Cause Marketing

Filling The Digital Marketing Gap 19 Students At A Time

~ K. Quesenberry ~ 2 Comments

The Online Marketing Institute (OMI), ClickZ, and Kelly services released results of their 2014 State of Digital Marketing Talent report.  This survey of 747 Fortune 500 marketing executives reveals there is a serious digital marketing talent gap. What’s more, this shortage of digital marketing skills is hurting sales and marketing ROI. The good news? If you have these skills, you are in high demand.

In my post “What To Do With Out-of-Date Advertising Professors?” I spoke about an Advertising Age article that talked about the underperformance of undergraduate marketing and advertising classes. An advertising agency owner quotes students saying things like, “Subjects like mobile marketing aren’t even offered at their schools” and “classes promise integrated marketing while delivering insights about only traditional tactics.” In light of this education gap, I would like to highlight one course that I offer through the Center for Leadership Education at Johns Hopkins University. Blogging & Online Copywriting  is attempting to build a bridge to the new digital language.

The ClickZ, OMI, Kelly Services report highlights the missing skills that are creating the talent gap and potentially costing corporations market share. In my Blogging & Online Copywriting course we cover all these subjects: analytics, mobile, content marketing, social media, email marketing, marketing automation, SEO, digital advertising, and more. For example, one former student is now working at digital marketing tech firm HubSpot, the 2nd fastest growing software company within the INC 500.

Another insight from the study is that hiring managers say “sorting through resumes is time-consuming and applicants do not differentiate themselves from one another.” Blogging & Online Copywriting also teaches students to create their own professional blog that has helped many land valuable internships and their first jobs out of school. This helped that one student get her foot in the door at HubSpot as she talks about on the CLE Student Blog.

So for corporations saying they, “… haven’t been able to hire the specialist we need due to lack of talent or experience in our area.” I know of at least 19 Johns Hopkins students you may be interested in this Spring.

Yes, there is a digital marketing talent gap as much as 27% to 37% in key skill areas at Fortune 500 companies – Imagine what it is at other corporations, startups and small businesses. But with the gap, comes opportunity. ClickZ, OMI, and Kelly Services sum up the rewards of investing in digital marketing education:

  • For the global brand it means “major expansion and market share gains that would normally take tens of millions of advertising dollars.”
  • For the startup and small business it means “going from surviving to thriving.”
  • For the career minded student it means “one of the best paying and growth minded career opportunities ever.”

Do You Have To Be Active On Social Media? Do You Like Being Invited To A Party And Being Ignored?

~ K. Quesenberry ~ Leave a comment

From top global brands to local businesses many are jumping into social media by opening accounts. Opening a social media account is easy, staying active (be social) is the hard, yet very important part. Inactive social accounts are like inviting your fiends to a party, but then not talking to them.

How can you be active?

Be prepared. That is the advice from Imperial College of London’s Employee Social Media Guidelines. Before opening a social media account and inviting people, have some content ready for the first few days/weeks (tweets, posts, events, notifications etc.) Imperial suggests the information be interesting, relevant and useful, but not always all three. Then the college raises an important question that too many of us forget, “Do you have adequate time to dedicate to this?” Social media is an active conversation with your audience. You must be prepared to be social and spend the time doing it.

Brandginuity advises some simple ways to stay active even if you don’t want to invest the time to write a blog. You can search and filter news from the vast Internet and share what is relevant to your consumers in your field. Glean information of interest from: 1. Online news alerts. 2. Forums, other blogs and relevant message boards. 3. Content from your every day life (observations). 4. Reposts of great past content. 5. Ideas sparked by other posts. 6. Tidbits and history from your industry. There is value in filtering through content and presenting what you feel will be of interest to your target audience.

ClickZ offers further advice for building an active social media community. They say the key is giving your followers value and that value can take many forms. Start by learning what your customers like and then giving it to them. It can be videos, PDFs, photos, infographics, etc. Ask yourself, What’s in it for them? But simply answering questions, being consistent, and saying thank you can have a huge impact. Here are ClickZ’s top 5 suggestions: 1. Be transparent. 2. Be consistent. 3. Don’t blatantly sell. 4. Appreciate contributions. 5. Say thank you. Common sense, when you think about it from the perspective of being social in a personal context.

Where should you be active?

Deciding where to be active can be just as important as being active. It also can help you optimize your efforts. First let’s look at how top brands are using social platforms. The International Business Times reports that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube remain the most popular platforms globally and point out that Pinterest is more popular than Instagram. Vine, though very new platform, has also seen a lot of activity.

Search Engine Watch looks specifically at Fortune 500 companies and reports results from a new study to see how they are using (or not using) social media. Among these top performing organizations 77% have active Twitter accounts, 70% are on Facebook, 69% have a YouTube channel, 35% have Google+ pages, and 34% have active corporate blogs. Good to know, but the bottom line here is to do some individual research on your target consumer and find out where they are most active. Be active where they are active.

Still, Nigel Hollis from Millard Brown makes an excellent point to close off our topic, “Unless you have a clear rationale for why your brand should be active in social media, perhaps it would be better off not wasting time and resources on doing so.” That’s right. Don’t bother opening an account if you aren’t prepared to be active, but also don’t open an account if you are not sure how it fits into your business and marketing strategy. Too often too many of us treat social media as a separate project and not part of a coherent strategy. How does your social media fit with and leverage your traditional marketing efforts? If you don’t immediately know the answer, you need to go back and revaluate those efforts.

Before you throw a social media party, make sure the effort is strategic, integrated, and plan on being active.