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

If you’re tempted to think the following post is just another one of those rants, don’t. I really do want you to picture me holding this gun to your head as you read it. That’s how serious I am.

You’ve heard it over and over. Some hotshot techno geek gets in your face and says you’ve gotta have a website, or a blog, or run an email campaign, or use Flash, or use video, or do this or do that, blah, blah, blah.  As your eyes glaze over you wonder if he’ll ever get to the part about how much this will cost and whether or not it will help you make any money.

Unfortunately it doesn’t matter anymore if it will make you any money at all. Zip. Zero. Nada. What counts is how much it could cost you if you don’t.

You MUST have some stake in the online world. You MUST have some way to join the conversations (no matter how nasty or one sided they may be) and you MUST have some way for people who are looking for you to find what you have to say. Here’s a little story that shows just how far the Internet has matured and how much power the online marketing savvy really do hold over the profitability of your business.

My car broke down. It died on the side of the road and I had to have it towed to my favorite mechanic. He’s a certified master mechanic who has treated me fairly for years. It hurt him to have to tell me I needed to take it to a dealership for the diagnostic equipment and tools they have.

It hurt me to learn they wanted $800 to fix my car. It hurt me even more that I knew the person I spoke to was padding the repair heavily describing each part in terms such as “essential plugs and wires” and misquoting what this or that part does. I called my mechanic back and asked what he thought of the estimate and work to be done. Then I called the dealership back with a request for an estimate on just the one vital part to be replaced.

The dealership came back with two “absolutely crucial” things to be fixed and a new quote of $500. Thank God we got the $300 tune up off the table. I bet he thought I should have been happy he was looking out for my best interests. He raised his voice to emphasize just how sincere he was about not wanting to let his own wife or daughter drive off in a job half done not knowing whether that second part could go bad at any time. I didn’t need my master mechanic to tell me that was a scare tactic, but it was very nice of him to apologize to me on behalf of a fellow mechanic none the less.

This dealership is probably well aware of the marketing fact that a happy customer will tell 3 other people about their experience and that an unhappy customer will tell 9. So I’m sure in their staff meetings there is a Service Manager who drums home being polite to customers, sounding sincere, etc. Under those circumstances even an unhappy customer will have cooled off somewhat by the time they drive home and in a day or two will have moved on to other gripes. If you act politely, they may only tell 2 or 3 friends after all.

What they most assuredly haven’t taken into account is that the Internet has changed this enormously and permanently. In addition to having this blog, I could also post about my experience on Facebook, MySpace, and in my Friendfeed rooms.  I also have Twitter.

I’ve searched my local midwest metropolitan area for other people who use Twitter. Between Rockford and surrounding areas, there are more than 100 Twitterers. In 140 characters, I can make sure that everyone of them know about my situation. I could rally them to retweet my warning to everyone who follows them. I could link through to this blog post, or any one of those other social posting places and do all of that in less than one hour if I chose to.

By the end of the day, how many people will have heard? How many people have every been in a situation similar to mine? Do you think they would be easily persuaded that I am telling the truth? I am by the way, but I ask that to drive home the point.

If you are in business today, you simply must have an outlet to tell the world who you are, what you are and what you stand for. You need to have your story told somewhere, somehow, and you need to be able to jump in to the conversations around you right now. Today. This morning.

You may choose not to respond to every story like mine. In fact, if this dealership was a client of mine I would done everything possible to convince them NOT to respond immediately or in kind to my story, no matter how many twitterers contacted them to find out if it were true. But they still need to have a way for all those twitterers to reach them. Right from the beginning I would have had them using those avenues to tell people stories of the repair experiences that went right. We would have included a disclaimer that not all do and may have even pointed out that sometimes we had to turn repair requests down, but we would have been able to do it in a controlled way.

If even a local car dealership’s service department needs to be able to talk to their customers where their customers are today, don’t you think you owe it to your business to be able to do so as well?

Posted under local business