And the Journey Continues...

Nearly six months ago, I embarked on a journey. A journey that would not only provide me with a more in-depth view of an emerging trend in the marketing communications world, but one that would also challenge me as a communications professional. This journey is the Digital Marketing Communications (DMC) program at West Virginia University. And after two courses, one introducing me and my three classmates to the topic and another focusing on social media, I believe I have gained a wealth of knowledge, and I am looking forward to the next step in the journey: a nine-week concentration on Web analytics and search engine optimization (SEO).

As a public relations professional with a decade of experience, the industry has definitely changed, or maybe I should say, evolved. When I started my career in 2000, the Internet was just beginning to play a major role in how we communicate with audiences. In fact, I was still faxing press releases and doing fax blasts. E-mail campaigns were just gaining momentum and numerous organizations were just starting to create Web sites. We were still grasping to understand what the Internet held and its capabilities. We may have been wondering if this was just a passing fad.

Fast forward 10 years, and we are in an entirely different world. We are in a digital world, and within this world we are discovering faster ways to disseminate a message; new technologies that have simplified life; and a culture that wants to be able to retrieve information on any topic imaginable with the click of a mouse.

This is an exciting and challenging time to be working in marketing and communications. Exciting because of all that is now available to us. Challenging because we are tasked with understanding these technologies and how to best use them. But I am ready for this challenge, and I look forward to learning more about Web analytics and SEO in the coming weeks. I know there is more to it than visitors to a site and page views. The knowledge that awaits in this course will be welcomed, embraced and applied to my daily work life.

So let the journey continue…