You must know tech

Amy Webb, principal of Webbmedia Group, spoke yesterday to a Washington Women in Public Relations (WWPR) Executive communicators brown bag lunch.  She is very knowledgeable and highly enthusiastic about technology and has made a business consulting on the various trends and applications of the new tech stuff.

Some of us are a bit recalcitrant about tech stuff.  There  are so many changes that it is hard to keep up.  Most of all, tech is changing the way things are done and change is hard.

However, we must learn about tech and how it is affecting the marketing/communications space. Just this week, long time Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz announced he is leaving the Post to go to the online-only Daily Beast. Print is giving way to online more and more.

Amy Webb talked about being in the space where the consumers are–even if you aren’t on there–places like Facebook, Foursquare, Tivo and mobile apps. She sees the world of media (traditional media, the web, mobile, e-readers, tablet pcs) as all connected by social media. Social media is part and parcel of all forms of media, not a separate entity.

Webb divides the social media world into:

• Geo social (Foursquare)
• Corporate social (Yelp)
• Social commerce (Groupon)
• Social content (YouTube)
• Mobile social (Loopt)
• Pure play (Facebook)
• Social curation (Digg, Delicious)

Other key take-aways from Webb:

• Keep your taglines and messaging simple for sharing

• Curation is huge right now simply because there is too much information out there to make sense of.
• Personalization is becoming more important. Journalists don’t want mass press releases or multitmedia releases but rather personalized content.
• Whatever you have done on line can be found by anyone with a bit of research knowledge
• Before launching a brand–make sure the name you want is not being used on social media.
• Tablet PCs are really big, witness the huge sales for the IPad, and there are many more on the horizon

My conclusion is that you must know tech. As Amy Webb suggested, read Mashable and/or Techcrunch every day to keep up with technology.

How is tech affecting your marketing life?