The competition for eyes, ears and wallets is more fierce everyday. In this blog, we often talk about the migration of all three of those things to the web. But the challenge is, as Kurt Cobain so brilliantly put it, “Here we are now. Entertain us!”

Savvy marketers are starting to figure out that engagement comes from creating quality content. Not from commercials, sales pitches, or top-down blogs or podcasts that pretend to be authentic. The secret is to build loyalty solving problems or providing services that do not NECESSARILY relate back to your core business in a straight line. (We’ll talk more about this in future posts, or you can check out our podcast for more details.)

Enter online media in the form of an audio or video podcast. Entities as diverse as BMW, Amazon.com, the Los Angeles Opera and even (ahem) Clearcast Digital Media have all figured this out. Marketing budgets seldom allow for TV campaigns, which are ephemeral, at best. But hear this: we are not talking about campaigns, we are talking about STRATEGIES. They’re long term, they’re lower cost and they last (virtually) forever.

We decided a long time ago that we were going to try and add value and cut through the clutter by providing valuable information that was useful to current clients, potential clients and casual observers. By exploiting our passion for new media, technology and production, we regularly publish this blog and its companion podcast for two reasons, one altruistic and one purely commercial. On the one hand, we LOVE talking about this stuff, analyzing it, trying to predict where things are going and trying to help our readers and listeners understand why they should care. On the other hand, we realize that by establishing our thought leadership, we become a considered source for that client who is looking to take the new media/social media plunge, but might not be sure how to get started.

We will talk a lot more about this in the future because I am convinced that this is the best way forward for marketers large and small. The cost of entry is much lower than a traditional offline media play, and the upside is limitless.