respect their time as if it were your own.
Side Note: I’ve been in digital marketing for 14 years now. I’m normally happy to spend small amounts of time helping others. Quid pro quo. If you’d like to connect with me, my information is included below.
Voicemail: 503.946.6450
Email: adam (at) adamboettiger.com
Web: http://www.adamboettiger.com/
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