jdMorgan - 7:53 pm on Jul 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

Claus,

Interesting subject... No short title can possibly cover all of those activities to the point of being self-explanatory, but something like "Internet (or Web) Marketing Project Manager/Coordinator/Consultant" with the last part variable, depending on whether it's a hired position or a consulting contract, and the level at which you interface with the company; "Manager" if you're actually given carte-blanche to tell everyone what to do, and "coordinator" if you're expected to work withing the established management structure.

As far as defusing the problem of people feeling threatened, you can point out that you are consulting (even consulting with *them* personally) and that you're not enough of a specialist in their field of expertise and experience to take over their job.

Enjoy the word-of-mouth referrals! Those are likely to be your best source. It should be very effective to have someone who has worked with you explain to a potential new client what you can do before you meet with them. You might even try to arrange to listen in -- like maybe at lunch with both -- to give you ideas on how to market yourself to your different types of clients.

As far as explaining this on your Web site, how about some "case histories" of past projects? Your "multi-view" description above certainly helped me to understand what you're doing, and I think it could help others; It's comprehensive enough that everyone is likely to find at least some part of it that they understand (and can "judge").

One of the best project managers I've ever worked with was a fan of Tom Peters' Managing by Walking Around. He spent about half of his day traveling from facility-to-facility, department-to-department, and talking with *anyone* who had a few minutes to spare. He didn't know that the machines we needed were going to be late because he read it in a third-generation week-old status report, he knew because he stopped at the receiving dock and asked one of the guys who unloads trucks, and the guy said that the shipment hadn't come in this morning. I imagine he drove 60 miles a day, and walked 20, but *no-one* understood how the company worked and how it was doing better than he did. This might not scale well for very large companies, but it worked well for one with 8000 employees, spread over 16 buildings in a 200 square-mile area.

Jim