This wiki is maintained by Dave Chaffey of SMARTinsights to help keep marketers up-to-date with developments in digital marketing

From Marketing Online

About the Marketing Online Wiki

Why create another wiki?

The Marketing Online Encylopedia is edited by Dr. Dave Chaffey, bestselling author of online marketing books used by many students and professionals worldwide.

I've created it to provide the online marketing community with a quality learning and reference resource for anyone looking to understand the concepts of marketing and digital marketing.

It uses the familiar and successful Wikipedia format, but using what I hope is a more comprehensive and better structured approach based on the experience I have gained in writing books on marketing and digital marketing.

Although I have written many books on marketing, I have become frustrated with the limitations of the linear book format and wanted to create a resource I could update more readily and link to other sources.

This wiki approach also supports my books and reports by making it easier to update the books with changes from previous editions, by using the update history system / version control system to easily highlight new topics and additions to existing topics.

I have also worked a lot on blogs, but the problem with the blogging model is that much of the content in posts soon becomes dated or duplication occurs making it less satisfactory for learning.

Who is the Marketing Online Wiki for?

I hope the wiki will help newcomers to marketing and digital marketing looking to learn more about these topics. Plus, you may already be working in these areas, but may simply be unfamiliar with some concepts or topics.

The content should help all students and people working in marketing, but since many of my books concentrate on larger, corporate companies, I wanted to make the guidance on this site more helpful for smaller companies.

So, in order of priority, the questions and answers covered should help these companies with their marketing:

1. Startup companies

2. Small and medium businesses (SMEs or SMBs)

3. Larger enterprises

Why was the Wiki created?

I've created the wiki since I'm keen to share my knowledge and expertise on digital marketing acquired over the last 15 years.

Over this time I've found many of the questions I'm asked are similar, so I wanted to create a resource based around common questions about definitions and approaches that are asked by those who are new to digital marketing or a specific area of digital marketing.

Who can edit the wiki?

Unlike most Wikis this Wiki is mainly the work of one person to help maintain its integrity. It simply uses the successful wiki publishing model of Wikipedia which is available through Wikimedia. This helps provide it with:

• Hierarchical (tree-like) structure through categories and sub-categories
• Cross-linking within wiki
• Links to other sites
• Ease of locating new content for incorporating into books through change control system
• Use of templates for enforcing categories
• Export to other formats for creating books
• Database storage

But if you would like to contribute to part of the Wiki I would be very pleased to hear from you. Please contact me via this form with the topic you could help with.

How is the Wiki funded?

Like my other sites, my wiki helps creates awareness and so prompt sales of my books and the in-depth reports I have written for Econsultancy. The site is also supported by Google Adsense contextual ads to other resources and services relevant to the different topics covered.