At the Edelman Digital Bootcamp, students are currently hard at work. With the help of the Edelman pro’s, students attending the bootcamp begin to realize that word of mouth marketing is no longer limited to friends talking to friends over a latte at the local coffee shop.

WOM marketing now involves blogging, tweeting, flickring and engaging audiences in a personal way, even if you are not engaged in face-to-face communication. How can you reach your audience in an increasingly technological world? Students at the bootcamp are working on just that question.

Students started their brainstorming conversations talking about press conferences, speaking to company manufacturers, holding community events and engaging different audiences. One particular group has audiences ranging from professional baseball players to tree huggers. How is it possible to reach all of those people?

The key is “micro-targeting,” and the easiest way to do that is by using social media. Students are beginning to understand the importance of taking issues that had traditionally been handled off-line and bringing them to an online audience.

As students are realizing the importance of online networking, new ideas are being formulated. Rather than holding press conferences, invite prominent bloggers that represent each demographic to partake in a fun activity involving your client, then ask them to blog about it. Holding live events that engage the community are still important tactics, but it is important that those events get documented online.

Edelman professionals are encouraging the students to utilize the information already available online. Stephanie is encouraging them to “let other people do the legwork for you,” utilizing other groups, bloggers and companies that have the same ideals as your client and ask them to spread your message.

It is becoming evident that Edelman is shaking things up in the minds of students and educators! I can feel a social media revolution coming on!

Tags: edelman digital bootcamp, online marketing, social media, word of mouth

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Edelman Digital Bootcamp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.