Eco-Friendly Digital Marketing Internship

In high school and early years of college my Facebook addiction appeared to distract me from what many others thought I “should” be focusing on. As I got older my Facebook addiction led to a fascination with Twitter and other forms of social media. Suddenly I was studying social media and digital public relations strategies in school. Within three years my degree in public relations went from cool to awesome. I was taking innovative journalism classes tailored to social media strategies and search engine optimization and all things digital. Was this too good to be true? Can I really make a career out of this?

Photo: DirJournal.com

It turns out you can. And there is quite the demand for digital agencies and social media strategist as the digital revolution continues to grow according to The Detroit News article, Aging Nation, Technology Give Rise to Five Hot Jobs. There is real value in social and digital and more and more people are recognizing that. The job market is fierce and there is good news for college students. According to The Detroit News Article. “By 2018 a million new jobs expected to be created.”  I don’t know if fate or luck or destiny brought me to my current internship in the digital marketing field, but the future is looking nice for me and for the digital agency.

The Detroit News: Aging Nation, Technology Give Rise to Five Hot Jobs

So the ever-changing facebook has turned to a creative side by some of its users.  Since the social media site first launched in 2004 it has had more than a handle full of revamps made to the site. Which always seems to throw users for loop as to why the site keeps changing on them.  This most recent facebook change have left most facebook users upset once again, but other users have decided to take the most recent change as a creative outlet.  The new formatting allows users to see their profile picture and right next to are pictures that have been posted or tagged of that user. Which sparked some users to look at facebook as more of an artistic side.

images provided by: mashable.com

Another recent addition to the facebook addiction is the video profile, which is relatively new. This is for all those people who are consistently making tweaks to the profiles, editing the information that is being seen about them.  This can allow users pages and fan pages to be more interactive with their facebook friends. In order to make the change to your profile picture you need to get the new Facebook app, which allows you to replace your profile photo with a video. The only problem with this is that only people who have the plug-in to the app themselves will only be able to see the video. It’s a great new idea to create some edge to your facebook profile but at the moment it still does have some kinks.

Derek Mehraban, Professor of Michigan State University’s New Media Driver’s License and CEO of Ingenex Digital Marketing in Ann Arbor, Michigan has been ranked as the #23 Top Marketing Professor on Twitter by the Social Media Marketing Magazine.

About the Top Marketing Professors on Twitter list:

The magazines Co-Publisher Kent Huffman, CMO at BearCom Wireless compiled the list as an exclusive for the magazine. To be considered as a top marketing professor on twitter, the professors, located all around the world, must meet the following criteria:

• Have at least 500 followers on Twitter
• Provide useful information and actively engage with those followers
• Demonstrate that they understand the best methods for social media marketing outlets such as Twitter

Derek Mehraban and the New Media Driver’s License at Michigan State University:

Derek Mehraban (@Mehraban) started this venture as a professor at Michigan State University in the spring of 2009, with the kick-off for the New Media Driver’s License class. He and Co-Instructor Dr Richard Cole, Chairman for the Department of Advertising, Public Relations & Retailing worked together to develop the class as an opportunity for students within the college to gain exposure to new media and its effect on marketing and advertising.

According to Mehraban, “The goal of the New Media Driver’s License is to certify students in new media so that they can go on after the conclusion of the course and use new media and digital marketing in their career, job search and everyday life. The course has proven itself as a great learning experience for college students, which is why we also offer it as a life long education course and for corporations.”

The semester-long class meets twice physically during the semester, with weekly assignments due on the New Media Driver’s License website. The assignments are submitted in blog format and teach students the ins and outs of blogging, rules for online public relations, digital presentation skills, search engine optimization techniques,  and how to build you personal online profile.

An innovative digital marketing professional at Ingenex Digital Marketing and new media professor at Michigan State University, it is no wonder that Derek Mehraban has the twitter following to place him in the ranks of Top Marketing Professors followed on Twitter.

A Special Thank You to Kent Huffman and the Social Media Marketing Magazine for publishing the Top Marketing Professors on Twitter.

Check out the New Media Driver’s License website, http://NewMediaDL.com

Follow Derek Mehraban on Twitter, @Mehraban

As the phrase “I’m currently in transition” becomes increasingly popular, it is no wonder that sites like indeed.com are garnering more and more attention. Indeed is a site that makes searching for jobs on the web easy… well easier at least.

Indeed.com functions like any other search engine, except that it is specifically for searching want ads and job posting sites. The concept is that users can log into indeed.com and by simply filling in their fields of interest, be given a list of related jobs. “Searchable” fields include salary, title, company, location, job type, and employer/recruiter.

A feature that makes recruiters and headhunters, like Collin LaLonde, recommend indeed.com is the trend capability. By hitting the trend button at the top left corner of the screen, users will see a graph of their chosen field pop-up. The screenshot below shows the graph that was produced for marketing professionals during the year 2009 and 2010. When looking at the graph it seems that marketing jobs were predicted to stay fairly consistent, as far as demand is concerned, throughout the year 2009.

Another feature on indeed.com that is drawing a lot of attention is the online forum. Forums are pages on websites that allow users to post comments, questions and/or concerns; while they also allow users to respond to their fellow users’ posts. This a great way for people to build a network- which is huge when searching for a job, maintain connections, and receive peer feed-back. Making indeed.com an important tool for anyone who is “currently in transition”.

Having studied advertising and marketing for four years now, I’ve learned more theory then you could shake a stick at.  However, there is no substitute for real world experience. Some of you may be already familiar with the Bateman Competition, a national case study competition held by PRSSA every year. Each university has a team who acts as an “agency” to develop a public relations campaign for the selected client of the year. This gives students a chance to rack up real campaign experience for actual clients and receive some feedback on their efforts as well outside of a professional setting. The Spartan International Advertising Association over at Michigan State University is pioneering a brand new program, the first of its kind in the country, very similar to the Bateman Competition.

Partnering up with internationally renowned media mogul Mark Carassi, the SIAA is forming a “virtual international agency” to work with real clients on a global scale. Using contacts established by Carassi, the SIAA will work with big name players such as LG, Samsung, and Sony providing advertising consulting services in return for educational grants for MSU. Carassi got the idea from a similar program overseas and saw MSU’s student IAA chapter as the perfect fit. The SIAA is the first student chapter of the IAA in the country and for those of you interested in participating in this virtual agency can attend an informational meeting next Thursday, October 15th at 5:30 in room C213 in Wells Hall.

In the interest of eco-friendliness (naturally), I bring you this update from an unlit bedroom with the power of my laptop’s battery.

So much of what we hear lately is about going green. As a Michigan State student (and lifelong fan), I’ve been yelling “Go Green!” as long as I can remember. Fortunately, the agricultural history of America’s first land-grand institution backs that phrase up, and with the help of the estate of Nick Drake, combined for a beautiful ad for the university and a reminder of who’s been going green from the start.

So what does it take to “Go Green?” My boss, Derek, recently let me know about a really great piece from trendwatching.com, a site that gives some great insights into trends across all industries — in other words, a goldmine for entrepreneurs. The article, Eco-Bounty, is part of their monthly trend briefing, a detailed profile of whoever or whatever is making the most buzz.

The key bit of information the article provides for marketers, entrepreneurs, and anyone else feeling the eco-friendly movement starting to gain speed is laid out in a very simple way: being green isn’t just nice to Mother Earth — it’s where the money is. Want green? Be green.

Eco-consciousness is becoming a status symbol. Excess is out and cheap is chic (you have to wonder if Steve and Barry are wishing they’d not overextended themselves to the point of bankruptcy last year — I can imagine Starbury Shoes are probably looking pretty good to a lot of families right now). From solar-powered boats to grass-covered roofs, there are a lot of ways that individuals and businesses can make themselves stand out in a way to showcase their brand as trendsetting, young, and conservational all at once. Greenwashing is already becoming a concern for eco-conscious consumers, so companies who want to claim their eco-friendliness had better be prepared to back it up.

With a recession in full-swing, there’s no better time than the present to start thinking about conserving, whether you’re a college student trying to stretch out that food budget for the week, or a CEO looking to save on energy costs — making an investment in green now will keep you from going in the red later.

Nate Erickson

David Meerman Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly” is being used as the lead text for Michigan State University’s New Media Drivers License course offered to Communication Arts and Science graduate students.

The New Media Drivers License (sm) is a graduate level course designed to provide its students with the tools and techniques to best use new media and digital communication tools which include: Facebook, Linkedin, Blogging, Podcasting, New Marketing, Digital Public Relations, Google Tools, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) including Google Adwords, and Presentation Zen techniques.

More information on David Meerman Scott and “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly” can be found on Scott’s website.

Deepti Dewan Chowdhry

Have you gotten one of these yet? Busting on the scene a couple years ago, these new USB thumb drives are just starting to get mainstream attention. They are essentially business cards in digital form, distributed by companies big and small (although a little pricey for the small guys). Companies can put any kind of media they want you to see on here, from promotional product pitches to pictures, music, and videos for their consumers. These have a large advantage (except in the dollar department) over those mini-CD business cards you might remember from a couple years back. With these Marketing Thumb Drives consumers can read over whatever the providing company has put on them, and then either erase them or just keep on using the storage media. This is much more Eco-Friendly than tossing those previous mini-CD’s in the landfills. So keep an eye out, these should be popping up more and more in the coming months.

[Via: TreeHugger]

Social media websites is having positive and negative effects on companies. Word-of-mouth advertising has increased significantly because of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, causing an increase in brand awareness and marketing sales. Marketwatch wrote an article about this topic, saying that companies that take advantage of social media will more likely have visibility in consumer generated content and effectiveness in marketing. With the decline of traditional marketing effectiveness, social media may be the future of marketing.

Even though word-of-mouth may spread good news, it can also spread the bad. ZDNet wrote an article about how social media may increase identity theft on websites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Most recently, a person on Twitter who claimed to be a representative of ExxonMobil was confirmed untrue. This has caused people to think that social media websites are untrustworthy and dishonest. These websites have been accused of not doing enough to secure a person’s identity (or brand, in this case). Despite incidents like this, the marketing world cannot ignore the rising influence of social media and must be prepared of how it will affect marketing as a whole.