Reflections on the class

Last month the class began focusing on some of the tools and technologies that make up the ‘Advanced Interactive Marketing’ field, and we began discussing how we could use these tools in our ‘real lives’. We were joined by Joe Barnes from the Girl Scouts of the USA who led the Friday afternoon discussions on blogging.

Joe is a great speaker to listen to, very conversational in tone and engaging in delivery. Joe used one of the most successful ‘Mommy Blogs’ to illustrate many of his points – www.dooce.com. I liked the use of this blog to illustrate how a personal blog with a conversational style and a defined target market has turned from a one-person hobby into a full-time two-person business. As I consider how to improve our interactive marketing for the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) I will bear this site in mind; computer security can be a very dry subject.

The MMPC currently has a blog where we post technical information about malware, spyware and other potentially unwanted software. One area I’d like to investigate with the MMPC is how we can move from just posting relatively long, technical posts to include some posts with a more conversational tone. I believe this will help put a human face on the MMPC and enable us to begin a more open dialogue with our readers.

Given the potentially sensitive nature of the MMPC’s postings I was also interested in the Saturday afternoon presentation on the legal challenges and concerns around blogging and online marketing in general. With a global audience I am constantly engaging PR and legal affairs to review our blog content – how will this work if I am trying to move towards more rapid, conversational posts? We’ll see…

Finally, I am looking forward to the March class when we will investigate tactical items such as search engine optimization and online analytics – with all the great content that the MMPC has to offer my main challenge is making sure that the people who would benefit from reading this content can find it!