the business of blogging

I’m no astrologist. I’ve never even done any marketing work for one, or I would know a lot more about the science behind that daily horoscope than I do.  And, even though I do read my horoscope,  I can’t say I usually remember it five minutes later.

But there is a word that intrigued me enough when I first saw it in a horoscope to look it up. The word was “retrograde.” It’s a scientific term referring to the relative motion of two objects. In astrology it’s used to cover the whole period of time that a planet appears to be  moving backwards, away from the earth.  Here’s how the Astrology Weekly dictionary defines its effects:

It is generally considered that a transiting planet is more likely to develop its negative qualities when it is in retrograde. That it is turning back for a recheck of ground already covered need not necessarily be bad, except for the fact that the future is held in abeyance. Some people look upon any delay as a tragedy, but the real difference has to do with whose neck is in the noose when the postponement of execution is decreed. In some cases it may mean only a temporary delay that is compensated for when the planet resumes its direct motion.

Judging by the rising pile of rehashed, recycled, recovered, and reworded junk piling up in my inbox these days, I’d say Internet Marketing has gone retrograde.

I hope your inbox doesn’t look like mine. I deliberately stay on the mailing lists of dozens of people who represent the three or four main schools of Internet Marketing sharks, er, gurus.  That way I stay in touch with what they’re selling these days.  Consider these offerings:

• A high priced, exclusive training course on how to sell search marketing to local businesses - billed a rate higher than most students can expect to make from the activity in a year. I ought to know, I tried to sell local businesses on the idea in 2006. (Hey Rockford, you remember, right?)
• Another chestnut from 2006 is being repackaged for the 2nd time in an attempt to squeeze one more dime out of the product. This time when the market bit at the 5,000 offered, the author got a bit too greedy and offered another 10,000. Last I read he’s still sitting on 2,000 of them. So much for fake scarcity.
• Speaking of chestnuts, there are literally hundreds of things every one of us can do to increase our sales results a little bit here and there. Last time out, these quick fixes were valued at $39. This time they’ll cost you $697.
• Five affiliates of one seller sent me the exact same message touting the templates and scripts for a social networking site so that I could start the “next Facebook.” I got mine when they were the ‘Giveaway of the Day’ 18 months ago.
• One last blooper was actually left in the final edit of the video sales pitch for one of the 3,750,000 products (I googled it) out there that will help you earn more with Twitter. The speaker said he earned $19,000 from Twitter. His interviewer said, “wow. I thought it was $5,000…”

All of these examples are throwbacks to the web 1.0 marketing tactics that we all said were to blame for the rise of web 2.0 “marketing democracy” and socialization. That’s retrograde behavior all right. And it comes at a good time.

When we have 101,000,000 “expert” offerings on how to use a social network that didn’t exist three years ago, the bloom is off the social rose. Even the gurus are “unfollowing,” shedding friends by the thousands and buffering themselves from the mob with Facebook fan pages these days because they admit they can’t stand the noise.

I can’t shake the feeling that the pressure is building faster now. It’s almost like we’re sitting atop the next volcanic explosion of change. Or maybe the planets are just about to swing through that last retrograde angle and appear to snap back into forward motion.

It’s time to move on from here. Time to get out of the schoolyard where everybody cares a little too much about what everybody else thinks and get back to business.

You do what you do best, and I’ll do what I do best and if we need each other’s services we’ll pay for them. I’ll stop pretending to be an astrologist who can predict the future if you’ll stop pretending to be a marketer. Deal?

Posted under social marketing

Yeah! I got a client to say no to an email marketing project today. I wasn’t alone in saying no, and that makes me feel good too.

Yes, I help clients organize emails, and newsletters, and do the creative for them, etc., etc., and that this could have cost me money and future business from other clients wanting to do the same sort of thing and needing to see samples of it, but I don’t care. There are times like this when I know for a fact that my client is better off not having exposed her business to 400,000 people.

This client is launching an existing business into a new market niche. She has a new website with an eCommerce functionality that has taken nearly a year to build. I am helping her with a blog that will drive traffic to that site.

She was excited to be approached by someone who offered an email list of 400,000 supposedly qualified and interested prospects. Who wouldn’t jump at a chance to jumpstart a new business with that sort of exposure, right?

Unfortunately the person offering the database wouldn’t or couldn’t even send us a simple email stating that he legally owned the database and had the right to rent it to us. The programmer who has spent the last year lovingly creating a 1,500 item eCommerce engine and I ganged up on the client to remind her that she’s come too far and worked too hard to throw everything away.

Moral of the story is an old one…if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Compound that old common sense with the new reality that nearly anything and everything can be tracked on the Internet and you have a recipe for business disaster. If  you send emails to a stolen list (or one that is just “scraped” and not double opted), you are just as tainted and guilty as the person who stole (or obtained that list under shady circumstances).

Building a business online takes time. Real time, not just Internet time. The tried and true techniques we use to get your site ranked and increase human traffic to your site work, but usually take at least 3-6 months to see results. The one thing we can do today that will show you results today is Pay Per Click advertising and that will cost money instead of time.

There are no shortcuts if you want to build a business.

Posted under social marketing

I’m having one of those “smack your forehead” moments.

Michelle McPhearson has written a report I should have written. It’s what I do for my clients and it’s the way I do it. We do it the same because we both have taken our online experiences and melded them with what we learned from great teachers, Ed Dale and company, during the 30 Day Challenge in 2008.

What’s different is that she recognized an opportunity to turn that into an information product that will lead to passive income sales online. That’s another thing I help a lot of my clients do.

So why can’t I seem to do it so well for myself?

I can tell myself it’s because I’m busy down here in the trenches trying to drum up (and finish) the business that’s going to pay the rent this month. And yes, I recognize that as the same sort of excuse I hear from prospective clients who know they should be doing more to market themselves online, but aren’t.

Like all excuses, it sounds good, but doesn’t really get to the heart of what’s holding me back.

Social media marketing is such a natural outgrowth of everything that’s come before that it falls into my “everyone knows this, it’s not special” category.  I suspect everyone who’s been working in their profession for a while knows exactly what I’m talking about. All of us tend to take our knowledge and the value of our lifelong experiences for granted this way.

In my case, the basics of what you have to do to attract qualified buyers to your website or blog is not some new secret I just tripped over. It’s something I’ve actually been doing for years.  Time has blurred many of the painful lessons it took me to learn what works and what doesn’t, so I have a hard time thinking of it as something valuable that someone else would be willing to pay for.

So I’m once again vowing to treat myself and my life experience with a little more respect. If you’re in my boat, I hope you will too.

And I’m recommending that everyone in earshot get themselves over to http://www.socialmediamyth.com/ and sign up for Michelle’s free and wonderfully valuable and readable report right now. There are no great and profound “secrets” being withheld by greedy gurus to be uncovered in a $97 per month private membership setting, but web 2.0 social marketing does take time and effort. Armed with Michelle’s report you’ll know where to apply that time and effort. If you don’t have the time, you’ll at least know why I do the things I do on your behalf… and why they work.

Posted under social marketing