social media

I just got back from Boston last night where I attended a great new training called New Rules of Marketing. The training is a new course offered by Pragmatic Marketing who specializes in product marketing training for product managers in technical companies. I have been to all of Pragmatic’s other courses so when I saw they had a new offering covering a subject I have been doing a lot of research on lately I jumped at the chance. I was not disappointed and found that this course could apply to anyone in a marketing or PR role for a company of any size.

The course was lead by David Meerman Scott who recently wrote The New Rules of Marketing & PR which he so graciously provided a copy of to each attendant.

In one short day, David covered a bunch of topics on how to reach both customers and press by utilizing new online tactics. In a time when journalists have become inundated with daily emails David told us how to get through to both traditional journalists and bloggers. He went on to cover current topics like blogging, viral marketing, social media, SEO and press releases.

My biggest take-aways from the course were his covering of press releases and e-books. Used properly and following a few simple guidelines David laid out these can be powerful and extremely cost-effective marketing methods. Check the links at the end for a few of the e-books referenced in the training.

David also has a great blog, Web Ink Now, which I subscribed to today and added to my blogroll. I’m pretty picky about blogs I add to my Google Reader but once I read a few of David’s posts I could tell that this would be a valuable resource for my marketing efforts going forward. I also found in my research for this post that his new book has recently been added to a list of The Best & Worst Business Books from bnet. He is in pretty good company in this list along side some of my favorite business books. I look forward to reading it and will try to post a review when finished.

E-books from the course:

Marketing Apple: 5 Secrets of the World’s Best Marketing Machine (download this now!)

The New Rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly