I totally agree with her supposition about ‘E-mail Marketing’ as a term slowly fading away as we find more and more vehicles to get our messages in front of the customer, consumer or client – the marketing doesn’t change, just the medium in which we do it.

But I think the key point that’s missing is that we need to change the discourse and make our superiors (whether those are bosses or clients) realize that marketing online is a much more holistic medium now and doesn’t just involve ‘an e-mail blast to tweak some sales’ (said to me more often than I care to count – as an aside, I hate the term ‘blast.’ Makes me think my client is Dick Cheney with a shotgun on a hunting trip: dangerous and not good for anyone on the other side of that ‘blast.’).

No, it’s now our responsibility as marketers to make people realize that any marketing content is going to be used across multiple mediums, and that the audience is having more and more control in how they interact with us. That the convergence that was mentioned almost a decade ago as the holy grail of technology and marketing is finally happening today and that our messages will be seen on Facebook, MySpace, Del.icio.us, TiVo, the iPhone, the Android, the billboard, or the internet-enabled car stereo.

We’ve finally entered the age of true, interactive marketing.

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After thinking that through and having some great conversations with people, I decided to dip my toe into the water of making money with ads on my WordPress Blog.

Now what I mean by dipping my toe into the water is I have decided to only add Google AdSense ads to the bottom of the post. I think this way I can see if they work and still not feel like I have put them there just to make money. I still believe that with anything you do when you blog that you must at all times keep your message and the readers in mind, or the content stops being relevant. That is when people will stop reading what you have to say.

So, as I keep an eye on the traffic and the ads I would love to hear what you all think. Do you find them a distraction? Do they bring down the value of the information on the site? Drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

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