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24.4.09

Are you a digital media expert?

God give me strength. Just been spammed by a “digital media expert” offering a training course on “New Digital Training”. Here it is verbatim:

“As the world of new media continues to explode, I’m writing to introduce you to our new training course: Digital Marketing & PR.
“This in-house course gives a comprehensive overview of the different aspects of new media. It shows delegates how digital techniques can be simply and successfully integrated with more established PR strategies to generate new revenue streams for your agency.
“Who is it for? PR professionals with a basic knowledge of new media, wishing to advance their skills, speak the language with confidence and sell more digital work to their clients.”

Oh Dear. I am not sure that new media is exploding nor do I know what a “digital technique” is – I wish I had one though.
The curious thing is the person who sent the email – obviously blind CC’d to all the unfortunate recipients – has not got a clue about social media. Otherwise, she/he would not have spammed me in this manner. Meanwhile, their online presence is decidedly Web1.0 – no blog, no social networks, no Twitter.
I’m finding that a lot of PR companies which have, up until recently, ignored the possibilities of social media as a medium for communications – and in some cases even derided it – are now putting themselves forward as experts on social media. All this on the strength of a month-old blog and a Twitter account with five followers.
As with traditional media relations, the sloppy agencies which gave the industry a bad name with the media, will tarnish us with same brush with their backward approach to social media.
There are some excellent agencies out there doing some fantastic work through social media – but now that others have spotted the bandwagon they threaten to turn it over as they struggle to get on board.
Chris Norton at Wolfstar neatly sums up the right way to approach social media when he compares two online pitches for the same company. Enough said.

2 comments:

Chris Norton said...

Ian, I couldn't agree more - I seem to be getting more and more approaches which are terrible but I don't like naming and shaming as everyone makes mistakes.

Unfortunately, I think this is going to continue as more ‘social media experts’ keep trying to sell us things. I find the Twitter followers who offer to “make you money quick by engaging online’ also pretty irritating but I am sure there are some great practitioners out there too. Let’s just hope the clients see what we see and don’t get fooled into parting with their money.

News Update said...

Chris,

Couldn't agree more - I think with social media the world is divided into two people. Those who get and those who don't. But those that don't get it can still smell money so plough on regardless of the all the niceities and subtleties that is implied in social media.
See this for instance! http://twitter.com/asuccesstemplat