What, would you say, you do here?

It's odd that I haven't really discussed what I actually do in web marketing for a living.

I think it's because I'm not entirely set on where this blog is going, yet. It's been reasonably professional and painfully formal so far, which bothers me a bit. I'm no stranger to overly-personal blogging, so I'm hoping I'll be able to find a comfortable middle ground soon.

Anyway, my day-to-day job is planning and buying online advertising campaigns. So I get briefed on the client/product/creative and I plan the online execution from there. I find the sites to purchase impressions on, make the buys, monitor campaigns, and work with the client to keep them up to speed. So that includes a lot of research, negotiation, and more spreadsheets and acronyms than could be easily imagined. Oh, and meetings after meetings after meetings...

That's for the display side. I also handle all the search marketing for our client's campaigns, both PPC and SEO. So I would set up and monitor and maintain Google/Yahoo paid link campaigns, and make SEO recommendations.

The rest of my job is being the internet expert in the office. Lots of meetings explaining social media, why CTR isn't as important as people would like to think, explaining the difference between reach and %Comp UV, and why if you make a website with a loading page you should be fired from the internet.

I'm actually preparing an hour-long talk that I'll be presenting to all my coworkers on Thursday about Web 2.0 and Social Media. I'm going to try to have it recorded, so depending on company policy I might be able to post it online.

So, yeah, that's a little bit of what I do. And also I'm the one male in the media department, so the other part of my job is being "the guy" who tries to turn the conversation away from Girlicious and toward Indiana Jones. With limited success.

Ask, Don't Tell

Everybody hates meetings. Well, most people do.

If you love meetings you're likely organizing lots of them, so you should probably keep in mind that most people hate meetings.

And the people who like meetings are typically the ones doing all the talking, the ones doing all the telling. The people who hate meetings are typically silent, thinking about other things, likely thinking about all the work that's piling up while they're away from it.

If you're stuck in a meeting, the best way to get something out of it, or at least try to keep it relevant, is to ask good, tough questions.

How many times have you sat in a meeting and wondered why the conversation has taken this turn? How often do you think no one's actually addressing relevant issues? When this happens, ask the question!

If you're in a meeting about how to promote a product before the product has even been developed, before there's even been a creative brief, ask why. Ask how you can be planning an advertising campaign before you've even differentiated the product from the competition. This sort of thing happens, and if nobody asks the question everyone will be wondering long after why nobody asked it way back then.

Ask the question. Best case you'll get a good answer and everyone will be enlightened. Worst case you might not get dragged into so many meetings anymore...