It’s often hard to tell the marketing experts from the impostors. Being a thought leader isn’t about knowing the best buzzwords and having a PowerPoint ready to deploy, it’s about being among the first to execute a great idea. Google and The Wharton School have teamed up to provide users with 100 marketing-related videos on how to build community and customer bases in the digital landscape. The Fast.Forward. Channel shows communications professionals how they can evolve to cut through the noise and spam, and build loyal audiences with tech savvy people like us.
Through short videos from some of the top industry minds including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lauder Professor at The Wharton School Jerry Wind and AAAA CEO Nancy Hill, the group hopes to challenge marketers to take risks and create better campaigns. For now, the site comes up short as the videos appear to answer questions in a very general manner with few specifics in terms of tactics and strategy. The most promising component of the site appears to be the “Free Tools” section with a list of resources including links to a website optimizer, search insights and 3rd party trends data from Facebook and Twitter. Nevertheless, as of this review, all of those links are dead. The first rule of marketing: test your product.
While this is a good site to get inspiration, social media marketers and PR pros who are looking for new strategies and specifics might be better off visiting Building43, PR 2.0 or asking questions through LinkedIn’s online groups. Other great resources include the Social Media Club events and social marketing-related Meetups.
