I entered university convinced that I would one day become ambassador to a swanky European country.  I left university with a Master’s degree in international relations and the realization that testing the waters of the private sector was really more my thing.

In 2006 I moved up to New Jersey from the DC-area and got a call about an executive assistant position that needed to be filled at an enterprise software company.  Within a month of holding that position, I had wedged myself into the fledgling marketing team.  Two years on, I am preparing to leave this position for a new opportunity, and I will take with me everything I learned in this tumultuous start-up environment.

1. Everybody has a different definition of marketing.  Some say it’s the promotion of a company’s goods or services; others maintain that it includes the “processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers.”  But fixating on the definition of marketing doesn’t mean you’re actually doing anything.

2. Marketing jargon, while thrown back and forth between marketeers with undeniable enthusiasm, is misused and misunderstood more often than not.  For those of you who have no idea what I mean by “marketing jargon,” Michael Bloch at TamingTheBeast.net provides an example:

“Through an inverted dynamic and proactive CRM process,  we are a best of breed online company – a goal-directed, innovative digital firm which fast tracks cyber stickiness through turnkey solutions that guarantee targeted eyeballs using multiple streaming channels and viral e-services, providing the best ROI on your media spend.”

3. Using two monitors instead of one is the best decision I ever made, especially where collecting data and doing graphic design are concerned.

4. Work for a start-up, and not only will you get to wear jeans every day and blast music in the office, but you’ll also get to go for beers on occasion with the C-level executive team.  Where else would you get that opportunity?

5. If you can’t sell a ‘new media’ idea to your old-school boss, continue to slip it into conversation wherever possible.  Eventually, it will stick.  Or, it will become so ingrained in their minds that they’ll shout it out at an executive meeting and get the credit for it.  Either way, your idea will be put into place.

6. Don’t be the sole administrator for a CRM system for longer than six months.  If you are, be aware that training a new person to take over, who has never used the system before, is a bit of an overwhelming affair, especially if you only have your obligatory two weeks to do it.

7. Metrics are great, unless the team can’t agree on them.

8. Success in marketing isn’t black and white; everything you do ends up looking a funny shade of gray.  If you want black and white, join finance.

9. If you must, use the first month or so on the job to be a listener in meetings.  After that, you have no excuse.  Speak up.  No matter your level, your opinion does matter.

10. People laugh at off-site, team-building exercises, but they work.  Especially when you get to be completely honest and blunt about your team members, and they get to do the same to you.  Think of it as a character-building experience.  Constructive criticism is the way to build loyalty and trust.

11. Knee-jerk reactions generally don’t end well.  For your newly-implemented marketing processes to succeed, you really need to give them at least a few months to mature.  One week doesn’t give you a clear view of anything, especially in online marketing.

12. If you don’t support the product you’re supposed to be marketing, you shouldn’t be marketing it.

13. You’re going to make mistakes, but you learn from them.  And it’s nice if you have a boss who realizes this point and who believes in giving second chances.

What other advice would you give entry-level marketing folks?

• 38 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started in Marketing
• 10 Marketing Lessons I Learned from 10,000+ Message Forum Posts
• Internet Marketing Makes the Grade

The Deal, a provider business and financial news to corporate and financial dealmakers, advisers and institutional investors, interviewed a number of gurus and entrepreneurs at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City last week regarding the current state of Internet business in the growing recession and their reactions to such.

While venture capitalists see a bleaker future for start-ups seeking funding, CEO Miles Beckett of Eqal, the company behind Internet phenomena lonelygirl15 and KateModern, believes that sound money-management is key to surviving in a bad economy.  “The good thing is, entertainment does well in a recession,” he said, laughing.  “We’ve always been very, very cost-conscious as a company … we try not to overhire, try not to reach too far, too fast.”  Eqal’s chief operating officer, Greg Goodfried, notes that strategic partnerships are key to generating revenue in the short-term, but to maintain internal ideas and projects for long-term growth.

Companies that sell sales and marketing tools are in a very healthy place as well.  Umberto Milletti is CEO of InsideView, a company that proclaims to “take advantage of the convergence of social media and enterprise applications – what [they] call ’socialprise’ – and bring the insights gained from subscription-based and user-generated sources to the enterprise.”

Milletti says, “Historically, sales and marketing applications like ours are helped by a tough economy,” citing Salesforce.com’s success in the early part of this decade.  “Frankly, I think [a poor economy] is sometimes the best opportunity because the weak companies get weeded out, and the strong ones make it.  For a healthy market, you do need these times where the good companies break away from the not-as-compelling companies.”

Mary Kathleen Flynn, Senior Editor at The Deal, also speaks with Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Lane Becker of GetSatisfaction, and Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, and you can view the entire interview at BlipTV.

The economy’s rough, and it will probably get worse before it gets better, and to survive in a poor economy you should always consider the following:

1. Be cost-conscious.  Don’t overspend, don’t overhire.  You don’t need that corporate jet just yet.
2. Have integrity.  Your potential customers are likely to be very concerned about budgets right now, so ensure that you don’t tell them one thing and deliver another.
3. Don’t lay your big ideas to rest, but put them aside for now in favor of immediate revenue-generating projects.  Remember that this too shall pass.  The U.S. been through a number of recessions, and that is likely the same for other countries, but economies do bounce back in the end.

And if in fact you provide a service that thrives in a poor or unstable economy, enjoy it now!  Those offering cost-friendly alternatives to pricier products should use this time to their advantage, and focus on the soft spots within companies that are struggling now with the high costs of their current solutions.  Providing a more efficient solution to companies that need it, while earning some revenue for your own company, is just great business.

• Advertising in a Recession means Digital, SEO, and SMO
• Can Social Media Grow In a Recession?
• A Top Ten List for Mobile Marketers Facing Recession

And it’s not just YouTube and Twitter that are spawning like-minded children.

It was thanks to Jun’s post on Hey Stephanie that I heard about 12seconds.tv, but it was also thanks to Hey Stephanie taking him on as a guest blogger that I heard of Jun’s new venture. Jun is Chief Marketing Officer for Future Delivery, a start-up that develops technology for students and professionals while shrinking the divide between Generation X and Generation Y.  Its flagship product, FD World, takes the best from Second Life and LinkedIn and mixes them together to form a virtual world in which students and professionals can interact, network, recruit, and collaborate.

Intrigued?  I know I am.

Future Delivery also offers what they call FD Office, a project management tool that “creates a virtual representation of your company, where each employee is able easily communicate with offices nationwide, outsourced personnel, employees at client sites, and allows each employee to express themselves uniquely which adds to the positive employee culture of the company.”  Forget about boring ‘ol instant messenging; this really has the potential for increasing productivity, fueling conversation, and managing costs effectively.  And hey, isn’t that what social media is all about?