The Story In Brooklyn
In the late Spring of 2008, I had finally sold my house and was ready to move to Los Angeles – a move that I had been preparing for and looking forward to for over a year and a half. A year and a half that included quitting my job, entering into the world of consulting, international travel, and a three month and 14,000 mile road trip all throughout North America.
But, as I sat in a converted concert hall in Brooklyn on a Tuesday night concert, something didn’t feel right.
The Previous Breakdown … and Opportunity
Rewind to the Fall of 2006. I had just quit my job, helping to build a truly great company with a great philosophy and exceptional performance in the marketplace, and jumped into the world of consulting…without a clue as to what I was doing.
Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim had just announce the first annual SEM Scholarship contest, where the winner would get over $5,000 in prizes, but most of all, high recognition and exposure in the world of online marketing. The perfect starting point for my career in consulting.
I looked around the industry in an attempt at communicating my observations. Three weeks later, I had spent two-dozen hours putting together a piece that was mediocre at best. The final submission deadline was near, and I was disappointed in what I had put together. Something was happening in the online world…something was changing, marketers would have to take notice, and I couldn’t put my finger on it, let alone articulate it. I was frustrated.
With less than three hours before I had to submit the article, and knowing that my article could be better…had to be better…I rejected what I had, and started writing from a very fundamental position. The changes that were occurring were not apparently large, they were minorly fundamental and very revolutionary.
I found that message, got it onto paper, one less word than was allowed, and hardly edited it in order to submit it on time.
It won. It was called the Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing. It outlined the fundamental forms of communication that exist in Social Media, and their purpose. It categorized websites in a way that had never been done before, and declared that the ultimate purpose of Social Media was in-person interaction.
Back to Brooklyn
Fast forward to that night in Brooklyn. I saw that what was happening was the same thing that happened in that moment three hours before the SEM Scholarship submission deadline: Something was happening, and I needed to communicate it.
Today, what that “thing” is, is the evolution of Social Media and Marketing. As marketers, we are here during a very exciting time when the future of marketing is being defined right before our very eyes, and influenced by our very own actions.
I want to be a part of that, I want to help others be a part of it, and I want to help businesses understand how to make use of it.
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