To be honest (and running the risk of indicting and/or emabrassing myself), I can’t really say that I keep up to date with what’s going on in the world of advertising/marketing/PR by checking websites and following gurus on Twitter etc. So, needless to say, taking NMDL and this class have been and will continue to be a great learning experience for me.

One learning resource that I am familiar with, however, is Mashable. There are a lot of things that I really like about the site. For one, it tries to incorporate humor and other things “normal” people (i.e. those with no specific interest in social media as it pertains to business) would be interested in. A lot of the articles are presented as useful and to-the-point lists or how-to guides (like 39 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed or 5 URL Expanders to Help You Avoid Spammy Links). As someone who hasn’t completely committed to and immersed their life in the world of online marketing, I think the way Mashable presents information is fantastic. They’re doing their part to educate the masses – without the masses even realizing they’re being educated.

Another useful resource I have found is eMarketer. Unlike Mashable, it seems to be geared much more toward the professional. The information is more indepth and research-driven. This difference is easy to see when comparing the two sites in terms of, for example, social media sharability.

This image shows a list of articles from Mashable’s homepage:

And this shows eMarketer’s homepage:

Here, you can see that sharing buttons only appear once you click on individual articles. This helps make the homepage look less cluttered, but also illustrates the difference in overall tone/approach between the two sites. For me, Mashable is a site that I would visit every day because it offers both useful information and humor while eMarketer is more useful for professionals or those looking for more indepth data etc.