What is the future of Internet marketing?

As opposed to the bots we have now?

I'm one who teaches internet marketing at the university level. I'm an internet marketer first, and an instructor second. Unfortunately, I'm somewhat of a rarity. In a typical marketing curriculum there is heavy reliance on textbooks and those books will never be up to date. Even in courses like Marketing Communications, there is generally a single -- and extremely general -- chapter on digital marketing. Almost useless in my opinion.

Due to that, I have adapted my course to teach a segment on internet marketing that includes topics like keyword research, basic onsite SEO, local marketing online, PPC, social media trends, various analytics, tools to conduct online competitive sleuthing, etc. I assign blog reading to introduce students to current internet marketing news. Textbook info on internet marketing is useless as most information is out of date by the time the text is published (and hence, the lack of meaningful, up-to-date information about internet marketing within any mainstream marketing texts).

I also teach a very hands-on elective course where students research blog topics they are interested in and learn whether there is a likelihood of monetizing a blog of this type. They then buy a domain, purchase hosting, and learn to build a WordPress site/blog on that topic. Along the way, they learn SEO, put up a Facebook page, establish a Twitter account, and pull in other social media. We also help several local businesses with online and social media marketing as a public service. Again, not the be-all, end-all, but at least a start -- and certainly a giant leap over reading a very vanilla textbook chapter about internet marketing that was likely written 2 - 4 years prior.

Unfortunately, what I do is rare. The academic world rewards faculty for research and academic publishing -- not for teaching what is currently relevant, especially when that information cannot be taught out of a textbook. When you teach courses the way I do it's a lot of extra work as you need to find your own materials and develop hands-on assignments that are outside of what textbooks offer.

All this to say:
With the exception of specialized college programs like those found at Full Sail University and a select few others, you won't find very good internet marketing education offered in most colleges and universities. Sadly, the ever moving target of internet marketing simply is not a good fit for the traditional academic model.

Honestly, I have no idea nor do I worry about it.

Unless I'm going to be an innovator (which I have never been) I will simply keep
an eye on things and if something changes, I will adapt to it.

If I had a crystal ball, I'd be a zillionaire.

Then I guess we better make bank while we can. We can watch it all fall apart from our retirement villas.

Wow, I'm shocked one person noticed, thanks! But this is why everything is regulated because we are pushed to comply by pressure and that is the future of IM.

I have been in IM a decade or so and I see more and more regulation but when I try to talk about it and how bad and stupid it is people kinda pressure me to shut up and not talk about it.

In any case there is no way to stop regulation if no one is willing to talk about it, so there you go that is my 10 year observation. I hope you all enjoy what's we are allowed to do since it's less and less every year (of course in the name of good for us all)>

My son is 18 and I started him using the computer when he was 3.

But then, both my kids and I are geeks. Guess I can take credit for that.

So the trend is well underway, at least with some of the geekier households.

- Valeria

He never said he invented the internet. The joke has been repeated so much it's a cliche, but it was his detractors that had him taking the credit, not him.

Videos. Think about it, we now watch more commercials and ads on YouTube than we do on TV. When a commercial comes on tv, we change the channel. When a commercial comes on the radio station, we flip to our Sirius XM Satelite radio. When a commercial comes on YouTube, we sit and watch it for 30 seconds waiting for our video.

I read a very interesting post that said, if you want to get backlinks, use all other sources of internet marketing, BUT if you want to build a brand, trust, and pr, use video marketing.

The shift is happening...

Thanks for the kind words Mark; definitely the nicest compliment I can recall getting here. I'm doing fine, thanking my lucky stars nothing like Sandy has so far hit Seattle, which continues to be a good place to be.

Not only will we have robots to wash the dishes, iron our clothes we will also have robots to sit behind the computer to wrtie good quality backlinks 24/7 365 days a year non stop.

On a serious note I dont think much will change in terms of what we do now such as getting traffic only the resources we use will likely change.

Hi ExRat,

Well, your response makes sense to a degree. As far as new avenues on mass texting marketing: I wonder why the Walmarts, FedExes, and other billion dollar companies can 'bombard' millions of people with unsolicited texting, and as usual get away with it (until you turn them in.....)? We live in a cut-throat world, they take the people's funds in order to make the 1% 'super-wealthy' even wealthier. So when we can get our hands on a service that let us promote to the masses like they do, why not?