So you can't, just drop the marketing plan and materials that you have developed over the past year(s) in order to jump on the latest hot item bandwagon, but you can't always afford to stay the chartered course. What to do?
I don't know if you're like me, I spend a great deal of time exploring for the latest and future trend in interactive marketing. Really, I try to evaluate, from a user perspective, every new tool or platform that comes out. I've joined so many platforms that I sometimes forget which one is which. (I apologize to Peter who did follow-up on his product last week and I couldn't for the life of me remember having tried it. Sorry. Note to self: keep better notes.) At the same time I'm still doing my best to master what's already in the works.
Well, this is where it pays to be a Jill of all trades and a mistress of none. I keep moving on to more and more options. That however, doesn't really do the job for my clients. They need experts. That's why I work with folks who are experts in many fields and I get them to apply their specific expertise as needed.
Naturally, I have a few fields that I do my best to keep learning in-depth. When it comes to social networking and content development, I'm pretty much on top of things. But being off for even just 2 months has meant a backlog of products to evaluate. It's easy to figure out which ones will do well in the short-term but much more difficult to get a handle on the long-term winners.
Twitter was one I didn't peg as a long-term winner. But now, with new apps being built to organize and put some structure the posts, long life seems assured. That's even with the current difficulties they are having with their user profiles being scraped by w3org. Talk about a blow.