12 years ago I embarked on my career as a technology marketing specialist. I've seen the dot boom, the dot crash and everything in between. The mind boggled at the possibilities the internet held, and it became an extremely exciting place to be. The marketing landscape changed dramatically with a myriad of "new" ways to communicate with customers and generate new leads.
Now the dust has settled. We saw the death of many, many, "amazing" online ventures, we also saw a number of success stories, the "old" timers are still around - Amazon, Lastminute - the "clicks and mortars" are all well established. Communicating, trading, "living" is made easier with the online services available to us.
More recently I've become increasingly aware of social networking, blogs and virtual worlds. I sense that we are embarking on another evolutionary phase in the marketing life cycle. SEO and PPC has been around for a while, we're all aware of it, but I want to begin to understand how blogs and social networking sites can be used to influence the sales cycle or as an effective route to market in the B2B environment.