We're writing this as we begin the development of our website and our journey into the world of educating and training of social network marketing.  We've been doing this for several years now, having taken the leap early on into Friendster... then MySpace... then Facebook, and have watched and participated in hundreds if not thousands of conversations happening BETWEEN individuals.  This is the major difference and the shift we're seeing in marketing today... learning to speak WITH people instead of TO them.  Speaking TO our prospective clients is what everyone in the marketing world seems to just know... we all take it for granted that things have always been this way.  Yet watching the series Mad Men helps to illustrate that there really was a start point... a beginning to mass advertising as we've seen it for most of our lifetimes.

That world is going away... slowly for those already undertaking social media marketing as their primary set of tools for making outreach to their prospective clients... way too fast for those still strongly connected to the 1/4-page print ad and the 30-second TV commercial.  Way too fast, even, for those who have just barely gotten their heads around banner ads and e-mail campaigns.

So we welcome you all to join us on this journey as we seek to educate and train an entire new breed of marketers... those who actually understand the novel concepts of quality and not quantity in the realm of Twitter and Facebook followers... who understand how a blog, some photos on Flickr and a video on YouTube can form the foundation of a social media marketing strategy that employs not only Twitter and Facebook, but also LinkedIn, a few social networks on Ning, perhaps Yelp and even TripAdvisor.