A very interesting and relevant Bizweek article

Found the following article by Dr Elaine Young, while generally browsing Businessweek

Teaching the Facebook Generation

Excellent article and recommended read for all. Talks about how expectations about skill-sets and competencies of Marketing majors have evolved over the past decade.

Sure, my bias shows through because I felt gratified my endeavor to balance the MKTR course with both Quant and Quali seems to be in the right direction..... Aaha!

The following passages found particular resonance

Over the past decade, there has been a sea change in the marketplace demands for graduates. Whereas broad skills used to be sufficient, now our students must demonstrate a set of concrete skills that not long ago were required only of those in highly technical majors. Nowhere has this change created a greater shift than in fields such as marketing and public relations, which traditionally have been viewed as nontechnical but are now demanding a technological competency that is astounding.

When I began teaching nearly 10 years ago, marketing and PR majors were expected to be stellar communicators, know the Four P's (Product, Promotion, Price, Place), have a good head on their shoulders, and have passion. Employers gobbled them up and trained them on specifics of the job.

Our traditional curriculum emphasized marketing, advertising, sales, research, and consumer behavior for the marketing major. For the PR major, writing, media relations, and campaign management were enough.

Aaah, those were the good ol' days, eh? The days of Auld Lang Syne indeed.

And here she comes up with some futuristic stuff (for India at any rate, it will still be some yrs before net usage in middle class India reaches anywhere near G7 levels and we can talk in terms of all this social-network marketing impacting business bottomlines here). But, doesn't hurt to look ahead and see what is coming, eh?

Today, marketing students also need to know basic HTML, design software such as the Adobe Suite, how to run a Google adwords campaign, how to optimize a Web site for search engines, how to analyze Web analytics data, develop a keyword strategy, and manage e-mail marketing campaigns. A basic knowledge of how social media including sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Twitter can be used to leverage a marketing message isn't optional—it's a requirement.

Make no mistake, we're heading there - the Mktg class for the class of 2012 or 2014 will be quite, quite different from that for 2010. The pace of change, already dizzyingly high, is further accelarating....

Of course, trust the academic-types to take swipes at 'the system', even one created and nurtured by they themselves....

Business school curricula mostly do not prepare students for this new digital world. Institutions recognize this, and many are catching up by offering courses and curricula in Internet marketing, digital media and new-media marketing. But the vast majority are not integrating these skills throughout. It's much easier to create a standalone course than it is to take the Introduction to Marketing class and change it so that it integrates analytics into the research or finance portion, or search engine optimization (SEO) into the writing/communication section.

The reality is that many businesses are struggling to wrap their arms around these developments as well. They actually are looking to new graduates to help them manage their digital strategies for them, with the assumption that because they are young they are familiar with the social media world. But our students cannot know how to leverage these tools professionally unless we teach them how. They must learn the difference in writing a news release, a blog post, a Twitter update, or generating content for a Facebook fan page. They have to know which metrics should be tracked on a Web site.

Well, to be fair, we did venture into the blogworld with this blog, didn't we? It was nowhere near as active, interactive and class-wide conversational as I'd dared hope for initially, but as first time course-teaching has so many other uncertainties to tackle, I decided to under-stress the blog aspect.

Now, another criticism I have of this piece is that often times, it might just about be mistaking style and fads for substance and function.

The core principles in any discipline, including Mktg, don't change every day, regardless of the packaging. Stress on modeling and using analytic tools (developing the basic ones on Excel, as we did in MKTR) is far more important than having no clue about these fundamental ways of understanding and framing real-life complexity but playing around on a Facebook or twitter account to make up for it, IMHO.

Those new social marketing skills one learns on the job, when confronted with a situ requiring reaching a Facebook audience. What is also invariably true is that so far nobody has figured out how to make money out of Facebook, including Facebook itself. I'd be wary of repeating another mania/bubble like the dotcom one where valuations exceeded realism and profitability.

Enough pessimism though.Back to the program:

The challenge for faculty in all business functions—and all disciplines across higher education for that matter—is staying on top of these changes and knowing what to teach in the classroom. More than ever, we must be life-long learners to stay fresh and understand these tools. From professional networking in learning communities with colleagues across the country, to seminars and conferences and building relationships with local businesses that have expertise in these areas, we have many resources at our disposal.

Last but not least:

Professors need to lead students by example by knowing the mechanics of social media and showing our students how to use them strategically for the good of their employers.

Aha. And there people, by moving to blogspot, moi and MKTR IMHO "led" by example....(:-D)

Rgds.

Sudhir