PORTLAND–Social Media Club PDX and Portland State University teamed up to present their quarterly Digital Marketing Breakfast this morning at Smith Memorial Student Union.
Carri Bugbee, principal of Big Deal PR, asked me to be “the ad guy” on the panel, and to speak about how people in the industry might migrate from traditional advertising to digital marketing.
image courtesy of Flickr user, @UncleNate
Daniel Timothy Wood of PMSI opened the session with some sweet looking slides and several key takeaways like “Meet Up.”
When it was my turn, I said we’ve moved from a one-to-many “push” or broadcast model to a many-to-many “pull” model with content playing a central role in delivering branded utility or entertainment–the two elements with enough gravity to pull people in. I added that we must learn to listen, and adapt our practices to the always-on nature of digital media. I also suggested that this is a major shift and one that’s not simple to execute against.
To prepare for the panel I dug through some old posts located conveniently in AdPulp’s Social Media archives. Were there time this morning, I might have added that social is the real trend and it’s not dependent on media. And surely I would have said every brand has a story to tell. What every brand does NOT have is a content strategy to help them map out and work their storytelling plan.
Near the end of the hour, a couple people from the audience asked different questions about finding time for all this social stuff. I was happy to hear Nate DiNiro say, in response, that social media isn’t right for everybody. And it’s clearly not right for every business or market situation.
I didn’t grab for the mic, but I’ll add that social media marketing–while not right for every brand–can be a powerful DIY route for many small business owners. By mastering some simple tools and sharing their expertise, owners of restaurants, hotels, bars, wineries and many other small businesses are successfully gathering a crowd around their various offerings.
As you can see from Carri’s pre-event Tweet, the panel also included Mark Evertz and was moderated by John Hartman.
See Daniel’s posterous blog for audio from the event.