So you’re sitting at your desk at your traditional ad agency, marketing firm, or public relations agency and you notice that every day there are more and more empty desks around you. Hmmm I wonder why? Well there is a simple way to keep your desk from being the next empty one: adapt.

So before we dive into me teaching you how to adapt, I am going to assume you are smart enough to know that you need to learn about online marketing (u know that lil thing the kids call the “internets” has been around for over a decade now). I am also going to assume you have a background in traditional marketing, PR, or advertising.

So everything you learned in your marketing classes isn’t completely useless, actually, it is still quite useful, it just needs to be adapted. You have to start somewhere though, so lets start with some basic terminology.

Blogs - A self published journal, newsletter, etc. Usually supports visitor comments/feedback, rss, and trackbacks. Do you need one? Only if you have customers whom you want to talk to, and value their opinion (these opinion things, are pretty important these days). If you are writing an email or physical newsletter you send out everymonth, you should be re-publishing this as a blog on your domain/site. Also things you find too minute for newsletter publishing, but are still useful or valuable to your users/customers, should be posted on your corporate or client’s blog.

Microblogging - think blogging or SMS, but limited to 140-160 characters in length. see Twitter.

SEM - Search Engine Marketing - This is the all encompassing term for everything that deals with buying ads alongside search results on web search engines. Think more off-site work than on-site (your website).

SEO - Search Engine Optimization - This is all about on-site work, and turning your site into something the search engines will love, will understand, and then in turn reward you with higher placement in RELEVANT searches. This is can also be tied heavily into link building. The key is to turn all those years of copywriting experience you have, into something a search engine will understand. So basic things include writing clear and concise content, and avoiding hiding your content from searchers (i.e. inside pretty flash files).

PPC - Pay Per Click aka CPC (cost per click)- A form of online advertising whereby you only pay for leads (clicks) to your website. Google popularized this (but did NOT invent it). If you are on a fixed budget, and want to drive an exact amount of hits to your site, this might be your best bet. Important to note, most PPC systems are designed as auctions, with bidders buying up exposure and demand dictating the prices dynamically.

CTR - Click-through rate: The average number of clicks per 100 views of your ad. Think of this as the number of people who responded to your ad as a percentage of the entire audience. These numbers can tell you how your creative, your copy, or your overall ad are performing.

A/B Testing - Sometimes referred to as multi-variate testing, the idea is that you are comparing several similar creatives, or copies, of a single ad, and trying to determine what is most effective in getting conversions or click-throughs. Because its so easy to create a number of different variations, you can in theory analyze and optimize your message on the fly. Think of it as using the web as your global focus group, and your sites/ads/creatives as the product they are testing and voting on (by either clicking or not clicking).

CPM - Cost Per Mil (Thousand): The amount an ad run costs to be shown in front of 1000 hopefully distinct visitors. There are a number of factors that play into the pricing on this (audience, content of site, site reputation, etc.). This was one of the first models popularized in online banner ads.

CPA - Cost Per Action: Think of this as the easiest form of advertising to measure your ROI on. You only pay when someone completes the desired goal (be it filling out a form, purchasing something, whatever). Lots of affiliate marketing campaigns are built around this idea.

SMO - Social Media Optimization: The idea that you can optimize your content for distribution on social media sites. Effectively fancy way of saying writing interesting copy. Be careful with people selling this service, some are legit and trustworthy, others are snake oil salesmen.

Social Media - Content created by people, not by traditional publishers. Often referred to as user generated content or consumer generated media. Really encompasses everything from social networks to individually created content. The idea being that media/content creation is being democratized and no longer exclusively the realm of traditional mass media creators.

Social Network - A site/service whereby people can create and maintain relationships between themselves and other individuals. The most popular in the US at the moment are Facebook and Myspace. If you are creating any type of product with brand affinity of any kind, you’d be well advised to take notice of social networks, which are fast becoming the top traffic destinations on the web.

Twitter - A revolutionary new (to you) form of communication. Often referred to as micro-blogging, it is really a new means of speaking to and listening to your community (you’ve got a community whether you realize it or not). There will be a follow up post in a few weeks on Twitter for non techies.

Affiliate Marketing - This wasn’t in the original list, but I was reminded of its importance. Affiliate marketing is essentially the idea of enlisting independent third parties to promote your products or services in exchange for a sales commission. Amazon was one of the first companies to start this online (not the first though). The idea being that it allows any individual marketer to come in and start selling thousands of products without owning any physical inventory, or handling any transactions, but still making money.

So remember this list is for those of you who have experience working in traditional advertising, and just need a quick glossary of online keywords.

A LOT of fuss has been made over the transition to the facebook design in the last 60 days, and understandably it is a big change to make to over 100 million people. However, most of those complaining really don’t understand why they are complaining, they just want an excuse to create a group and get a million people on it (so they can possibly spam you or use it to promote other things).

So let me break it down for you in simple terms.

As a facebook user:
The new design means your apps will be able to have better experiences (more screen space for them to fill for you) on the canvas area (the space inside http://apps.facebook.com/whatever ).  The redesign also means your profile will be faster (not a billion boxes loading at once), which will make checking out your friends profiles less time consuming (less time = more profiles you can check out while at work).  It also means applications will be forced to engage with you, not just reward your friends for spamming you (sorry if that was your favorite aspect of apps).  So you should eventually get a richer experience out of the apps (the good ones at least).

As a marketer:
You now get more options on types of ads you can display to facebook users, you also get more engagement metrics to boot. But really the goldmine is in creating branding opportunities with the smart applications and application developers. Gone are the soft-touch applications that had a touch once and ignore forever relationship with their audience, you have to build truly engaging experiences to leverage the brand potential available to you.  The tabs on the user profiles are a perfect place for self-expression and brand affinity, you just have to grab it.

As a developer:
You unfortunately have the most work cut out for you, but who knows, maybe you can get renewed business out of reworking the apps you built before.  To a developer though, the changes are the most dramatic shift in the platform we’ve seen so far. You have to re-work the interactions and demands you are making of your users to build up something that has a more valid value proposition.  What incentive does your app have to bring its users back? What activities or enhancements are you offering them? Realistically good application design hasn’t changed much from the previous platform iteration to now, you just have less incentive to use BAD app design to promote yourself.  It also means this isn’t a real-estate grab as it once was, its an attention land rush. Attention we are going to learn is an incredibly valuable asset to possess in this new economy.

So what next? Where is this all heading? Well I think this all plays into my original theory of a multi-pronged approach, which I discussed a year ago. You need to use facebook as a net you are casting to engage users and drive their activities from wherever they are (in facebook our out) and figure out how to benefit from that traffic regardless of where it comes from.

So after just receiving an email from Johnnie Walker to participate in a local event they are having to promote their hooch, I decided I’d check out the site. First thing I notice: age related “filter” to keep out the youngsters (although I’ve never heard of an under-21 year old dumb enough not to know how to figure out how to get around this…). Anyway, this gave me an idea: why don’t these alcohol companies use this data to customize the output of their sites? So if you’re in the coveted 21-25 year age group, you’re more likely to drink X type of alcohol, so why not customize the site to appeal to your current visitor?

This baffles me as to why they aren’t doing this already (and if they are, then kudos to you web team at big booze company). They could also use this technique to pitch new products aimed at that demographic. Now imagine they take it one step further, and figure someone from a zipcode in Alabama in the 30-40 age range is likely to drink Jim Beam instead of Blue Label Johnnie (fair assumption, no offense), now you’ve got an entirely new level of targetting. Anyway, I’m not going to rant much more on what is essentially A/B testing and optimizing their ROI, but it would be a wise decision.

P.S. if you’re from any of these companies, my contact info is on the site, feel free to send me a case of….

Google announced Trends today, which lets people perform a hybrid google ego battle so to speak between two or more topics over time.  Now this might not seem like much to you right now, but what it really means is that marketers can now precisely measure the popularity of certain topics in relation to others.Have you ever wondered if Bush was more popular than god? Well now you know that for a time, people were in fact more curious about him than the All Mighty.How does this affect you, the small business owner? Well now you can access mounds of data that was previously unavailable to you for free. This is the data that some SEO analysts or interactive marketing firms were able to get for you in the past, but required alot of data crunching and analysis.Interestingly, they are also referencing news events in the timelines (take this comparison of amazon to web2.0, techcrunch, and startups).