Media Communications Association Gets Digital Marketing Help

November 21, 2008 By BJ Cook,

When you combine a room of Media Communications Professionals and the guys from Digital Operative; you better be ready with your pencils, notebooks, iPhones and Flip cameras. I had the honor of speaking with a fellow colleague, Brent Altomare. Brent is the founder of Groovy Like A Movie, a multimedia production company located in San Diego, CA. So I wanted to share some of my experience and also provide a link to my presentation. First off, Brent's office is huge and felt like one of those big movie production studios you would see in LA. From the huge sound room to vintage-like sculptures and pristine offices; GLAM was doing business right. Adam and I got to sit down with Dominic, a music composer. All I could think of was Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the guy who was doing tv show soundtracks and his Dracula rock opera. The night started off with Brent's presentation about how media professionals could do a better job of marketing themselves and some traditional ways to that. I was jealous, his presentation was great. From the background image for the slides to the images he chose ... high quality. Then I was up. I took the audience through who I was, what the current digital marketing landscape looked like, where they could start, some tactics I've used and how to measure their efforts. The room was pretty cold and whenever it's cold I feel myself picking up speed during my presentations to build some warmth. Overall I thought it went well. There were a lot of questions about blogging platforms, podcasting, video blogs, social media and our experiences with marketing do's and don'ts. At one point we were asked what our top 10 for marketing would be, similar to the Letterman model. We actually came up with 10 great points. Someone mentioned they were going to put them up online, but luckily Adam posted them to Twitter. Top 10 for Marketing

Goals - set some
Plan - marketing never fails at the point of the idea, it's in the planning.
Track - keep your eye on what you're doing
Know Your Audience - who? what? where? when?
Focus - be targeted
Test - don't be afraid. how do you know if it works?
Be Authentic - people know when you're not. not being = viral reputation destruction
Listen - it's a two way street
Be Consistent - cross your i's, dot your t's
Be Creative - think outside the box
DO it - avoid analysis paralysis. take the leap.

In the end, the crowd was happy, they felt like they got something out of it and had plenty of new websites to check out when they headed home. Getting the chance to speak at events is one of the best ways to help market your business, but also the best way to give back to your peers. There is always going to be someone out there that has an experience before you and they can download what worked and what didn't; you'll be better prepared for your new endeavour. Thanks to the Media Communications Association - San Diego chapter for having me. You can download my Digital Marketing presentation here.