I presume it might be a case with likeness to the electric car vs oil giants. Not so much social media, but internet marketing as a whole. BUT we’ve managed to prove otherwise with traditional online advertising. We’ve proved that there does lie real value in online marketing and as with all new technologies, the early birds will catch the worm.

The problem comes in where companies make use of service providers that don’t really know how to utilise the power of social media marketing / Web 2.0. And it doesn’t work for everybody I might add. But  when implemented correctly these strategies can add immense insight into your consumer markets. Especially where we’re talking of large corporates with big databases that have responsibility to maintain a good profile on the CRM side of things.

I agree that social sites will come and go (like with all fads), but the principles and application thereof will live on and surely it is also up to the owners of such sites to innovate and improve their offerings to keep their subscribers happy? The fact that there’s such large buy-in to new media like video (YouTube), Photos (Flickr) etc opens up new avenues of marketing at much lower budgets than traditional advertising. And to top it off we have the advantage of real time stats with return on investment. Tracking is what makes online advertising so popular, plus the market is growing by the day.

You might ask the question, where does the value lie in social media and its marketing principles?

Well, it’s measured in different ways, but you can look at the following (to name a few):

• Brand Loyalty/Awareness Building
• Word of Mouth Marketing
• Consumer Generated Content
• Consumer Data Profiling
• Advanced CRM Principles
• Viral Marketing Aspects
• And More…

The problem will always be implementation and finding service providers that understand the methods and can implement those principles to drive social online strategies for clients.

It guess it’s true that the early adopters will pay some school fees and that the corporate world is sitting back to see what happens, but dead, it’s truely not…

I’m not sure whether it’s possible to really define the term, since every second person and their pet dogs now call themselves internet marketing consultants.

Personally I feel it’s someone with a broad perspective (and experience) into developing online marketing strategies for companies. Someone that can identify opportunities and know through that experience what will work NOW.

This kind of information is valuable by default since it saves corporates the time and capital outlay of trial and error. An Internet Marketing Consultant can do broad analysis of sites, from all perspectives including analytics,  business trends and new markets, making recommendations on various internet marketing solutions.

Should you wish to make use of an online marketing consultant, take your time to see whether the technology is effectively communicated to you in laymans terms. Would you ever buy into technology that you don’t understand? Go with someone who communicates well and can show you the advantages of what you’re about to do.

If you want to speak to an internet marketing consultant now, click here and fill out a free quote request form.

This is quite an intruiging new KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) type blogging platform. It’s called Tumblr.com. Seems to have been built on a WordPress platform, but very simple to use. Quite interesting…

We’re (www.peronii.co.za) employing again and are looking for a PHP programmer with minimum 2 years experience in Cape Town. I vibrant team worker that can handle deadlines and multi tasking.

Your skillset includes:

• (X)HTML
• PHP 4, 5
• MySQL
• Advanced Cross Browser CSS
• Photoshop
• SEO & Compliant coding

Skills that would help your cause:

• Flash / ActionScript
• E-Commerce Programming with Gateway Integration
• Advanced Email Handling (Python an advantage)
• Dreamweaver
• LAMP
• MVC methodology
• CakePHP
• Javascript/AJAX
• Knowledge of XML would also be beneficial

Salary Neg depending on experience. Contact info@peronii.co.za with your CV.

If you’re an company looking to do some affiliate marketing, check out TrafficSynergy.Com. Their Adrands program is going to give Adsense a go since it’s almost fully customisable (the ads that get displayed on affiliate sites). Obviously affiliates looking to make some extra moolah can sign up and start serving ads in minutes.