An email. One. Because, maybe twenty years ago, your email inbox didn’t get an awful lot of action. Heck, you probably didn’t even refer to it as in inbox. It was just “my email”. Email zero as a concept did not exist, because it was a given. You received an email, and you read it. Done. No more email to read. Until the next time, which might be in another day or two.

There are parallels here, of course, with regular mail. Snail mail, if you will. Twenty years before email, being sent something in the (actual) mail was exciting. It was almost always personal, and as such demanded your attention – which you were happy to give. And then, slowly but surely, what started to come through the letterbox changed. You still got those lovely letters from friends and family, albeit occasionally, but now you had bills, too. And direct mail shots. Then junk mail. Flyers for takeaway restaurants where you would never eat and postcard-sized promos for businesses that you would never use. Endless, endless junk mail. So much, in fact, that it ruined all of mail for you. And everybody else. Those personal letters stopped arriving. Pretty soon, it was almost nothing but demands and aggravation. Who looks forward to that?

Email went the same way, of course. It’s now just part of your job. Something you have to do. And, accordingly and so often, impersonal, automated, and cold.

Is this what’s happening to social media marketing, too?

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you’re a person of a certain age – that is, depressingly young – it’s highly likely you’ve never known a world without the web. While the origins of the internet can be traced back to 1969, it wasn’t until the 1990s and the launch of the first proper browser that the medium really started to take off, with Yahoo!, Google, e-commerce and the birth of social media each playing a hugely important role en route to the present day, when it’s almost impossible to imagine a life without these tools.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sales professionals have been using technology to both open doors and close deals with consumers for a lot longer than you probably think. The invention of the printing press back in 1440 revolutionised the world, and the telephone (1870), computer (1960s), widespread adoption of email and the internet (1990s), Google (1996) and social media (2000s) have each played a massively important role in how brands market their products.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Do you remember all the way back to January, when Pinterest was named the best new startup of 2011, and Facebook introduced Timeline? In May Facebook had their much-hyped IPO, August saw Instagram top Twitter for daily active users and in November, President Obama’s election victory message became the most retweeted Twitter post of all time.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

But social isn’t (and never was) just these two platforms – in fact, it actually predates both of them by over thirty years. Yep. The history of social media is, essentially, the history of the internet, and you will find its roots in email, usenet, the world wide web, blogs and (gasp) AOL.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and his metal movable type would ultimately lead to the mass-production of flyers and brochures. Magazines emerged in the 1730s, and the first paid advertisement appeared in France in 1836.

Marketing posters on private property were banned in London in 1839, and it wasn’t until 1867 that the earliest recorded billboard rentals appeared. In 1922, radio advertising commenced, with TV making its debut in 1941. Telemarketing in the 1950s led to desktop publishing in the 1980s. Modern search engines started appearing in the mid-1990s, with Google making its debut in 1998.

MySpace and LinkedIn emerged in 2003, Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. And with the enormous success of the iPhone and iPad, mobile marketing began to make serious waves just a few years ago.

So, here’s the big question: what’s next?

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Indeed, the foundations of the movement are scattered across numerous platforms, many of which have come and gone, and it’s generally accepted that the beginnings of social media date back to the very basic (but hugely popular) bulletin board systems of the 1970s and 80s.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.