What's all this talk about the future?

Things move pretty fast here on the ol’ world wide web and if you don’t move pretty fast you’re liable to get passed up.  Or are you?  I’m relatively new to the blogosphere, social media sphere, and most every other ‘sphere’ out there, so a lot of the time it’s all new to me.  The one constant that I’ve found on my journey is that everyone seems to be trying to race to the end of the finish line.  Am I wrong here?  When did we abandon proven strategies?  Aren’t there still time-tested proven methods that will allow your marketing to succeed, regardless of what crazy new widget becomes available?

I’m certianly not the first to express this concern.  Recently Lorraine Ball posted an entry on her blog listing 9 guidelines for online marketing and how they are really the same guidelines that have always applied to forming a marketing strategy.  

Susan Murphy recently posted a rant on her blog about how the entire social media community seems to be ‘scrambling’ towards the next big thing, and how in the process they just end up producing a lot of redundant mediocre rigamarole.

There are basically two constants in business.  1)  There will always be a very small percentage of people who brashly push forward into the unknown and succeed by accident (usually accompanied by huge profits).  2)  There will always be a much higher percentage of people who follow a system that works and succeedslowly (though often with lower profit margins).

We are certainly at the dawn of a new era.  Marketing (and business for that matter) has already changed enormously as a result of the web.  However, we need to keep our heads and not get too carried away.  It is a long journey after all and there’s no reason to peter out early.

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