Last year I thought I was a pretty damn good digital marketer. I had 5+ years industry experience and had just landed a job with Australia’s biggest digital marketing agency. I was on my way… Yet looking back as little as 4 months later, I’ve had a stark realisation. I knew squat! In fact, in retrospect I liken myself to a cocky teenager who thinks he has mastered all of life’s lessons. So what sparked this change of heart? Entering the blogosphere. Indeed, I now wonder whether it’s possible to be a truly good digital marketer without being a blogger…?
In the short space of 4 months since I started this blog, my personal digital marketing knowledge has evolved exponentially. Quite simply, it has to if you want to maintain a semi-successful site. I’ve listed the biggest areas of personal development below. I suspect most bloggers have learned similar lessons through their journey.
Social media
Prior to entering the blogosphere I wouldn’t have been able to give you a definition of social media. I knew social networks like MySpace existed, but thought they were predominantly the domain of pimply teens and pedophiles. Actually… come to think of it, that perception hasn’t changed a whole lot since then. I knew a little bit about Digg, where people could vote for articles and stories on the web. Now why on earth would they want to do that, I thought.
Fast Forward 4 months and most of the articles I write address social media in one way or another. Sphinn is just about my favourite site on the web. Social media has taught me three valuable lessons:
- The power of human aggregation and intelligence in the search for quality content.
- How to find the most influential and knowledgeable experts in my niche.
- The benefits of developing networks and digital relationships (cross promotion & traffic generation).
At the end of last year if you asked me about social media I probably would have told you it was a fad likely to last about as long as Friendster. Now I would tell you it’s the next step in the evolution of the Internet, particularly in the area of search, as Google looks to integrate human intelligence into their algorithm. Social media optimisation could well rival SEO as a recognised and powerful digital service within 2-3 years.
Information Sources
I’ve always been a keen reader of marketing news and articles. I guess it’s the inner geek in me coming out, but I like to stay on top of thinking in my field. Before starting my blog I relied predominantly on generic sources such as Clickz, Imedia and MarketingSherpa. However, Marketing Sherpa is the only one I read with any sort of regularity now.
It’s not necessarily that these sites are bad or have dropped in quality. However, after leaping into social media and Sphinn in particular, I found that they weren’t as cutting edge or informative as I thought they were. In fact, after identifying and following my favourite bloggers, I found the articles from the aforementioned sites lacked real insight and insider knowledge. Bloggers are at the forefront of industry trends and intelligence because they are typically at the coal face. They fight the battle day-to-day, and blog about their experiences at night.
You can see the blogs I now read on a daily basis for cutting edge news in my Blogroll.
Putting theory into practice
I’m not an SEO. I can certainly talk-the-talk with a well developed theoretical knowledge. But when push comes to shove I’ve never taken a site to glory within Google. That’s all about to change… While I may not take this blog to number 1 any time soon, I will develop a practical knowledge through trial and error. Maintaining a personal blog gives me the freedom to tinker with SEO tactics and try all sorts of things I could never do in the corporate world (and no… I don’t mean black hat).
The same principle applies to social media. I learn by doing. I’ll sensationalise a heading just to see what impact it has. I’ll write a controversial piece and determine the effect on traffic quality. After all… it’s my blog. If I make a mistake it doesn’t effect anyone but me. These types of lessons can rarely be learned in the sterility of a corporate environment. Bloggers manage all elements of their blog, from content ideas & development to optimisation to analytics. This provides a breadth and range of practical experience that can rarely be gained elsewhere.
Getting back to the original question
Let’s get back to the original question – can non-bloggers make good digital marketers? I can only answer this question from personal experience. What I do know is this… few people in my digital agency (Australia’s largest remember) can talk intelligently outside of their chosen field. I can. Few people have any real comprehension of the impact social media & blogs are having on the fabric of the web. At a recent meeting, I posed the question as to whether we would be developing a social media service offering such as social media optimisation. No-one could answer. To be honest, I suspect no-one understood what I meant…
This doesn’t mean it’s impossible for non-bloggers to be good digital marketers. Many people I work with are stars in their chosen field such as digital advertising and analytics. But their expertise rarely moves beyond that. A blogger’s does, if only by necessity. And to me that makes them better digital marketers.
The question I pose to you is… how much longer can old school/one dimensional digital marketers remain relevant as the web evolves further and further away from their comfort zones?
What say you…?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Non-bloggers can make great digital marketers… but if you think about it, essentially what you have to do to succeed in search is to create the stuff that people want to read. (the old content = king saying). The only difference between creating content and blogging is the name. But you’re pretty much doing the same thing. The benefit of blogging is the ability to get your content out there fast because the marketing tools are already in place.
I think really it’s the same as any kind of career – you have to keep up with the times and the trends otherwise your value is lost. Given the increasingly integral nature of social media and blogging to online marketing I’d argue that it will become impossible to be a good digital marketer without a good understanding of those aspects.
That might not mean that you have to be a blogger, but it is probably more difficult to gain the genuinely in-depth understanding of social media without involving yourself directly rather than being a passive viewer.
Interestingly I think the reverse is also worth analysis – can blogging make you a good digital marketer. My own increasing involvement in blogging and social media has led to moves at my employer, looking at changing my role to one of focusing on those aspects rather than on my active web design output.
Good points Robin. Personally, I do believe some hands on experience is essential to develop the in-depth understanding you speak of. SEO is a good example for myself… I have a great theoretical knowledge, but not a whole lot of practical experience (yet). So do I really understand SEO as a result? I’d say probably not…
And yes… the inverse is absolutely true. Blogging opens opportunities that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Just ask Darren Rowse…
Congrats on the role enhancement too!
Thanks for the input Colorado. Creating great content is indeed a key part of blogging. But there is more to it. Understanding how to promote your blog beyond the search engines is a starting point. Building relationships and personal networks is another. You also need to master different technologies such as RSS and web analytics. And it is this depth of experience beyond just writing content that I believe gives bloggers an advantage over other digital marketers.
Yeah, I’m much the same on the likes of SEO. I think the important thing there is that social networking can give you a really good general overview of digital marketing issues. So for SEO I might not be an expert myself, but I have enough of a knowledge to be able to talk intelligently to an expert about what my or my company’s needs are, and to be in a position to reasonable judge the value they are providing with a service. And that knowledge has largely developed because of blogging and social networking.
Nice blog. I keep a blog for the same purpose – to track everything I come across and learn more about digital marketing. It’s a way to join the conversation and to also initiate discussion with other people.
I agree that people as they get more experienced stay within their circle of expertise – they become one trick ponies. To be an effective digital marketer you need to be able to be knowledgeable in multiple areas – whether that be websites, SEO/SEM, email marketing, mobile, etc….
I dont believe you need to be a blogger to be an effective digital marketer, but it gives you a unique perspective to be on the blogging side rahther than on the readership side. However, I do believe that you need to be engaging in social media (whether it’d be wiki’s, FB, RSS) to be an a digital expert. That’s one of the reasons I try to use all the available stuff out there.