What a student needs to know about marketing

First off, let's simplify things a little.

SEO is dead. SEO was when we could add some meta tags to a website, submit it to Google every 2 weeks and we were off to the races. That was "Search Engine Optimization", literally, optimizing your site for search. Now a days that stage is can be considered in the same realm as creating a standards compliant CSS.

On to PPC. PPC is nothing more than a targeted media buy where the buy is made on a keyword basis. Learn the tools or hire someone who knows them.

Everything else is online marketing. It's just like regular marketing, on this time, it's online.

What that means is that you still need a valuable product, a good message, a strong call to action and access to a targeted marketplace. Everything you learned in school is still applicable. The primary difference between on and off line marketing is the measurement options and ability to change things whenever however.

With online marketing, you can track damn near everything. Set up your metrics and test, test, test, test. Did I mention TEST!!!!.

That is basically it. Everything else is learning how to build a usable site and gaining a solid understanding of user behavior. Do keep in mind that every site, every market and every person, while they do have things in common are indeed unique people and making them feel special even on a million hits a day site will be crucial to that sites success.

PS. Don't even get me started on conversational marketing and community building.

Most colleges are behind the curve because the people setting the lessons don't tend to be actively involved in the industry.

It wasn't very long ago that I was being taught to program Pascal at college.

Well, I have learned everything I know about SEM/SEO from reading blogs and any SEM books I could get my hands on old or new. I know what you mean, as a recent graduate myself, I didn't come across SEM ever in any class so you just kind of have to be self taught. I wouldn't expect to be trained on the job and it would probably be good if you had the initiative to learn it yourself.

I am pretty much in the same boast as you. I had a business degree with a Concentration in E commerce in school. They didnt mention SEM /SEO in school ever. I had to learn it all on my own.

I think bar none the best place to learn SEM/ SEO is to get your hands dirty with test sites. Don't expect to learn it all from reading articles. They help, don't get me wrong, but your test sites will do you a lot more good.

I think most SEO/PPC/SEM people are self taught. I learned most of my stuff on the job and by reading articles written by the leaders in the industry.

Here's my thoughts on How to Learn SEO