A Smart Start – Online Marketing Guides
Recently I receive the Yahoo PPC Guide Smart Start it is 82 pages with plenty of pictures and simple instructions. I would feel comfortable showing it to a client who wanted to know more about buying online advertising, I would not recommend it for a beginner trying to learn how to use the system. A definite win for this pamphlet is the troubleshooting guide. It is a good reference — I tore those pages out (77 -82) and put them by my desk.
For something a little more in depth about starting in pay per click advertising I suggest Google’s Guide (warning PDF download). This guide goes through the current tools that Google offers, short exercise that let you try it out, and an extensive glossary of terms. Again I think that the reference aspect of the glossary (page 138 – 154) is the most valuable part.
In both cases I think that anyone who is really looking to start should be reading the study materials from the Yahoo Ambassador test or Google AdWords Professional test. Going through the respective Official User documents will familiarize you with the systems much better.
Also on the theme of getting started — the Seattle Start Up Weekend was this weekend I am looking forward to see what they came up with. Start Up Weekends concept seems interesting, put a bunch of people in a room for a weekend to crush-out the details of a venture. I am not sure if this is a formula for good results. The short time seems a good push for creativity but the rest of the strangers in a room seems like it could fulfill the adage: none of us is as dumb as all of us. I haven’t attended an event so I don’t know how well their process works.
Apparently the result this time is SkillBit with the tagline “Your Teams Potential, Now!” Good luck to everyone involved
