search marketing – TechCommGeekMom

The next module of my online digital mini-MBA in Digital Marketing was about social media marketing. Simply from the name of it, I suspected that I had a better chance with this topic than I had with search marketing. I took a look at the slides and completed the pre-reading assignments, and sure enough, I understood ALL of it. Why? Because I’ve entrenched myself into social media from the beginning of my tech comm career, and it’s why you are reading this article. It’s all about how to use social media for promotion and starting the conversation with your readers through the use of meaningful content.

I was lucky that I had a great course on the theory and practices of social media at NJIT, which I still refer to in presentations and still greatly affects me to this day. That course was what started this blog, after all! I learned many of these marketing concepts through trial and error over the last three years.

There were so many concepts that easily clicked for me, which included what I’ve been struggling to get people to understand not only from a social media perspective, but from a content strategy perspective as a whole! It seems that most of the issues from a corporate level stem from a cultural standpoint, and that corporate culture is not willing to evolve and change with the times! There are other complications, but that’s the primary one. I know from working with several companies, I’ve seen this often. There’s some progress, but it’s not the progress that I would recommend. (But I’m a consultant at the bottom of the food chain, so I know I don’t have a chance to be heard anytime soon.)

The biggest part of this module that I agreed with entirely was that social media is not another type of media along the lines of singularly directional TV, radio, or print. Social media is SOCIAL, people, so it’s about that two-way communication that I wrote about in my last blog post. The instructor for this module of the course, Mark Schaefer, is the author of several books on the subject and has been in marketing for 30+ years, and discussed much of what I’ve come to understand on my own! He went into deeper detail of it all, but he talked about the idea of creating strategies that create relevant content that connects. He said that we are already experiencing content overload, and the key is figuring out how to filter the relevant content that connects people to each other. It’s no longer B2B (Business to Business), but rather P2P (Person to Person). Mr. Schaefer is also the author of Tao of Twitter where he provides insights on how Twitter can be used effectively–and ineffectively–for content marketing. As students of this course, we all received a digital copy of the book. Based on how this module went, I definitely plan to read this! (Perhaps I’ll do a TechCommGeekMom Book Review about it as soon as I finish it.)

This time, I got 100% on my quiz on the first try. So many of the concepts in this module were easy for me, I think simply because there was such a strong connection between content strategy and social media concepts that I already knew or learned on my own in the last few years, either from experience or from various presentations I’ve seen at conferences (Intelligent Content Conference is a great example–did you see that discount there on the right side bar? If it’s still there, take advantage of it! It’s a very good conference on this very topic!) After last week’s struggles with Search Marketing, I was relieved that this module, while truly packed with a lot of information, was much more my speed and less confusing.

I know Rutgers offers another mini-MBA program that is solely on social media marketing, and I’m sure that I’d like that very much, but I think I’ll wait and see how this mini-MBA goes first. I’m not sure that I necessarily need the social media marketing mini-MBA, but Mr. Schaefer said he teaches in that one, and if this module was a broad summary of the larger course, then I think I’d be okay!

The next module is something that I think I’ll have a pretty decent understanding of as well…mobile marketing! Y’all know that I love my mobile tech comm and m-learning, so I have a feeling that many of the concepts that will be brought up in this module will be familiar to me or easy to understand as well. Until the next module…

kick_me — That’s right, SEO. I know you put that sign there. (I wish I looked this good from behind, but that’s not me! I’m much wider. :-S) You win.

The second module of my online course in digital marketing is about Search Marketing and how SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) works. The module is taught by Mike Moran, who crams a lot of information in 3-4 hours of video.

My initial reaction is similar to when I heard Mark Lewis talk about using XML and DITA to determine ROI metrics on tech content, namely that I understand it on a broad level, but ouch, it hurts my brain! Mark is awesome*, don’t get me wrong, and what he figured out with his XML analytics is genius to me, but about 95% of it is over my head. That’s how I feel about Mr. Moran’s talk on SEO Marketing. I understand the concepts without any problem, but I supposed that since I have little practical marketing experience, much like my XML/DITA experience (which is even narrower), it’s hard for me to make the full connection to the information without feeling overwhelmed.

I just took my quiz, and got a 70% on it. Ugh. Not good. I can take the quiz over again many times until I get a better score, but that’s not a good starting point.

I think much of it feels overwhelming not only because it’s taken from a marketing perspective which I don’t originally come from, but also because I’m listening to the information, and the content strategist/writer in me is trying to think, “Okay, now with the content I write, it has to be clear and concise, and written in as much plain English as possible, using consistent terminology and word choices to be able to be reused and translated easily, as well as written in a way that can be globally understood in context, AND now I have to start thinking about keywords in relation to organic and paid searches to my website so that I can have as high a ranking in web searches as possible.” (And I’m sure I’m forgetting a few other things, too.)

AAAGGGGH!

I think my brain just exploded. Hopefully there’s something left, because it feels like a mess inside my cranium. In the end, what’s happened to the actual content? Is there anything left worth looking at after that? How creative can I be to make ALL of that happen?

To put it in context, I’m trying to think about how to apply this information I’m learning about search towards either this blog or towards websites I’m thinking of building for my potential tech comm consulting business I might start this summer. Part of me wants to give up before I even start! How can I compete when it all boils down to keywords in my content, figuring out differentiators (which I can’t figure out in the first place), and other factors that would help drive my listings towards the top of a search? For example, how do I even start to promote myself as a tech comm consultant? I have to figure out what makes me a great choice. Part of that is on me, because I have to figure out what my strengths are, and I still don’t feel as strong as other technical communicators who have been doing this much longer than me. Sure, I understand content strategy, but I’m no Scott Abel, or Rahel Bailie, or Ann Rockley, or Val Swisher, or Noz Urbina, or Sarah O’Keefe…(and the list goes on and on…) But once I figure that out, what’s the one thing that will help draw me to the top of the list, or at least the first page of a search, other than geography?

(Ow, ow, ow…hurting brain….)

I think I need to review the slides again for this module, and start re-analyzing the terminology and conditions of all the topics. From a high level, I understand this. From a more granular level–not even that far down–I get lost. I’m feeling a bit defeated already. Mr. Moran said at the end of the lecture that a lot of this information is overwhelming, and that we should focus on what we can do rather than what we can’t do, and work on one aspect, and hopefully you can grow as you learn and practice. He even wrote a compelling article that digital marketing is a matter of bravery, not necessarily matter of knowledge. While I take this to heart, and will keep pursuing this, it will be difficult since I have no or little practical application for this right now. Fear is my primary motivator in all of this. I’m not a content marketer…yet. I don’t even know if I’ll be any good at content marketing until I have a chance to actually try. All I know is that this is the direction I have to go to better my chances in finding work. I really need to master this better, because I don’t have practical experience to use.

I didn’t go to business school for a reason–I’m not good at it, or at least I know others who are a lot better at it than I am. If I can survive this digital marketing course, it’ll be a miracle, at this rate. 😦

One more review of module 2, then it’s on to Module 3– social media marketing. Okay, that might not be too bad. After all, I have a little bit of practical experience with that topic from promoting this blog and other stuff I’ve produced on other blogs…**fingers crossed**

* Since I wrote the two articles about Mark Lewis linked above, I did meet him a year ago, and that’s why I know he’s awesome beyond just watching his presentations. 😀