03 Aug 2009

Why didn’t I do that? Social media explained

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 the same great teachers (including Ed Dale, Dan Raine  and Bob Summerfield-thank you!).

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.

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Posted in Social marketing | No Comments »
21 Jun 2009

Search engine optimization tool is easy, but…

One of the hardest working plugins you will add to your blog is the All In One SEO plugin. It’s free, and easy to install and use.  But it won’t do you any good unless you use it. It’s not automatic.

This plugin allows you to set a separate title (what appears in the top bar of your browser), description and keywords for each post and page on your blog. That’s a tremendously powerful combination.

The title bar as the first element of the page is very important to your search ranking. Use the keywords you want this post to rank for in the beginning of your page title. Some people repeat the blog name at the end of each title, but this hasn’t been proven to be vital to success.
The description is for your human readers. In one to two brief sentances, you don’t want to tell your reader what the article is about. You want to tell they why it’s important, or why they should click through to read the rest of it. The description should be a teaser. If it’s not that sort of post or page, use several of the related keywords and tags that apply to the page.  Just don’t leave it to the spiders to pick out the first 160 characters they find on your page. That will most likely be giberish.
The keywords are your chance to have this blog post, written eight months after your blog was launched as the fourth in a series of technical how-to articles, become the front door for search engine spiders, referral site linkers, researching prospects and potential clients with money in-hand alike. Deep linking can improve your overall rank in the search engines as well.
BUT…you have to actually use the opportunities this plug in gives you. Don’t let yourself be shortchanged because you only have time to add a link to someone else’s article as your blog post today. Plan on two to three minutes with each and every post to craft this information as carefully as you do your lead paragraph or headline.

It’s that important. Every time.

Posted in Search optimization | No Comments »
08 May 2009

Email marketing: it feels great to say no

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 in Lead generation (email) | No Comments »
04 Apr 2009

Internet marketing goes retrograde

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.

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 in Inbound marketing | No Comments »
02 Apr 2009

Tweet links and blog posts build rank together

Randfish said on the SEOmozBlog that he and Darren Rowse had talked about blogging evolving away from sharing, and how that might leave an opening for twitter links to start trumping blog posts and appearing above them in the search engine results. The importance of rankings for any business makes this worthy of serious thought. He said:

…It seems very likely to me that the search engines will need to start relying on Twitter’s tweet graph, particularly for “new” information and content. Darren and I remarked that:

* Twitter, and sites that aggregate data from it, like Tweetmeme, actually expose content before social voting sites like Digg, Reddit or Hacker News
* It can be 12-24 hours between when content is first “tweeted” vs. when it earns its first external link
* Many pieces of “throwaway” content (a quick, funny image, post or video) will earn virtually no links, even if hundreds of people have shared them on Twitter

I think it’s way too early to determine if this trend is real, or if it will continue, but the SEO industry has been talking for years about when the engines might start to evolve beyond link analysis. This is one of the first credible expansions I’ve seen.

I am very happy to see this evolution unfold and ultimately think it’s good for both blogging and Twitter. Removing the “junk” and overly personal posts on many blogs improves their quality and relevance for a reader immensely. At the same time, confining those personal tidbits and shares to a micro 140 character outburst makes them a lot more palatable and desirable.

In a time starved world, the twitter/blog combo is a perfect division of labor. I can still convince myself that I am connecting with people even if all I get is a brief glimpse through their eyes at what is funny, important, fascinating, or revolting to them. I get that through the links they share on twitter. Of course, to truly connect we must engage each other in real conversations and use @replies, etc. that aren’t solely self-serving…

Even if all I do on twitter is absorb other people’s tweets and links, I can then explore, in depth and dimension, the blog posts that those links take me to. If twitter forces bloggers to concentrate and present more unique, high quality content, in the hopes of gaining links, more power to it.

That makes twitter the sizzle and blogs the steak. Having that sizzle come in the form of a 140 character message is a huge relief after enduring looooonnng sales letters, and squeeze pages of no information fluff in hopes of getting a bite of real meaty content.

So here’s my bottom line contribution to the discussion Rand and Rowse had:
I’m no search engine algorithm expert, but I do work every onpage and offpage angle I can to help my clients rank well and grow their business.

I wonder if, instead of taking over the rankings directly, twitter will play another important role in the future of search. I can see a “tweet score” being added to Google’s algorithm instead of  tweets outranking posts. If tweets are replacing blog links it makes sense for a tweet score to replace the pagerank formula so many experts have already remarked no longer seems to hold much meaning. It makes even more sense when you consider that pagerank measured the importance of who linked to you.

Even if Twitter is cannabalizing links, I can’t see Google feeding it search prominance while waiting around to see if Yahoo or MSN is going to buy it. They’ll gobble it up first by incorporating it in their supersecret formula (and it won’t cost them a buyout penny). At least that’s what I would do if I were Google.

Posted in Social marketing | No Comments »
31 Mar 2009

Blogs are the perfect internet marketing tool

Blogs are websites, but not the static, unchanging kind. They have been purposely designed to be easy to change. Their coding is completely hidden to allow anyone to grow their web business without having to know a single thing about how it all works. that makes them an extremely powerful Internet marketing tool.

Busy business owners who have no desire to spend hours on the web can use blogs to keep in touch with current customers and attract new ones to their business in minutes. Posts that feature a specific product or service, comment on current news and how it affects potential buyers, remind people of a scheduled event, or just wish readers a happy holiday don’t have to take hours to write to be effective. In fact, when blogging, a simple, conversational style in a shorter format has proven to be far more effective than long, formal articles.

There’s also plenty of help available if your blog starts doing it’s job so well you need to devote every minute to running your business, not blogging. (Yes, that was a shameless plug).

This blog was set up to show you what I do when I set a blog up for you.  I include several posts that talk about specific features, functions and benefits that make my blog installations extra powerful search engine marketing vehicles as well as the kind of professional storefront you want your visitors to associate with your business.

Once we have your blog set up and you understand how to keep building on the base I’ll provide, you’re not done. Subscribe to my RSS feed to keep getting valuable information on how to turn your new blog into a tireless business generator.

Oh, and did you notice the one thing this – and all my posts are missing?

Posted in Blog building | No Comments »
15 Feb 2009

Website vs blog: can you spot the differences?

I wish I could just fold my whole website into my blog. In my case though, the coding of the site itself (pure CSS layout) is part of my professional portfolio so I can’t.

But you probably could. And you probably should.

Blog is both a noun and a verb. Post is also used as both a noun and a verb in the blogosphere. That’s a bit of confusion that’s led a lot of people to think the mechanics behind blogging (the verb) and posting (the verb) are a lot harder than they really are. Such semantics don’t count with blogs (the noun) the same way they do for a post (the noun) on a website where the coding of a post (the noun) also makes up the structure of the website.

If you do know even a little bit of coding (specifically CSS or PHP), you can usually find and remove a little snippet of code from your blog’s main page and post templates that removes the automatic insertion of the date of the post. That, along with another tweak or two, makes your blog a full fledged and very robust content management system. Not too long ago, only enterprise sized companies could afford the powerful back-end programming that is a CMS.

Today, anyone can have a clearly and cleanly designed web home that consists of thousands of pages or posts of information. If you have the time to set it up and tweak it correctly yourself, you can have it all for free. If you don’t have that time, there are plenty of people (like me) who are happy to help.

So unless you need to show you control the technology behind your website, why let it weigh you down and take up one minute more of your time? With a blog you can update your content as quickly and easily as you can type an email. If typing is even a bit too much of a chore for you, you can also turn on your webcam (or microphone) and record a video, or audio, blog post.

You just concentrate on saying what you need to say as clearly and concisely as you can and both you and your readers will be happy.  The only people who are likely to care if your site is made up of webpages or blog posts are the IT people who helped build the engine you’re using to run it all, or the web designers who lost their jobs because of it.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
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