For some, Youtube is an outlet for music videos and live performances from their favorite artists.

For others, Youtube is an escape from the doldrums – giving the viewer cheap laughs with weekly viral sensations.

i.e. sneezing pandas…

But for me and advertising fans alike, Youtube is a website which caters to our love of advertising…

Advertisements posted on Youtube have an opportunity to be seen by millions of users. Usually, the reach of a video advertisement is limited to the audience of local television markets. Companies buy media time to have their commercial viewed by certain markets but Youtube opens up those market-boundaries and the ad becomes universal.

The significance of this universal market is huge for advertising. Instead of television watchers being force-fed ads that they may not want, videos on Youtube are selected without force. They are viewed for their artistic and entertainment value rather than their branding efficacy. The consumer is now simply the audience; I think this presents a new realm for advertisers to break from convention and fully express their artistry and love for the industry.

This has led way for the popularity of extended commercials on Youtube; 30 second tv spots turned into 1 minute Youtube videos or longer.

Here are a few of my favorites:

You can see from the production value of those advertisements that they have been crafted with pride. The producers of these advertisements are able to show their full ambition of the ad while the brands (sony, xbox, t mobile) are receiving free exposure.

You might visit Youtube to watch sneezing pandas, celebrity parodies, or the newest Britney Spears song; but the fact is that Youtube is much more valuable than the casual user knows it to be.

It’s okay if you’ve never listened to a podcast, but it’s time to break podcasts free of the cloud of mystery in which they unnecessarily reside.  The idea of a podcast is to deliver a message to a niche audience via recorded radio. Named after the iPod, podcasts are typically accessed through iTunes because it is so convenient, but can be found elsewhere. To search for podcasts all you need is an internet connection and the iTunes store. Let’s go through this step by step for the beginners (because it’s not just the older generation who don’t know this, my dad actually turned me on to his favorite podcasts):

1. Open iTunes and go to the iTunes store.

2. Find Podcasts on the left-hand side and *click*

podcast logo

3. Congrats, you’ve entered the universe of podcasts!

From here you can search countless podcasts and all you have to do is click subscribe and you’ll automatically get all new episodes from that program as they are released.

My favorite podcast, of which I rarely miss an episode, is RadioLab from NPR. If you’ve never heard of it- give it a listen. At the very least  you’ll learn something you didn’t know before. And that is the point of a podcast… I enjoy special interest stories and fun anecdotes which shed light on an array of interesting subjects, that is the niche appeal of RadioLab. If you like hunting, gambling, horoscopes, sports, etc, there will be a podcast to get excited about.

Here is the kicker: Some podcasts like NPR’s RadioLab are syndicated programs that are available on radio as well as podcasts, but there are other podcasts that are user generated shows, meaning not available anywhere but by podcast. Even more, up-and-coming bands are now creating podcasts to get their music out and are joining other music lovers to create a culture of niche radio podcasts.

Move over XM Radio, there is a more effective niche audio subscription player in town.

Thus, podcasts can become syndicated radio periodicals, an environment for communities of garage bands, or simply a dictated version of a blog!

I haven’t taken the initiative to create a podcast for this blog, but the vision remains true, podcasting is a new frontier of online social networking and Ionly expect the idea and its application to grow in the coming years.

I believe the success of Wikipedia comes from two areas:

1. Outstanding Google search return – meaning that an individual Wikipedia page will come up as one of the first search results from Google. i.e. if you search Romanov Dynasty on Google, the Wikipedia page for that topic will pop up before many university websites and even Encyclopedia Britannica Online. This happens because Wikipedia has so many pages linking to and from other sites that Google knows it is a popular site. In short, Wiki has more Google cred than Britannica.

2. However amateur the idea of Wikipedia is, the proven fact is that a multitude of opinions combined with peer review will always lead to a product which is better than one voice by itself…

Don’t believe me?

You don’t have to.

A 2004 book by James Surowiecki suggests that there is a “wisdom of crowds” which guides popular belief closer and closer to fact.

The popular anecdote for this phenomenon, which is used by Surowiecki, comes from the mid-1800′s involving a man named Francis Galton. Galton attended a county fair at which hundreds of audience members would guess how much an ox weighed in order to win a prize. The audience wrote their guesses on a slip of paper and the closest guess to the actual weight of the animal would win the prize. However, even in the 1800′s people didn’t know much about the weight of an ox and thus there was a large range of guesses. None of the guesses were exact but the prize was given out. After the competition, Galton then took the slips and mathematically averaged the responses of hundreds of people who had guessed- to his surprise, the resulting average was closer to the actual weight of the animal than anyone’s individual guess!

In short, if the crowd was smart enough to vocalize their opinions to one another, they would have come up with a more correct guess than their individual responses. Working for the good of the crowd produces better results than working individually.

I believe that this theory is the principle reason that Wikipedia is successful. Common people give their knowledge about a subject to a melting pot of other knowledge and opinion. Combining that with peer review results in a powerhouse of information that is more accurate than any one voice could be.

In a broad look of online networking and collaboration, one can see that this theory is not exclusive to Wikipedia, but is shared by the entire world wide web. Blogs are a culmination of ideas as are online encyclopedias as are peer reviewing features of Amazon and eBay. Together we are building a wealth of common knowledge on the internet and we are making things easier and faster because of it.

This being said, I want to open this post up to discussion, dissension, and opinion…because after all that’s what this is all about.

My opinion of  online marketing and networking hasn’t changed for the most part; I’m still very much impressed with its power and reach. However, I think we as a society are now seeing the dangers of the technology when used inappropriately.

Across online news reports are examples of imposter Twitter accounts, meaning that celebrities are having their likeness portrayed through Twitter and the public is unknowingly following the tweets of people posing as celebrities. Celebrities and sports figures are essentially falling victim to libel as the public is getting false information about a public figure given from the supposed first person perspective.

This phenomenon represents a new ‘digital dilemma’ in that there is no precedence for Twitter and impersonation. The legal line with celebrity likeness has been drawn with libel and slander in advertising and news reports, but how does a judge rule on online impersonation with a Twitter account? Anyone can register on the wildly popular website and people are always looking to follow the biggest names in pop and sports culture. I am interested to see how this wrinkle in online social networking will play out.

As nice as it is to know what Shaquille O’Neal is up to, do we really know it’s Shaq?

In summation of this course, I’m going to highlight the most important lessons in a less comedic top ten list a la David Letterman.

10.  The Concept of NMDL: How using the internet efficiently can change the landscape of a marketing plan.

9.  Free PR Websites: This underrated tool gives people the opportunity to create buzz in an online newspaper-like setting.

8. Google Applications, Specifically Google AdWords: Inexpensive advertising that reaches people who want to see it.

7. Facebook: Not just for the drunken college kid.

6. Other Social Networking: LinkedIn, Digg, Twitter – they are all means to free exposure to a mass public.

5. David Meerman Scott’s book, “The New Rules of Marketing and PR“: The insight the book provides.

4. Blogging: Getting your ideas out there used to be half the battle. Now it’s free and fun, try blogging and you’ll be hooked.

3.  Search Engine Optimization: Strategically wording and linking your website to manipulate search engine results.

2. Online connectivity in General: This class has shown that organizations/classes can exist and function solely on the internet. The class felt like a social experiment of how long people will stay together using a common interest, and we all survived.

1. Taking Off the Training Wheels: We are now equipped with the tools to help us further our careers and lives with a knowledge base that most professionals do not have. In a world of continuing technology, staying one step ahead of the curve is impossible but those who strive to do so will be rewarded.

As a testament to the power of new media, I created an online press release that will be seen by many who search for the keywords used in my press release. By going to www.pr.com, the general public is handed the tools to inform one another of important happenings in an unlimited number of fields, you just have to know what you’re looking for.

My press release which talks more about the author and the book is currently pending approval from the website and a link will be posted as soon as it can be seen.

This new brand of marketing is diffused through an enormous and limitless medium, the internet. Creating a way for the individual to bring an idea to the masses, the internet is going to play an increasingly larger role in marketing and PR. I appreciate David Meerman Scott’s message and agree with his philosophy that one must adopt these strategies to fully embrace marketing and PR in a digital world.

ATTN: All advertising and marketing majors,

Are you afraid of being under qualified in your post-graduation field of work?

Are you looking for a way to separate yourself from the thousands of other recent graduates who have the same degree as you?

Well, with Michigan State University’s “New Media Drivers License” course, you will be given the tools to stay at the forefront of the advertising and media industries.

Professor Derek Mehraban, CEO of Ann Arbor-based Ingenex Digital Marketing, leads the class by helping students establish their personal blogs and guiding them down a path of relevant and future tools of the internet.

Tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn, and WordPress are used as mediums to explain the depths of social networking and a new wave of media opportunities that will be important in our future careers.

As an MSU undergraduate student, I used to be worried about interviewers probing about my internet experience. Now, with the help of this brand new 2-credit course, I feel much more confident with my new media knowledge base and know that I have more skills available for potential employers.

For more information about the class and its benefits you can contact:

Derek Mehraban’s blog at The Digital Bus

Evan Jackson on LinkedIn, email: jacks767@msu.edu, or by leaving a comment on my blog!

Good luck in attaining your “New Media Drivers License”

I like this analogy because it implies that the employees or vendors of the relationship hold more power than the customer. Because the inner-workings of the Google searching process are hidden in the cosmos of the world wide web, the searching party has little control over what results pop up first. In a Home Depot, only the employees know the inner-workings of their store and can steer customers in any direction they choose, even if it’s not exactly what the customer wants.

To avoid further confusion, I’ll say that businesses ultimately control where their websites pop up in search engine results.

By strategically structuring their site to highlight key words, optimize relevant content, and bolster linkage to credible websites, web domains can improve their position in search results on Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engines. This may seem like trickery but it is in fact a very beneficial, and legal, form of marketing.

Aaron Wall writes about search engine optimization (SEO) as a form of marketing in his blog. He points out that the process of improving a website’s potential reach is a systematic marketing process including research, brand building, and structuring. SEO is a translation of marketing in a new media; the game stays the same as it medium changes.

For more resources on SEO, refer to this guide on the basics of SEO written by Derek Mehraban at his Digital Bus Blog.

In 2005 I discovered Facebook, a site which at the time was an a la mode albeit archaic version of Myspace for college students.

My Facebook account

And in 2009, I discovered Google applications, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These three tools have changed the face of internet social media outlets in ways that Myspace and Facebook never did at their inception. These sites, specifically Twitter and LinkedIn, are much more polished and refined than previous sites and provide features that are very useful.I have but just scratched the surface of these new outlets but can already see their utility.

Twitter, seemingly a glorified Facebook status updater, provides news, sports, opinions, and many other written accounts of the world and they appear on my command. I subscribe only to the channels or feeds that I want and the best part is that I am part of this network. Not only are these tools at my fingertips but I am reacting to them with my own opinions that are seen by people viewing my account. I think this tool is brilliant and relevant in today’s real time network.

My Twitter account

LinkedIn is a website that offers the networking benefits of Facebook with a professionalism that transcends the college campus. This is a profile that I can use beyond my days as an undergrad to maintain contacts and friendships.

My LinkedIn account

For the rest of you, I think that reading blogs can be beneficial in getting differing opinions on current issues and technology as well as offering your own opinions and creating relationships with intriguing authors.

When I searched “New Media” on Google Blog Search, I found a blog written by Robert Witham entitled “Explaining New Media to Old Media Friends and Family”. This I found intriguing because I run into this problem when trying to explain to friends and family what my New Media Drivers License class is all about. His blog referenced another blogger, Jon Swanson,  to whom he credited his blog’s inspiration. The idea behind the blog is that there are many people today who do not know the capabilities that are on the horizon in digital media. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and RSS, Witham says, are foreign concepts to many people and explaining them can be tricky.

In the case of New Media Drivers License, I can see that many people feel unprepared for this change in media because the class does not just include MSU undergrads, it includes people from all walks of professionalism.

New Media is important in today and tomorrow’s world, and welcoming people into that world is going to be an intriguing process.