My Travels on the Net

This blog has moved.

2009-09-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

You can now find this blog, all of its old posts and fresh posts and the new address http://emarketingstrategist.com/blog/.

Be sure to change your bookmarks and/or RSS subscriptions.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Should I Have a Blog?

2009-04-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve spent as much time talking clients out of starting a blog as I’ve spent talking them into a blog. If you hate to write (or can’t pay someone else to do it), can’t find the time to write, or don’t think you have anything to say, save yourself the heartache and don’t start a blog. But! If you want to get clients from the internet and are willing to write (or pay someone to do it), blogging is a great way to get people into your sales funnel.
The following is a down-and-dirty quick way to decide if blogging is for you and your business.

Benefits of a Blog:
- It’s a lot easier to add a new blog post than it is a new web page. With a little training, a non-technical person can add a blog post but you need a programmer to add a web page.
- A blog is a great way to build relationships online.
- A blog is a great way to keep in touch with clients and prospects.
- Because readers can comment on what you’ve written, you can create a dialogue with readers. (Depending on how you set up a blog, you can moderate comments before they are viewable to others.)
- A blog is a great way to become a recognized expert in your industry and to the media.
- People can find your business in ways they otherwise wouldn’t be able to find you. (i.e. blog directories, mentions in other blogs, social media sites like Digg or Technorati)

Blogging Options:
The first decision that needs to be made about a blog is figuring out where it will “live.” A blog (like a website) needs to be hosted on a server. There are two ways to do this:
Use a service like https://www.blogger.com/ where the blog lives on their server.
Host your blog on the same server as your website.
(The following gaping space is brought to you by Google.)

Here are the benefits and drawbacks of each:
	Using a Service	Hosting Your Own
Benefits	It’s free Can be set up in a few minutes	It does nothing for your own website’s rankings To get it to look like the other pages on your site, you need to have someone create a custom template
Drawbacks	Can drastically improve your website’s rankings Looks more professional than using a service Can make it look like the other pages on your website	Need to have someone set it up for you May need to have a slightly more expensive hosting plan

Which option should I choose?
- Use a service if money is really tight or you’re not sure you will keep up with it, go with a service. You can always go with hosting your own later. BUT, it’s kind of pain to move your old blog posts to a new blog.
- Host your own if improving your rankings and looking professional are important.

How the eMarketing Strategist Can Help:
- Explain how all this works in plain English.
- Help figure out what features you need.
- Give you pointers on what can be done to help improve your blog’s rankings.
- Coordinate with the programmer to minimize programming expenses.
- Give you pointers on how to increase readership and comments.
- Submit the blog to blog directories.

My Two Cents on Twitter

2009-04-01T19:17:00.001-07:00

I can’t take it anymore. I have to weigh in on Twitter. I thought the “trying to figure out how to make money from it” hype was bad when blogs came along but that had nothing on Twitter.

If your only goal is to “figure out how to make money from it”, please do us all a favor and cancel your Twitter account. You’re not going to make money from Twitter. I don’t care what the self styled internet marketing Gurus are telling you. You might - and that’s a big might - make money because of relationships you’ve nurtured on Twitter but that’s it.

There is no 1:1 relationship between Twitter and your income. And I think that’s a good thing. The internet was originally designed as a way to share information and despite the best efforts of the Gurus, it’s still primarily a way to share information. If sharing of information leads to business, great. But it starts with sharing information!

I only follow people who provide quality information. My time is valuable to me and I’m sure you’re time is valuable to you. It’s one of the few things in life we can’t make more of or get back once it’s gone.

My Twitter Red Flags…

You follow more people than follow you.
It tells me you think Twitter is a numbers game and you expect that if you follow someone they will follow you. I’m sure there are self proclaimed internet marketing gurus who think it’s some great secret they’re sharing when they tell their minions “You can get TONS of traffic (they love the phrase “tons of traffic”) by following everyone you can find because they will follow you back. If they don’t, un-follow them.”

You measure your Twitter success by the number of followers you have.
Me, I graduated from high school. Not just literally but emotionally. Having 9000 followers on Twitter won’t make me feel more confident about the success of my business. Having quality relationships with people I respect and trust makes me feel better about the success of my business.

All your Tweets all start with @friendsname.
If your Twitter stream consists primarily of replies, it tells me you use Twitter as an instant messaging service. I actually take the time to read tweets and I really don’t care to follow your disjointed personal conversations. Sometimes replying to a Tweet can be interesting but please, try to include the rest of us in the conversation.

Most of your Tweets are back to your own content.
Really? You think you’re the only one with something interesting to say? Oh I get it! You’re using Twitter as a “traffic generator.” (Smells like the Gurus again!) You know. You can also get traffic by sharing other people’s content. Not only does it make you look well informed, it makes you look generous. And it makes you interesting.

Phew. Okay. I feel better now.

How Much Is a Link Worth?

2009-03-12T18:01:00.000-07:00

A link can be worth £100 ($139) or it can be worth 1p (1¢).

I came across the following question on LinkedIn today and thought it perfectly illustrated the question “What is a link worth?”

Here’s the question:

I'm doing some work with a client who has used a linkbuilding service to help with their SEO in the past but at £100 per month it wasn't exactly cheap! Can anyone recommend someone they've used for this service who delivers results but doesn't charge silly fees?

Here’s My Answer:

Depending on the types of links this service gets, £100 can be a great deal or a waste of money.

One link can be worth £100 if your most desirable key phrase is in the anchor text and the link is on a blog or website your target market reads with a page rank of 4 or more. This kind of link can both help your rankings for the key phrase in the anchor text AND get real live human visitors interested in your product to your website. Win! Win!

On the other hand, 100 links to the URL in totally obscure directories is a waste of money because they won't help rankings at all and won't get in front of anyone. Lose! Lose! (Except if you own the directory.)

So, The question should be “What links did they get you?”

If this service gets even one high quality link a month, it’s worth it. Links on websites and blogs with a high page rank that include your anchor text and can be expected to drive traffic require a lot of research and leg work to get. They don’t happen on accident.

If the link service gives you a list of 10 directories you’ve never heard of that they submitted the site to this month, you might as well use those pound notes to wipe your arse!

Getting the Most Out of Micro Blogging

2009-02-26T10:24:00.000-08:00

A simple 140 character message is an excellent way to stay front-of-mind with all the people you are connected to. And maybe you haven’t noticed but Twitter isn’t the only micro-blogging platform out there. Many other social networking sites including LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook and even Flickr have a micro-blogging feature too.

The primary benefit of micro-blogging is that when you update your status, it shows up on the home page of all the people you are connected to. If done right, there is no better way to say to your network “Give me your attention! Now I’m going to share something interesting with you.”

Here's what the micro-blogging feature looks like on my LinkedIn home page:

Here's what the micro-blogging feature looks like on Facebook:

Posting updates on each of your social networking profiles would turn a 3 minute task into a 20 minute task. For many things we do in a day, 20 minutes isn’t a lot of time but when you’re trying to fit social networking into an already jam packed schedule, 20 minutes is too long. On the other hand, 3 minutes is doable and you’re much more likely to do it if it only takes a few minutes.

Personally, I don’t follow people who use Twitter to tell me where they are in the airport, conduct private conversations or to blatantly promote their products. I follow people who provide valuable information and as such, I also try to provide value. I consume a lot of media in a day and I really like to share the helpful and interesting stuff I come across in the course of my travels on the internet. So, most of my Tweets include a link I want to share with people.

To make sure what I’m sharing gets in front of the most people possible, I have developed a micro-blogging process that enables me to send my Tweet out to all my networks in 3 minutes AND tells me how many people clicked on the link in my Tweet. Here’s what I do.

When I find a link I want to share, I:
1. Go to http://www.budurl.com/ and get a custom link.
2. Go to >www.HelloTxt.com and post my Tweet with my BudURL link.
3. Sometime later, go back to www.BudURL.com and see how many people clicked on the link.

There are a couple of things you need to know about these websites to make this process work. First, when you create your http://www.hellotxt.com/ account, you will need to enter your login info for all the social networking sites you want to update. This can take 20 to 30 minutes but it will save you much more time than that over the long haul. Second, to get the click data, you will need to pay http://www.budurl.com/ $4 a month. They do have a trial offer, if you want to check it out for a while first.

Not only does this process tell me what people are interested in, it’s also made me a better writer. Sure, you have to be concise to fit an idea and link in 140 characters or less. But I’ve also found that I think about how to word my Tweet so people will want to click on the link. This short daily exercise of asking myself “How can I make this compelling to the reader?” is great practice for all the other writing I do in a day.

The process I describe takes about 30 minutes to set up and costs $4 a month but in my experience it has been well worth it! I’m sure my Tweets reach a wider audience and I know more about their value than people just using Twitter.

Taming Social Media - How to keep track of social networking, blogs and Twitter and still get your job done.

2009-01-15T13:45:00.000-08:00

The Natives Revolt
It seems like every one I talk to is fed up. For years they’ve been hearing about the latest “must do” to do to get clients from the internet and they’ve tried it. First, it was email. Gotta have email. Then it was a website. Gotta have a website. Then it was search engine optimization. Gotta get your website to rank well. Then it was a newsletter. Gotta keep in touch with a newsletter.

Then came blogs and people hit the wall. All the experts said you had to write a blog post at least twice a week which is no small time investment. When these experts couldn’t tell people exactly how blogging would lead to paying clients, many business owners said, “Wait a minute! I’m not drinking the cool-aid on this one.”

By the time social networking came along, the villagers had their pitchforks out and were ready to riot. When I talk to clients about using LinkedIn, Facebook, Biznik and Twitter, the most common reaction is, “No more! I can’t add one more thing to my daily to do list!” Social networking proponents aren’t doing themselves any favors either. The hundreds of articles written about how to use social networking to build your business assume you have the time - or will make the time - to do it. But that’s the problem. No one has any more time!

Keeping It all in One Place with iGoogle
In this day and age of constant information, value doesn’t come from providing information; value comes from filtering information and showing people how it’s valuable to them. But in order to do that, you have to sort through a lot of raw information first.

I don’t think you need to spend more time reading and researching to provide value. You just need to organize your sources of information better by putting your news sites, social networking sties, blog feeds, twitter account and everything else in one place. I use iGoogle —a customizable version of Google— to do that.

I’ve customized my Google home page so that I can:

Follow people on Twitter and even add my own Tweets

Monitor what my connections are doing on Facebook

Stay on top of news headlines with the New York Times, CNN and the BBC

Read the latest blog posts from all the blog feeds I have subscribed to

Read and respond to LinkedIn Questions about internet marketing

Search Wikipedia

Keep track of my To Do List

And even follow the phase of the moon

Each morning when I fire up my computer, I open a browser window. I have iGoogle set as my default home page and I see all this stuff first thing. Since I’m on the internet throughout the day, it’s really easy for me to keep an eye on my various accounts. I know many social networking experts say you should set aside time for social networking and blogging but I like to do it when inspiration hits. If I see something that sparks an idea that will take more than a few minutes to write up, I’ll make note of it and take care of it when I’ve got some time later to dedicate to it.

It’s really easy to set up and customize your iGoogle home page; you just need to have a Google account. If you use Google for email or run Google Analytics on your website, you already have a Google account. You can either sign in or create and account by clicking on the “Sign In” link in the upper right hand corner of the Google home page.

Once you’ve signed in, you can browse through and add gadgets (aka widgets) to your iGoogle home page by clicking on the “Add Stuff” link under the search box and to the right. Fortunately, there is a search box in the upper right hand corner so if you do a search on “Twitter”, it will pull up all the Twitter related gadgets you can chose from. You move things around so they’re in the order that works for you and you can even change how everything looks by selecting from one of the dozens of themes available.

A word of warning. These gadgets are not created by Google and they can “break” from time to time. Since there are typically several in each category, I recommend trying out different ones to see which work the best. I also don’t recommend adding too many because you can only fit so many above the fold and can lose track of the ones you have to scroll to see.

Feeling Adventurous? Try Flock.
I’m assuming most readers are using Internet Explorer and a few might even be using Mozilla. (Please for give me Mac/Safari users.) There is a great new browser called Flock (http://www.flock.com/) which is designed around the needs of social networking and social media. I’ve been playing with it for about six months now and I still don’t think I’ve figured out most of what it can do.

While with iGoogle you put all the gadgets on one page, Flock has separate pages for separate functions. For example, you can customize Flock browser so Twitter is on one page, your news feeds on another and your web mail on another. This enables you to monitor more accounts at more depth in one place. The combinations are practically endless and they are adding new features all the time.

While you can do a lot more with browser like Flock, you’ve got to pay close attention when installing it. If you’re not careful, you can inadvertently make it your default browser or disable features from other browsers and toolbars. It makes sense. Microsoft and Google don’t want to lose market share by making it easy for you to use another browser or search service. But don’t worry too much. If things get messed up, you can always uninstall it and start over.

Sure, there’s a learning curve with any of these options and time to set up the accounts and get them all talking to each other but it’s worth it. In just a few days, you’ll be doing a better job at staying on top of your social media and social networking. You might even feel like you’re in control of it instead of it being in control of you!

6 Internet Marketing Articles You Really Ought to Read

2009-01-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

These are all article I wish I’d written but definitely don’t have the hundreds of hours necessary to do it. Take the time to read them and you will know a lot about internet marketing.

12 Different Types of Links and How To Get Them
by Todd Malicoat
“What is a backlink?” is one of the top five most frequently asked questions I get from clients and colleagues. My short answer is that a backlink is a link from another website or blog to your website. It’s like a vote of popularity for your website and backlinks are a crucial but often ignored aspect of improving your website’s rankings. There are many types of backlinks and although this article is a few years old, it’s still a great explanation of the types of links you can get to your website. Hopefully it will help “backlinks” go from something that seems beyond your control to something you can put on your To Do List.

Comprehensive Guide to Key word Research, Selection & Organization
by Stony DeGeter
I firmly believe that key phrase research and selection is the foundation of - not just an SEO campaign - an effective overall internet marketing campaign. Fail to target phrases or target the wrong ones and you will wind up wasting many hours and lots of dollars. While I don’t agree with everything Stony says, if you read all 12 of these articles, you will know just about everything you need to know about finding, selecting and prioritizing the right key phrases.

The First Three Questions
by Joe Hage
The most challenging part of my job is getting clients to dig deep and go beyond describing “What I Do” and getting them to describe “These are the results I provide and the benefits of hiring me.” Joe’s article helps me help my clients start thinking about their business in a new way. I suggest you read it, write about it and incorporate your thoughts into you website copy. It will definitely help improve the conversion rate of your website.

What Makes a Good Blog?
by Merlin Mann
Most of the time when I see yet another “What Makes a Good Blog (Post)” article, I want to gouge out my eyeballs. This version actually has important stuff you should know by a guy who’s in a position to know.

50 Resources for Getting the Most Out of Google Analytics
by Kissmetrics.com
This list of Google Analytics resources includes everything you ever wanted to know about Google Analytics from tutorials for beginners, to tips and tricks and tools and hacks for advanced users.

Blogger Outreach
by Matt Dickman
Contacting bloggers who might be willing to write about your product or service is a great low cost way to attract clients and build your expert-factor online. If you’ve ever read The Bad Pitch Blog, you know even seasoned PR people make stupid mistakes when it comes to pitching to bloggers. If you follow the advice in this blog post, you will go along way to preventing any accidental foot-in-mouth learning experiences.

How to Say Absolutely Nothing on Your Home Page

2008-11-22T19:01:00.000-08:00

The main difference between a website that works and a website that sucks are the words on the page. This is why when I’m working on a website rewrite the most important part of my job is jargon busting. Jargon busting consists of finding words and phrases that don’t say a damn thing and helping the business owner replace them with words that make sense to people.
I love it when I come across an especially jargon laden site. These sites save me a lot of time. I can show them to my clients and all of a sudden light bulb goes off. They get how bad it is to use generalities to the point of vagueness.

I came across the mother load of all jargon sites today. The following is the home page text of a company on track to reach 1 billion dollars in revenue by 2010. Obviously, this is not a small company and yet, this is their home page text. I have replaced the company name with “Our Company”.

Our Company efficiently and effectively integrates a wide range of
resources and core competencies to provide unique and timely solutions that
exceed our customers’ stated needs and expectations.

We are guided by integrity, innovation, and a desire for a safer world. Our Company’s professionals leverage state-of-the-art training facilities, professional
program management teams, and innovative manufacturing and production
capabilities to deliver world-class, customer-driven solutions.

Our corporate leadership and dedicated family of exceptional employees adhere to essential core values- chief among these are integrity, innovation, excellence,
respect, accountability, and teamwork.

Click here to find out whose home page text is this bad.

Doing a Crawl Test

2008-11-13T15:52:00.000-08:00

Hi Folks,

I'm testing out Google to see how fast they find links from various sources. I'm trying to get them to crawl this wrongful death lawyer page.

I'll explain why I'm diong this and let you know what I find out in a future post.

Best Facebook Group Names According to Non Required Reading

2008-11-11T19:51:00.001-08:00

I ferverently wait for "The Best American Series" each year. For the last several years I’ve bought “The Best American Short Stories” and “The Best American Non Required Reading”. They’re kind of like magazines you can buy once a year and are pertinent for the next twelve months. I just got my 2008 copies at Wordstock this past weekend.

Since 2002, Dave Eggers (author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius") has been the Chief Editor of Non Require Reading. As far as I can tell the series started with him. And that’s fine. He does a great job of pulling together all kinds of fun stuff. I mean this with all due respect; this is a book you should keep in the loo for prolonged transactions.

My Favorite segment of Non Required Reading is the lists. One of this year’s lists, Best American Facebook Groups, seemed especially pertinent to the internet audience.

Here are my favorite’s from the Best American Facebook Groups list. (Please note, I just think they're funny. I don't necessarily agree with them.):

I Thought You Were Hot Until I Clicked on “View More Pictures”
I Feel Bad When I See Kids on a Leash
If This Group Reaches 15k, Kevin and I Will have a Pine Cone Eat Off
Catholic School Screwed Me Up, but I’m Still Sending My Kids There
I Beat George W. Bush on the SAT’s
Disney Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations about Love
When I Was Your Age, Pluto Was a Planet
I Wish My Homework Was Asexual So It Would Do Itself
I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar
Every Time I Walk into Math Class a Little Part of Me Dies
Legalize Dueling
Automatic Doors Make Me Feel Like a Jedi
I Have to Sing the ABCs to Know Which Letter Comes Before the Other
It Wasn’t Awkward Until You Said “Well, This Is Awkward.” Now It’s Awkward.
I Refer to People by Nicknames They Will Never Know
Friends Don’t Let Friends Invade Russia with Winter Approaching
I’m Asian, You’re Asian, Let’s Compare Grades!
I Stay Up Late and I Don’t Do Anything Productive
Mr. Miyagi Taught Me How to Fight
…So Apparently I’m Going to Hell
If You’re OCD and You Know It Clap Your Hands!
I Had a Leash When I Was Little
Being Bilingual Obviously Makes You a Better Person
I Love How We Are Friends on Facebook, but We Don’t Actually Talk in Person
When I’m Super Bored, I Go on Facebook and Join Tons of Pointless Groups

Intrigued? Buy the book and support the cause! We need more people to do Non Required Reading.

Cool Tool: Mechanical Turk

2008-10-28T18:36:00.000-07:00

I had coffee last week with a web designer here in Portland, OR I work with and he told me about an outsourcing website owned by Amazon called Mechanical Turk. Oh, man. My world has changed!

I do a lot of writing for websites and article marketing and there are two things I’ve long wished I could get cheap:
1. answers to specific questions
2. transcriptions of conversations with clients.

It pains me to admit that I’ve paid virtual assistants $30 to answer questions. And I went into sticker shock when I found out transcriptionists get $180 for an hour long phone call. It’s pretty tough to turn ideas into words when you’re paying those kinds of prices.

So when my website designer pal George, told me about how he’s been using Mechanical Turk to get answers to questions, I was intrigued. He even told me about Andy Baio author of Waxy.org who created an awesome blog post about how he used MTurk to get a transcription of a conversation done quickly and cheaply.

I first tested out MTurk on an answer I’d wasted half an hour trying to fiind for a web page I’m working on. I posted my HIT (MTurk’s name for a question) at about 8:00 PM. The next morning I had an answer with resources that sent me on my way happily writing again

I then tested out Andy’s method for using MTurk to transcribe a conversation I had with a client whose website I am writing. Knowing I was getting a transcription of the conversation was liberating. I could just focus on the conversation instead of having to worry about the notes I was taking. I found that I was asking better questions and getting better content for the website.

Although I’ve never used an audio editing software program before, it did take some time to figure out how to use the free audio editing program to edit the hour long conversation into 10 minute segments. It was a bit of a challenge but well worth the time investment.

Less than 12 hours later I had all 40 minutes transcribed and it cost me $20. Now I’m happily on my way writing again.

Comment SPAM: You Are an Idiot if You (or Someone You Hired) Do It

2008-10-17T18:09:00.000-07:00

My blog is set up so that I have to approve comments. And like everyone else in the world, I HATE SPAM. So imagine how happy I was to get the following comment on my last blog post which was about copy writing from "Justin_AKL". According to Justin's profile, he's a programmer. I can tell from Justin’s comment that he is trying to get his site (or his client’s site, or the site he’s an affiliate for) to rank for "Article Post Robot" and "article submission sites". You can tell this because those are the words that are hyperlinked in his fake comment.

Making the rather questionable assumption that “Justin” is a real person*, as opposed to an outsourced company in India or South America that has no strategy behind internet marketing, Justin has screwed up on so many levels it warrants a blog post from me:
* When you go to the Article Post Robot website, all the glowing recommendations are for “David” not “Justin.”

Here’s why this comment is wrong in so many ways:

First of all, you’ve pissed off a D List blogger to the point that she is willing to dedicate a post to your scatter-shot approach to internet marketing. So if you were hoping to get traffic, you’re f’ed. Any traffic from this blog is going to be gawkers looking at the scene of the accident.

Secondly, the links in your comment won’t help your rankings because Blogger comment links are nofollow links!

Your product has nothing to do with the blog post! So even if I approved the comment so readers could see it, it wouldn’t be appealing to them because it has nothing to do with what they were reading about.

Congratulations. Your one size fits all approach to internet marketing has done more damage than good. Was that worth the time savings of automating your internet marketing campaign?

How to Improve Your Copywriting: Nuts & Bolts Examples

2008-10-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

I hate it when books and articles on copywriting make lists of suggestions without examples. I think they do that because it's easier to make suggestions than keep track of actual examples. So, today when I was working on editing some articles that will be used in article marketing for a client, I kept track of the suggestions and the examples.

Start with the solution instead of ending with it. Often, sentences flow better if you start with the solution.

Original: One of the best sources for you find ideas to aid you operating your ranch in the most affordable ways would be the Internet.
Updated: The internet is one of the best sources for finding ideas to help you operate your ranch affordably.

Be mindful in the use of pronouns like “it” or “this” especially at the beginning of a sentence. These words are vague and can lead to confusion. Sometimes when I come across them I find myself thinking “Huh? Or “What are you referring to?” Many times you can replace pronouns with a more specific word or phrase that makes the sentence clearer. You can also replace vague pronouns with key words or phrases which helps improves your rankings. In the example below, I replaced the word “it” with what “it” is referring to. Doing so makes for a more understandable sentence.

Original: Many ranch owners had ranching or farming experience in their past or in previous generations of their family and assume this makes them able to profitably run a ranch. It doesn’t necessarily mean they will be successful because profitable ranching practices are constantly evolving.
Updated: Many ranch owners had ranching or farming experience in their past or in previous generations of their family and assume this makes them able to profitably run a ranch. However, previous experience does not ensure future success because profitable ranching practices are constantly evolving.

Break up run on sentences. They slow the reader down and can be a bail out point which works against your goals. It can be hard to identify a run on sentence when you write it. Reading your articles out loud will help you find them.

Original: There are numerous reasons this may well be the best route for you to consider if you are hoping to get a huge return on your ranch investment and you should have this in mind when you’re looking at ranches for sale.
Updated: There are numerous reasons this may well be the best route for you to consider if you are hoping to get a good return on your ranch investment. Plus, you should have this in mind when you’re looking at ranches for sale.

Two for one example. The phrase “key to doing so” makes me think “Key to doing what?” and this sentence is a run on.

Original: The key to doing so can be as easy as taking the time to do some extensive research that will pay huge dividends for you in the future when it comes to ranch management, and this is something you should consider as early as the time you’re looking at ranches for sale.
Updated: The key to effective ranch management can be as easy as taking the time to do some detailed research. This is something you should consider as early as the time you’re looking at ranches for sale.

Make Your Copy Work by Entering into the Conversation

2008-10-15T17:07:00.000-07:00

You know when you’re reading website copy that’s compelling and gets the job done. Even if it’s for a product or service you don’t need, you want to bookmark the site or forward the URL to someone who needs it. You want to take action! But, do you know why it’s good?

Nine times out of ten it’s because the good copy enters into the conversation the reader is having in their mind. This is especially important on the internet because

Writing for the internet is different from other forms of advertising because of how people access the information. Other than the phone book, I can’t think of an advertising method where your potential customers are actively looking for you. They have a problem and are looking for a solution. So it makes sense that most copy writing coaches and courses subscribe to the problem/solution/benefit model.

It’s been my experience that writing compelling copy is a process of evolution. Typically we start with “This is who I am and these are my services.” When this fails to yield results, we go to the problem/solution/benefit model. Most service professionals stay stuck at this level. They wonder why they don’t get more clients from the internet and live with poor internet marketing results.

If you do the hard work of crafting copy that enters into the conversation going on in your prospect’s mind, it will improve all your results from newsletter sign ups to phone calls.

Take a look at the following websites:

http://www.sensiblecoaching.com/

http://www.millionairemind.com/

Now I’m really not trying to slam Shell’s website. For all I know, she’s perfectly happy with the copy on her home page. However, when you compare it to T. Harv’s you can see the difference. Where Shell starts with a list of problems, T. Harv’s jumps right into “Have you ever wondered why this is the case? Here’s why that’s the case.”

Although they’re both selling products designed to help you change your relationship to money, T. Harv’s is more likely to make the reader say “This guy has the solution to my problem! I want that!” He assumes you’re both discussing the same problem and puts the majority of his word toward describing his solution and benefits, benefits, benefits.

You can even see this difference in their domain names. Would you rather have ‘sensible coaching’ or a ‘millionaire mind’?

High Impact Mentoring Has Many Applications

2008-10-05T18:01:00.001-07:00

I rarely blog about clients but this week I wanted to share a white paper written by a client, the Maverick Institute, about high impact mentoring. The white paper distinguishes “high impact mentoring” from “mentoring” in that high impact mentoring incorporates the concepts of lean learning, just-in-time knowledge transfer and easily managed chunks of information into a paradigm that often has a stodgy reputation.

This is a “no fat” white paper and on the first page it answers the question “Why should we care about high impact mentoring?” with the short answer “Because we can’t afford not to.” Then it goes on to enumerate the reasons why running lean and fast is important. While the reasons are compelling at any stage, they’re especially pertinent in the current economic climate.

I found the information very helpful because I am in the process of bringing sub-contractors on board and am trying to get them up to speed and up to standard as quickly as possible. I’ve developed my own way of doing things and need to make sure the people I employ understand what they’re doing, pay attention to detail and use critical thinking skills along the way. That can get very time consuming for me if I don’t do it efficiently.

The points discussed about high impact mentoring were helpful because it showed me what I was doing right (which I wondered about) and how I can improve my own processes. I recommend it for any business owner who is not only looking for good information on mentoring but hiring and training subcontractors or employees.

What You Need to Know about Internet Marketing (in 500 words)

2008-09-23T19:50:00.000-07:00

Internet marketing is often overwhelming and confusing. As if designing your website to rank well and getting other websites to link to it weren’t hard enough, now you have to factor Web 2.0 and all that entails into your internet marketing mix.

I’ll be honest with you, it even drives me nuts. And I do this stuff for a living! But, I wrote a proposal for a new client today and found myself creating a brief summary of what’s involved with internet marketing.

The goal of internet marketing is to sell stuff. Whether that’s a physical product, an information product or a service, it doesn’t matter. The ultimate goal is to sell something.

There are two main components to internet sales; drive more traffic to your website and convert that traffic by giving the visitor what they want.

This sounds pretty basic but it’s easy to lose sight of the primary goal. We tend to focus on statistics like: how high my website ranks for certain key words, or how many unique visitors were there last month, or how many people signed up for my newsletter or blog feed. But you know what? Ultimately, none of that matters! What matters is how much money you made!

Selling stuff comes down to two things: driving traffic to your website and converting traffic into customers.

Driving traffic to the website can be done in two ways.
1. Your customer is looking for you. They have a problem and they are actively looking for a solution. They go to a search engine like Google or Yahoo, type in a key phrase and find your website in the search results.
2. Your customer may be aware that they have a problem but aren’t necessarily looking for a solution. They hear about your company in an article, blog, forum, podcast, video, social media or social networking website and because they like what they hear, they visit your website.

When people land on your website, it’s time to give them what they want. It’s a lot of work to get customers to your website and once they’re there, if you don’t give them what they want you’ve wasted your time and money. That’s why a customer centric website is crucial to converting visitors to customers. It’s also the most commonly overlooked piece of the sales process.

I’m not going to tell you what your website should say because I could write the most brilliant description and the vast majority of you are going to tell yourself, “My website says that.”

You know what? It doesn’t! I will straight up bet you $100 (donated to your favorite charity) that I can find 10 things on your website that are not turning visitors into customers.

Want to know why visitors are not customers? Have a friend (who doesn’t owe you anything and will tell you the truth) look over your website. Then shut your mouth, stop defending it and listen. Your bank account will thank you for it.

How Internet Marketing Works

2008-09-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

I recently signed up for Ed Dale's Thirty Day Challenge. I highly recommend it. It's no BS, straight ahead, good info about how to make money online. Oh yeah, and it's free.

As part of signing up for the Thirty Day Challenge, I get a few promotional emails. Nothing outrageous just emails about their other products. One of those emails was about their membership site called Immediate Edge. The sales page has a great 30 minute video where Ed essentially explains how internet marketing (aka making money online) works. Yeah, he promotes his product a bit but it's just to demonstrate how it can help.

If you've ever wondered, "How the heck do you make money from the internet!" you need to watch this video.

Maybe There Is a Use for Twitter After All...

2008-09-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

The media has a steady stream of stories about how the younger generation seems to be obsessed with staying in touch via cell phone and computer these days. You hear stories about kids sending 10,000 text messages a month, checking their MySpace or Facebook page several times and day and using micro-blogging services like Twitter to inform all their friends about what they’ve had for lunch. Virtually anyone over the age of 30 is left thinking “These kids need to get a job!”

But the September 7th New York Times Sunday Magazine had an interesting article by Clive Davis titled “I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You: How News Feed, Twitter and Other Forms of Incessant Online Contact Have Created a Brave New World of Intimacy” that helped me understand that maybe there are benefits to this level of contact. While any individual communication via Facebook, Twitter or news feed appears to be insignificant, in aggregate they create an “ambient awareness” which is similar to being in physical proximity to someone and picking up on what’s going on with them by their physical cues. This awareness makes us feel like we are close to people with out actually communicating with them one on one. The common reaction to this faux-connection is one of horror and lament about the decline of western civilization but it’s not all bad.

The author describes a phenomenon called the “Dunbar number” in which research has confirmed that human groupings tend to tail off at about 150 people. These social websites and apps don’t necessarily help increase our number of close connections but they do help expand and stay connected to our larger informal network. This has real benefits for anyone trying to network professionally.

If you’re going to use these social tools for professional networking, I wouldn’t recommend you update people on what you had for lunch. But I would recommend that you use them to share information and resources you think might help your network in their business. When done properly, it’s a fairly easy way to stay in front of people and build the perception of expertise. For example, I follow Robin Good on Twitter and he “tweets” several times a day with links to interesting web applications. Sometimes I feel like he tweets too much but unlike email they’re pretty easy to ignore so I’m less likely to unsubscribe from his feed.

If you’ve wondered what the appeal of these social technologies is, I suggest you read this article. It does a good job of describing how they work and why anyone would spend their precious time using them.

Hi Folks. I’m back. Did you miss me?

2008-09-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

I took the summer off from my blog. It wasn't planned. And for the first month I felt terribly guilty. What a bad business owner! Then I remembered that everyone is as overwhelmed with information as I am and wasn’t hurting anyone’s feelings by not posting every week. Despiste what the blogger advocates tell you.)

So why the silence? Stompernet. It’s all their fault. Stompernet is an advanced internet training program started and run by people who have made gobs of money on the internet. And when I say gobs I mean many, many millions of dollars.

You can throw a proverbial rock on the internet and hit a marketing guru who will sell you their million dollar internet marketing program. The only problem is that they’re the only one making a million dollars. Stompernet is different. The price of poker ain’t cheap at $800 a month. But it’s worth it. Each month when I ask myself if I can afford it, the answer is “yes.” There have been office hours when the resources I’ve learned about or the “This is how I do it” from internet millionaires have been worth the $800 alone.

So what did I do with my summer? I worked my butt off! There was no vacation. There wasn’t even a stay-cation! And I couldn’t be more excited! I am ready to kick butt and make some serious money. My goal for this blog in the next months is to share with you what I’m learning about. I hope you find it helpful. Let me know what you think, what you’d like to see more of and any questions you have.

Now That's Using Social Networking!

2008-06-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

I logged into LinkedIn this evening to post a question to their Answers section and was surprised to see that Barak Obama is using LinkedIn to get answers to his questions.

Now that's using social networking to make change!

The Web 2.0 Media Group Demystifies Using the Internet to Build Business Relationships

2008-06-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

Where web 1.0 was a monologue, web 2.0 is a conversation. Ultimately, web 2.0 is about building relationships online through blogs, social networking websites, online reviews and wikis.
Web 2.0 is a good thing but it’s also created overwhelm and confusion in non-techies trying to figure out how to apply it to their own business. I equate it to being born and raised in the cornfields of Iowa and then moving to New York City. All the sights, all the sounds, and all the options are fascinating but they’re pretty overwhelming too.

I’m all for any effort to help demystify web 2.0 which is why I was thrilled to be invited to join the Web 2.0 Media Group. The purpose of the Web 2.0 Media Group is to help non-techies get a clear, jargon-free overview of new ways to market and manage their business using online media.

The Web 2.0 Media Group was conceived by Wayne Bishop founder of Arbutus Software which produces Joint Contact project management software. Wayne co-founded the Web 2.0 Group with Mark McLaren owner of McBuzz Communications an online communications firm.

I met Wayne through Biznik (my favorite social networking website) when I responded to an article her wrote. I had recently signed up for BaseCamp to manage client projects and wanted to know how Joint Contact was different than BaseCamp. In minutes I got a reply from Wayne with a list of about a dozen ways Joint Contact is better than BaseCamp. I gave Joint Contact a try and am now using it to manage all my projects. Now that’s leveraging the internet to build business!

Wayne, who is based in Seattle, got the idea for the Web 2.0 Media Group after noticing that there was a disconnect between the business community and the tech community. I’ve noticed it here in Portland too. “Business People” and “Tech People” network in their own little worlds and rarely do their paths cross. It’s as if they live in parallel universes. Wayne is one of the few who lives in both worlds.

Wayne also noticed that there were dozens of tech start ups with great ideas and products that didn’t get talked about because they didn’t have VC funding or angel investors. So he decided to start the Web 2.0 Media Group to help non-techies learn how to leverage new technologies in their own business and get tech start ups in front of a new audience.

The Web 2.0 Media Group is getting the word out in a variety of ways. There is a free introductory in-person seminar called "Introducing Web 2.0" designed to give the attendee an overview of the various technologies and how they can be used to build a business. There is a half or full day paid seminar that goes into more depth about exactly how to use the various technologies. There are also plans for an online community dedicated to answering the questions that come up as people try out web 2.0 technologies.

One of the goals for the Web 2.0 Media Group is to make a connection between cyber-space and physical space which is why it’s offering in-person seminars. Currently the seminars are only offered in Seattle but I plan to bring them to Portland in the fall. Email me if you’re interested in attending and I’ll keep you posted.

Business Struggling? Stop Doing Favors!

2008-06-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

I met with a new client yesterday. She’s a great lady with a great product. She’s got a good looking website, beautifully produced instructional DVDs and no sales.

To figure out why her products aren’t selling, I asked her a series of questions about what she’s been doing and what she thinks she needs to do. Part of the problem is that she’s overwhelmed by everything she needs to do. She’s trying to get sponsorship deals with some of the products she promotes in her DVD’s. She’s trying to get distribution deals in stores. She’s trying to write articles for print and online publications. And she knows there’s a lot more she needs to do to promote her business online.

But that’s only part of the problem. She knows she can’t do everything so she’s trying to delegate some of the work but her last two assistants have quit in the first week. This was intriguing to me. She seems easy to get along with and fun to work for so why are assistants quitting on her? As she told me about the people she’s hired, the reason became clear.

She, like many of us, likes to help people. Both of her assistants were acquaintances who were down on their luck and she saw that they needed some help. If someone would just give them a break (and some money), they could get back on their feet. They weren’t bringing many skills to the job but she was willing to train them so that she would have an assistant and they would have a new skill set.

Ahhh! The problem crystallizes.

She was making a mistake many small business owners make and can be fatal to the success of their business. I told her “I know this is going to sound harsh but you have to stop doing favors for people.” Her eyes got big and she slowly said “I have to stop doing favors for people?” I could tell it was a radically new concept to her so I explained.

Many of us – especially people with a background in service professions – get a boost from helping people. We like helping people. It makes us feel good. Many times that’s why we got into the business we did. The problem is that we forget to help our business first. When your business is new or at a growing stage, it needs all the help and support you can give it from people who are bringing the right skill set and mindset to the job. At this point your business is fragile and vulnerable. You wouldn’t let someone with the flu kiss your new born baby! So don’t give people without the right skills and attitude an important job in your business!

It’s great to want to help people. Personally, a strong motivator for me to be successful is so that I can donate time, money and expertise to the causes I care about. However, I won’t be able to do that if my business just bumps along. My business has to be strong before I can help other people improve their lives.

So think about it. Is there someone (or “someones”) you’re giving an important job that isn’t qualified or committed to doing the work? Are you spending time teaching someone how to do their job instead of doing yours? Are you trying to figure out how to motivate them so they will have the right work ethic?

Now is not the time to take risks with your business. When your business has exceeded your revenue goals, you can give them a chance with a job that is not going to seriously impact your bottom line. But until then, you need to quit being “the nice guy” and invite them to be successful elsewhere.

How NOT to Use Articles to Improve Your Rankings

2008-06-01T16:26:00.000-07:00

The company that ranks #1 for “internet marketing articles” has quite a few articles on the subject. I’m sure it took a lot of work to write all those articles but I’d be willing to bet all that work hasn’t paid off. Why?

First, consider the words used buy people looking to buy a service versus people looking for information.

When people want to find a service provider, they use words like:
Consultant
Consulting
Strategy
Expert

When people are looking for information, they use words like:
Articles
Case studies
Examples
Information
Data

Second, the articles tell you how to do something but they don’t show you why you should hire this search engine optimization firm. The author could argue that the purpose of the articles is to build the perception of expertise. Providing good information is one way to do it but these articles aren’t particularly well written or all that helpful.

If you’re going to try to improve your website’s rankings with articles make sure your articles demonstrate your expertise AND subtly show the reader why they should hire you to do the job. Otherwise, you will just wind up with a bunch of looky-loos and no customers.

(*I’m giving them a link for “internet marketing articles” as a consolation prize for being my "how not to do it" example.)

Case Study: How Social Networking Can Sell Books

2008-05-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

Last week I was on a panel on social networking for the Portland chapter of SECP (Self Employed Creative Professionals).

Jeff Fisher who is a graphic designer, author and speaker was on the panel too. He fielded several questions about how he's very successfully used social networking to promote his latest book "Identity Crisis: 50 Redesigns That Transformed Stale Identities into Successful Brands".

Jeff blogged about which social networks he uses and the results he's gotten from each on his bLogo-Motives blog. If you're looking to promote a book with social networking, it's an excellent example of how to do it. Jeff also maintains a blog specific to the book. Check out the Identity Crisis blog to see how he's using a blog to promote his book as well.

eMarketing Case Study: Content Can Achieving Multiple Marketing Goals if You Do It Right

2008-05-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

I set up some Google Alerts to help me research an article I’ve been asked to write for a CPA Journal. An alert on “forensic accounting” took me to a page that had a link to an intriguingly titled study:

“The Long Tail of Investment Research:
How Economic Forces Are Reshaping the Research Industry”

I was really impressed with the study on several levels and decided to blog about it because it’s an excellent example of how good content can perform multiple jobs.

Goal #1: Good Content Builds the Perception of Expertise
This white paper has really good content! It’s new, it’s different and the information has many applications. It’s not too technical and it educates the reader while give them the subtle message “We know what we’re talking about!”

I’m an idiot when it comes to investment research but I know how to research all kinds of other stuff and I learned something from their analysis of what constitutes good research. The criteria they use to describe what constitutes good investment research applies to good web copy, newsletter articles, blog posts or articles for social media.

The following is a graphic from the white paper that drives the point home:

One of the things they do particularly well in this white paper is use graphics to drive home a point. First, they describe the concept. Then, they give you an image that makes it memorable.

Goal #2: Ranking Well for Good Key Phrases
I thought I was going to be telling you about the great long tail key phrase coup this white paper made for Integrity Research but I can’t! I figured that pairing key phrases like “The Long Tail” and “investment research” were a match made in heaven. I planned to tell you a story of long tail key word success that would drive people interested in investment research to their site. I was wrong.

To back up my claims of long tail key phrase dominance, I searched Google on the following key phrase combinations (plus others I didn’t include here because they seemed repetitive):
- "the long tail"* + investment research
- long tail + investment research
- "the long tail" + white paper
- long tail research white paper
- "the long tail" + "research white paper"
- the long tail of investment research
* (Quotation marks tell the search engine “I'm looking for these words in this order.” Otherwise they will show pages that have the words any where on the page.)

However, the only key phrase I got a hit on was the exact title of the white paper. That’s not good. How often is a potential client going to nail the exact wording of your blog post or article?

This white paper didn’t rank on the first page of Google for any of them! I’m so bummed. I really wanted this to be a success story. Maybe their lack of results in more informative.

I figured that by pairing popular a popular key phrase like “the long tail” with their service key phrase “investment research” they would cover both ends of the key phrase spectrum. That is: general key phrases that are used but hard to rank for AND specific key phrases which are easier to rank for but used less often.

So why doesn’t this white paper rank for the key phrases it could? I’m not sure but here’s what I think:
1. The website isn’t updated all that frequently and Google hasn’t indexed it yet.
2. It’s a PDF instead of a blog post and Google indexes blog posts almost immediately.

Anybody else got any ideas? I’d love to hear them.

Why Doesn't eMarketing Seem to Work?

2008-05-14T10:44:00.000-07:00

My blog gets a lot of hits for search phrases like “eMarketing what works and what doesn’t” and “internet marketing best practices.” I have a mental picture of the people using these search terms as nomads wandering across the desert that is the internet searching for answers they’re probably not finding. I wonder if these intrepid searchers find the answers they are looking for. Somehow I doubt it. “What works in internet marketing?” is almost as difficult a question to answer as “How do we create world peace?”

I think this question stems from a deeper frustration that eMarketing doesn’t seem to work. I’ve talked to dozens of business owners who feel like they’re tried everything only to wind up with a handful of website visitors each month, a mailing list of a couple of hundred people, a blog that makes them feel like they’re talking to themselves and a sense that social networking is a total waste of time.

It’s easy to assume that eMarketing isn’t working for folks because they’re doing it wrong. And while that is surely an element to the problem, I’ve come to realize that many business owners have assumptions about attracting clients via the internet that aren’t realistic or send them off in the wrong direction.

The rest of this article will focus on the underlying assumptions that lead us astray when it comes to eMarketing. In future posts I will address creating an eMarketing plan, how to create buyer personas and how to put the pieces of the eMarketing pie together in a way that attracts clients instead of just wasting your time.

Technology versus People

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the purpose of eMarketing is to connect with people. This may seem obvious but think about at what we pay attention to when it comes to internet marketing: How well does my website rank? What newsletter system should I use? What blogging platform should I use? What social networks should I be on? All of these questions are about technology; not about people. While they are all valid and important questions, they are the systems we use for communication; they are not communication themselves. It’s like confusing the telephone with the person on the other end of the phone. (I’m reminded of the Comcast commercial where the person is saying “But I have Comcast high speed phone service now.” and expecting a different outcome from the conversation.)

Introverts and people who think of used car sales men when the concept of selling comes up like the idea of being able to find clients via the internet because it allows them to stay in their comfort zone. They don’t have to leave their office, they don’t have to go to networking events and they don’t have to feel insecure each time they say their elevator speech. They can just hide behind their computer and work on the things they have control over; adding a new page to their website, tweaking their newsletter template, adding a new widget to their blog, making lists of new key phrases, etcetera…etcetera…etcetera…

The false assumption is that we can control technology but we can’t control people. Granted, you can’t make someone buy your product or service but if you show up at the right place at the right time with the right solution, you can entice people to buy your product or service; or at least choose to hear from you again. When you overly focus on the method of communication, you lose sight of the real goal which is to influence buying decisions.

“If You Build It, They Will Come” Only Happens in the Movies

An analogy I often use about building relationships online is that you wouldn’t go to a networking event, stand in the corner the whole time and afterwards complain about how it didn’t work. So why are you doing it on the internet?! Just because you have a website (even if it’s a fantastic website) with a newsletter sign up form, a blog you’ve submitted to all the blog directories, and a social networking profile on all the big social networking sites, doesn’t mean anyone is going to contact you. You have to go to them! Sure, you have to “build it;” but you also have to start conversations and participate in existing conversations.

There are many, many ways to waste time on the internet so in order to have productive online conversations you have to know where your target markets hang out online. In order to be where they are, you have to know your target markets very, very well. The better you know them, their interests, their pains and frustrations, the more able you will be to figure out where they are hanging out online and where you need to be showing up.

To know where you need to be showing up, start by making lists. How you organize your lists will depend on many factors but regardless of how you do it, your lists need to include:
• websites your target markets visit (for entertainment, for information, for analysis)
• blogs and forums they read
• experts they pay attention to
• stores they shop at
• other products or services they buy

These lists will be an ongoing work in progress. As long you are creating online relationships, you will be adding to your lists.

Product Development Is Not Marketing

A common mistake I see many entrepreneurial minded business owners make is that each time they decide to do something about their lack of sales they create another product. They get a great idea and think “This is the one that’s going make me rich!” (Or famous. Or an expert.) Instead of doing the hard work of selling what they’ve got, they jump right back into the design process and once again they’re in their comfort zone. They’re happily creating away while avoiding the real problem; selling the products they already have.

There are a couple of reasons why your informational products aren’t selling. Either there isn’t a market for it or you just don’t know how to sell it. Either way, jumping into developing a new product isn’t going to help you. If you’re tempted to design your way out of poor sales, slow down and really examine whether or not a new product is going to make a difference. Do some market research to make sure there aren’t already a dozen similar products out there and that there really is a market for what you want to design. If you come to the conclusion that you don’t know how to sell what you’ve already got, find someone who does and either do a profit split with them or pay them to teach you how to sell it yourself.

Marketing Gurus Promising Riches Are the Only Ones Getting Rich

The following is an actual ebook title:

"How To Make Money With Anything You Choose to Sell
On-Line... Automatically...With a Simple, Proven Strategy! "

There are dozens if not hundreds of marketing gurus on the internet promising that if you just buy their “secrets” you will make money in your sleep. Years ago I bought a few of these books and came to realize they all say the same thing. They tell you to put up a website, write an obnoxiously long sales page, get some testimonials and run a Google Adwords campaign. What the don’t tell you is that the days of being able to throw up a Google Adwords campaign and expect the money to start rolling in are over! Sure. There are people who made gobs of money doing it — I even know a few who managed to do it — but even they say it’s not possible anymore. Once again, the old maxim holds true; if it sounds too good to be true, it is.

All these books and programs do one thing. They focus on infrastructure. Once again we are back to focusing on technology instead of focusing on building relationships with people. These “gurus” will dazzle you with their stories of thousands of dollars worth of product sold in a single week; and it might even be true. What they’re not telling you is that they were able to do it because they already have a mailing list of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people. When you can get in front of that many people with one email, you’re bound to make money.

Are You Answering the Door when People Knock?

There are several ways to get in front of potential customers but none of them matter if your website doesn’t back them up. I talk to people every week who want help marketing their business online and they balk when I tell them we have to start with their website. Maybe it’s that a website redesign sounds expensive or maybe it’s because a website redesign doesn’t sound nearly as sexy as a social media campaign. But if your website isn’t set up in a way that makes sense to the people you are driving to your site and they can’t find the solution to their problem, don’t bother with the sexier stuff. It will just be a waste of time and money.

While you do need to think about what impression the look of your website gives people, you don’t have to spend a bunch of money to have the most beautiful website. The bulk of your web design effort should go to understanding who is coming to your website, what they are looking for and where they expect that information to be on your website. Remember, with so many ways to connect online, people are coming to your site from a variety of sources and with a variety of reasons. Make sure you’ve thought about all the possible ways they could find you and what they might be looking for.

So if you think eMarketing doesn’t work, you need to take a look at the assumptions you have about it, stop focusing so much on technology and start focusing more on the people you are trying to connect with.

Social Networking & Social Media: What’s the Difference and Why Should You Care?

2008-04-17T20:01:00.000-07:00

I often see the terms “social networking” and “social media” used interchangeably when in fact they are two different concepts. Attracting clients via the internet is hard work that requires a tightly focused plan. If you’re going to do it effectively and efficiently, you have to know the difference between the two so you can target the right activities, have realistic goals and achieve them. So here’s the scoop.

Social Networking is very much like face to face networking. The primary goal is to connect with other people (old classmates, new friends, love interests, potential clients and sub-contractors) for similar purposes and start conversations that can lead to specific outcomes.

Social Media is about content: articles, news, videos, absurd stories, jokes. It’s about using the wisdom of crowds to find interesting stuff on the internet and bringing it to other people’s attention. Social media websites enable users to decide what’s important on the internet by voting on it, sharing it and commenting on it.

The reason why the two terms get used interchangeably is because social networking and social media are increasing found in the same places. (Biznik is an excellent example!)
- Things social networking and social media have in common:
- Designed to create a dialogue
- You need an online profile to participate
- There is an element of trust (which differentiates it from the general internet)
- Typically gather around a particular topic, area of interest or purpose

Why Do I Need to Care About the Difference?

If you want social networking or social media to work, you need to consider the purposes for each and how they fit into your overall eMarketing strategy.

Connecting vs. Sharing - Social networking is about meeting people while social media is about sharing what you know with the hope it will be helpful.

Proactive vs. Passive - While with social networking it’s generally okay to be proactive about seeking out introductions, it’s not okay to be proactive about seeking votes for your social media content. (Yeah. People do it but if you get caught, you will have to dig yourself out of a public relations nightmare.)

Meeting People vs. Getting Links - Social networking is about making human links while social media is about getting website links.

Hopefully, knowing the difference between social networking and social media will help you decide which combination of the two will work best for your business. Please! Let me know fi you have any questions!

SEO Basics: Every Page Is Your Home Page

2008-04-10T17:53:00.000-07:00

Business owners tend to assume that when a potential client does a search on Google or Yahoo and clicks on their website, they wind up on the home page. Sorry. That’s rarely the case.

While your house might have one front door, each page of your website is a front door to your business. Why? The search engines don’t really care what page you want people to land on. What they care about is what page on your site is most pertinent to the searcher. NEWS FLASH! Many times the most pertinent search result page is not your home page.*

So if each page of your website is a front door, what information do they need to have?
• Each webpage needs to be able to get to the main areas of your site. Make sure you have basic navigation on each page.
• Each webpage needs to indicate to the visitor who you (and your company) are.• Each web page needs to make it easy for people to contact you.
• If your customers are local, you need to have your address on each page.

So how do you make each page your home page? Look at each page of your website individually and ask yourself “If a first time website visitor landed on this page, would they get the information they looking for?”

Looking at each page as if it were your home page will go a long way to making your website more user friendly, help your website rank better and will help make it easier for people to contact you.

* Not sure what your home page is, it’s the one you land on when you go to www.yourdomainname.com.

oh great... The Spammers Found Twitter

2008-04-08T22:04:00.000-07:00

I get a handful of people signing up to follow me on Twitter each week. It’s kind of flattering (Some one cares what I think!) but it also occurred to me that following people is a pretty good Guerilla marketing tactic. Why? Because when you sign up to follow someone, they get an email that you’re following them. If you’re using Twitter, you’re probably using social networking and are curious to about who’s paying attention to you so you’re going to click on the link to check them out. And bang! You just played right into the hands of a spammer.

For a brief moment I thought I’d discovered “Twitter Spam” so I decided to Google Twitter spam and realized someone (or many people) had already discovered it, named it and created a website around it. I’m not kidding. Check out www.TwitterSpam.com.

Tips for Creating a Social Networking Profile

2008-04-07T18:25:00.000-07:00

Your social networking profile is important. People visiting your profile are making conclusions about you and your business from very little information. Small things, like your picture (also known as your Avatar) and your email address can say a lot about you. Your bio and your company description will say even more about you. Don’t just throw your social networking profile together. Put the time and effort into creating a profile that’s informative and compelling. Doing so will make a huge difference in how you are perceived by your social network.

Every directory and social networking site wants slightly different stuff so it’s hard to say “This is exactly what you need.” But if you have the basics, you can edit or add as needed. The following is a list of information you will most likely be asked to add to your profile (assuming your profile is mainly for business purposes).

Components of a Social Networking Profile:

Screen name – Base it on your name or business name. “Cutesy” screen names make you look unprofessional.

Job title

Company

Website URL

Blog URL

Tagline

Email address – Use a professional email address not your personal email address. If you have a website, have your webmaster set up an email addresses at your domain name. It looks a lot more professional than a Yahoo or Comcast email address.

Thumbnail picture (aka Avatar) – Get a good headshot! Don’t have your kid or spouse line you up against the wall and take a photo. It’s unprofessional and can be downright scary. You don’t have to spend a fortune on professional pictures. I recommend going to a high school portrait photographer and asking them for a CD of the pictures.

Summary or Bio of different lengths – It is crucial that your summary or bio be well written. Don’t just throw it together on the fly! Spend some time working on it or get help with it. Tailor it to the audience of the specific social networking site.

Key words and phrases that describe your products or services. These are words your target markets would use to find you so be careful about using industry specific jargon.

Information you might need or want to include:

Education and job history – If you’re in a field where these types of credentials are important and you don’t mind disclosing them, go ahead but be mindful of how much information you’re giving out.

Recommendations or Testimonials – You do have these, right? Well put them on your profile! Show people this isn’t your first day on the job.

Interests or Hobbies – Remember; people are looking for information about who you are. Adding pertinent interests and hobbies can make you memorable.

Groups and Associations – Listing these adds to your credibility. If you have access to the group or association logo, add it if possible.

Writing Captivating Case Studies

2008-04-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

Case studies are one of the bet selling tools a service business can use on their webiste. Unfortunately, they are often overlooked or just plain boring. Even when they follow the problem/solution/result format, they wind up leaving reader thinking "So what?"

I recently cam across an article, "The Secret To Writing Persuasive Case Studies" by Mark Levy that does an excellent job describing how to make your case studies stand out. He makes the case that the missing element is the "insight." Mark makes the case that "By highlighting an insight in a case study, you're underscoring how you think, create, strategize, and fix problems." which I think is an exxcellent point.

I strongly recommend readin this article and then reviewing your own case studies. Also, check out Mark's article "Two Strategies to Help Increase Your Fees by Up to 2,000%"

Social Networking Resources

2008-03-27T18:41:00.000-07:00

I was asked to write an article on tips for creating a social networking profile and came across the following resources about social networking I thought were particularly helpful.

Social Networking Resources:

A short video with an overview of social networking. (CommonCraft who produced this video also has other helpful overview videos on blogging, wikis and RSS.):
http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networking
(Or see it on YouTube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc

An in depth history of online social networking that includes links to the major players:
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/08/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_so_1.html

Social Networking Blog where you can learn about latest developments and new tools.
http://www.socialnetworking-weblog.com/

Search engines specifically for finding social networks:
http://www.digfoot.com/
http://www.findasocialnetwork.com/search.php

List of Social Networking Sites organized by category (i.e. books, business, family)
http://mashable.com/2007/10/23/social-networking-god/

A good list of Social Networking Aggregators. (Yeah. There are so many of them you need to worry about putting them all in one place.):
http://mashable.com/2007/07/17/social-network-aggregators/

Alternatives to Paypal

2008-03-02T18:43:00.000-08:00

I am not a fan of Paypal but for many of my clients Paypal is a necessary evil. Paypal is pretty good if you’re an individual or small business selling stuff on eBay but if you’re selling an eBook, Payapl is an in-elegant solution.

The problem is that once someone has purchased your eBook (or other informational product), it’s really tough to tell them how to download their purchase. You can’t customize the landing page to tell them “Click here to download your purchase.” All you can do is hope that they figure out that they need to click on the tiny “Return to Merchant” URL in the lower left hand corner of the page. The best work-around I’ve found is to put in big, red, bold text on the order page “Click on the ‘Return to Merchant’ link to download your purchase.” Yeah, right. Like that’s gonna happen. In-elegant is an understatement.

So when I was noodling around the internet today and cam across an article on CNN.com about 5 alternatives to Paypal, it got my attention. I haven’t tested out any of the companies they mention but I will be testing out http://www.e-junkie.com/. They’re not really on par with Paypal but have the potential to be better because they work with multiple payment systems including PayPal Standard, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, 2CheckOut and ClickBank. This means you can accept payment for multiple systems that don’t require you to set up a merchant account.

The thing I really like about e-Junkie.com is that you can customize both the landing page and the email people get when they purchase your eBook. That way you can send them to a page that says “Download your purchase here.” Seems pretty simple but apparently it’s beyond Paypal’s capabilities.

How Service Businesses Can Use Social Media

2008-02-27T17:14:00.000-08:00

I just came out of the session on SEO and Social Media Marketing. Although I wanted to slam my head against table because the chummy, clubby-ness of the panelists, I did manage to get one nagging question answered.

On the surface, social media seems like a natural fit for service professionals. If you write good content, people vote for it which gets exposure for your website. The problem with social media is that the “linksters” voting on social media sites are typically young men (and to a lesser degree women) who are highly technically savvy. My client’s target markets are usually C level executives who don’t have the time or inclination to dink around on the internet. The question become “How can my grown up clients use social media to reach their target markets?”

The answer is one of targeting content to the social media audience. If you can find something related to your business or the concerns of your clients and find something about it that appeals to the social media demographic, you can cross the divide. Linksters link to your site which improves rankings so it’s more likely to come up in the search results when your target markets are looking for your service.

It also helps if you refocus the purpose of social media from getting your target market to read your article to focusing on getting links to the site; especially links from bloggers. It’s more reasonable to expect that C level executives are reading blogs than voting on social networking sites.

3Types of Searches and How They Affect Professional Service Firms

2008-02-26T12:52:00.001-08:00

I’m at the Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara this week. Most of the seminars and panels are biased toward product driven companies so I will be posting short blog entries on material that with be of use to professional service companies.

This morning at a panel discuss “The Blended Search Revoultion”*, Raju Mathotra of Microsoft, discussed the three main ways people search.
Find – The searcher is looking for a specific answer to a specific question. i.e. driving directions or movie times.
Discover – The searcher has a clear need but is uncertain about next steps.
Explore – The searcher is interested in a topic and is noodling around on the internet. (I know I often do my research this way.)

In both discovery and exploration, the searcher tends to have multiple, search sessions.
What does this mean for service professionals? I think it means they need to consider all these types of searching when creating quality content on their blog and website. An FAQ page could be a way to attract the Finders. Focusing text on problems and solutions can be a way to attract the Discovers and “How To” articles can be a way to attract explorers.
But before you do any of this, you need to think about what questions do my target markets want answered, what problems do they have and what do I know that they’d be interested in? If you’re not clear on what your target markets are looking for, you wind up missing the mark and that great content turns out to be charity work. (Nothing wrong with charity work but it’s best to be clear that that’s your intention.)

* The Blended Search Revolution - The first generation of search engines ranked pages based on the content of those pages alone -- the words on the page. The second generation increased relevancy by analyzing links. The third generation, Search 3.0, is upon us now in full force. Google Universal Search, Ask.com's Morph, Microsoft Live Search Scopes and Yahoo Shortcuts are different names for the same core concept -- automatically blending in results from specialized or "vertical" search engines such as video search or local search. This session looks at the revolutionary change happening with blended search and how search marketers can ride the wave to success.

Backing up Your Computer Data Doesn't Have to Hurt

2008-01-31T16:30:00.000-08:00

I once had a boss who had so many piles of paper in his office that once a year, one of the three secretaries in the office would spend a couple of days in his office with him sorting through it all. The running gag was that we had to tie a rope around the unlucky secretary's waste so we could pull her out when she got buried under an avalanche of paper.

Fortunately, I’m much more organized than that so when I cleaned out my office last weekend, it only took about half a day. Once I had all my papers filed and put away, I had two file drawers. That’s it. Two.

That’s not necessarily a good thing. Why? Because it made me realize how much information I have stored on my computer. For years I didn’t worry too much about that because all the websites I’ve done and the related files are stored on servers out on the internet. Then I thought about the Word docs representing hundreds of hours of research I’ve done, the irreplaceable digital photos and the lifeblood of my day-to-day business: email. Wow. And I thought I was bummed when my wallet got stolen. At least with my wallet all I had to do was shut down credit and debit cards. If I lost all the stuff on my computer, my business would be seriously debilitated for several weeks if not months or years.

So why haven’t I done anything about this yet? I’ve looked into backing up my computer data but each time I did it quickly turned into a Pandora’s Box of technological questions I couldn’t answer and exorbitant expense. First of all, more than one computer guy has told me that “All you need to do is” and then describes a multi-step process completely outside the realm of probability. Secondly, when I first looked into online data backup in 2003, it cost about $100 a month. $1200 a year made that impractical backup process sound reasonable; but still, I didn’t do it.

So after I cleaned out my office, I researched “reviews of online back up systems” and came across a very helpful article on InformationWeek called “Review: Five Online Backup Services Keep Your Data Safe.” In the article, they describe five different online backup systems tested by someone who knows what they’re doing. I thought I was going to go for Carbonite but after reading about Mozy, I tried them out.

Carbonite might be perfectly good but I’m pretty happy with Mozy. Two things really stood out with Mozy. First, their phone support was excellent. I called twice about separate issues and each time I didn’t have to wait more than a minute to talk to someone who was very helpful and treated me like I was a sentient human being. Each time, they stayed on the line while I figured things out and even anticipated future issues and offered solutions to potential problems I might have. Second, I really like that the Mozy online back up system scanned my computer and created a suggested list of folders I would probably want to back up. I didn’t have to figure out what to back up; they did.

Beware: purchasing and setting up an online backup system is not the same as buying a book on Amazon. It’s definitely more involved but it’s not rocket science. If you’re fairly comfortable with buying things online, aren’t in a rush, and understand how folders work on your computer, you can do it. If you feel like an internet newbie, you might want to do this with a more tech savvy person handy so they can help you answer some questions and configure the set up process.

Ready to give online back up a try? Here are a couple of tips to help streamline the process:

Be sure to check how big your folders are. When I purchased my plan, I thought 2 GB of space would be enough. Little did I realize that the folders I wanted to back up were closer to 16 GB! (Here’s how to check your folder size: Assuming you have a PC, right click on the folder, then click on Properties, and then select the General tab.)
It’s certainly not a requirement but you also might want to clean up the files on your computer first. I didn’t realize that I had a bunch of music files I didn’t want that where taking up a bunch of space.
Music files and pictures are WAY bigger files than your Word docs, spreadsheets or PDF files so if you’re looking to reduce files, clean those out first.
Don’t forget to clean out your email! If you’re one of those people who pride yourself on keeping every email you ever received, get over it. There’s a good chance your Outlook file is going to be pretty big. My general rule of thumb is to delete emails older than a year unless they relate to financial stuff or important decisions made by clients.

You Can Do Something about SPAM

2008-01-22T09:24:00.000-08:00

I got the most obnoxious SPAM email this weekend. It wasn’t the product they were pushing that was so offensive. It was the statement at the end of the email that started with a claim that if I were getting this email, I signed up to receive it (which I most certainly did not because I couldn’t care less about another “make money at home opportunity”) and ended with “Any person who make a false report of alleged spam IS GUILTY OF BOTH FRAUD AND A CIVIL CRIME.” (The emphasis is theirs.)

That made me mad. Don’t send me SPAM and then make vague threats about being guilty of fraud and civil crime if I complain. So I decided to do something about it.

The email was supposedly from mybizathome@gmail.com. Hmmm. Sending an email from an address that is obviously not your regular email address. Now that doesn’t look spammy at all! When I looked at the email header information* I could tell that the spammer was spoofing this email address because it didn’t come from Google’s mail server but from an Earthlink mail server. (Spoofing is when a sender hides the real email address their sending the message from and makes it look like it’s coming from another and is a huge red flag that the email is spam.)

Fortunately, there are forces of good on the internet as well as bad. So, I went over to SpamCop.net, created an account and filed a complaint. Spamcop is a free service that figures out the origin of an email and sends a report to the relevant ISP. They sent my complaint to Earthlink’s network administrators and the whole thing only took a few minutes. Will this guy get shut down because of it? Probably not. But if enough people complain he might. At the very least I feel a lot better for having done something about it.

*Email Header Information

Click on the email to highlight it but don’t open it.
Then right click on the message.
It will pull up a screen that should look something like this:

This information in the box I’ve highlighted is the information you will need when making a spam complaint.

My Biggest Influencers

2008-01-11T12:48:00.000-08:00

Tom Pick of Web Market Central tagged me to create a list of my biggest influencers. It was fun to write and made me cry. (Okay. That's not exactly hard to do. I'm kinda leaky.) This list is in order of how long I’ve known the person, not in order of importance.

Grandma Ruby
I had a pretty chaotic childhood but my sister and I could always rely on Grandma Ruby to be there. She and grandpa would show up at our house every other Friday at 5:00 and take us for the weekend. Those visits were the one stable thing we could count on growing up. Grandma Ruby was born on a farm in Kansas and was a young adult during the depression. She’s always lived simply and enjoyed what she had. She’s also embraced aging. Because of her example, I couldn’t imagine doing all those silly things women do to “fight the aging process.” I’m too busy enjoying life to waste the mental energy on that stuff.

Pop (aka my step dad)
I am the first person in my biological family to graduate college and oddly enough, that’s because of my step dad. He graduated high school and got a scholarship to MIT when he was 16. He also did ABD (all but dissertation) PhD work at UC Berkeley. Fortunately he married my mom when I was pretty young and set the expectation that I would graduate from college. I don’t think he ever said “You HAVE TO graduate from college!” it was just a forgone conclusion. I doubt I would have graduated college if he hadn’t come into our lives.

My Pop’s also the most successful entrepreneur I’ve ever known. He’s worked incredibly hard for over 30 years to be successful and watching him made me feel like it was possible for me to do what I love and be successful too. Last but not least, he’s the most generous person I know. He spends his money on quality time with his family. I’ve seen the joy it’s brought him to help out deserving people and if I ever get rich, that’s what I want to do with my money too.

Master Lloyd Francis
I didn’t realize it at the time but studying a martial art in my early twenties was about the best thing I could have done to build the self confidence I would need as an adult. Master Francis literally taught me how to take a hit and not cry. As a result, I am a much less fearful person than I would have been otherwise. Also, starting out as white belt, then going through the various levels to black belt taught me not to get complacent. It taught me that if you want to make progress in life you have to get used to feeling like a beginner and getting your ass kicked for a while.

Carol Proudfoot-Edgar
I’ve been a student of Native American Shamanism for about 20 years now and Carol has been my teacher for most of those years. Shamanism is not something I talk much about because I don’t want people to assume I’m a “woo-woo” person and to me, a spiritual practice is a very personal thing not to be discussed lightly. But I have to mention it here because I can’t even begin to enumerate the lessons I’ve learned in my work with Carol that have made me a better person. Two major lessons come to mind. First, I now know that the answers I seek are within me. I don’t need external things or a mediary to have a connection and dialogue with God/Spirit. Second, I KNOW Spirit has my best interest at heart and is looking out for me. That doesn’t mean life is easy and pain free. It means that if I chose to access it, I have the strength to survive and thrive.

Arati Prabhakar, PhD
Arati (pronounced “Arthee”) was my last boss in the corporate world. I was her Executive Assistant when she was the CEO of Interval Research. She was an amazing example of how a woman could be extremely smart (She was appointed as the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology by President Clinton.), tough, compassionate and feminine all at the same time. She showed me that it is possible to balance a demanding career and a family. Arati was CEO at a very stressful and chaotic time but she never let them see her sweat and she never lost her cool.

Kathie Nelson, Connectworks
I met Kathie in the closing minutes of a Robert Middleton seminar. In hindsight, it was one of those things that at the time seem minor but turn out to be a touchstone event in your life. It’s not an overstatement to say I would not be in business if it weren’t for Kathie. She’s helped me more than anyone else to build my business. Heck, she even came up with the name eMarketing Strategist! Kathie is the most focused person I know. She has built a successful business while overcoming events that would have wiped out a weaker person. Kathie is also adept at seeing the positive in a potentially negative situation. She’s taught me that by asking myself “How do I want to see this?” I can take a potentially negative situation and turn it into a positive situation. I often find myself asking “What would Kathie do?”

Okay. This is kind of funny...

2008-01-07T15:38:00.001-08:00

In Defense of eNewsletters

2008-01-07T15:12:00.000-08:00

eNewsletters get a bum rap these days. As blogs have become more popular, I see more and more on the internet about how much better blogs are than eNewsletters. I hear things like “Anyone can add a blog post and you don’t have to know HTML to do it.” and “You can add a blog post whenever inspiration strikes.” But just because adding to a blog is easier than sending a eNewsletter doesn’t make them better. Here’s why I think the predicted demise of the eNewsletter is greatly exaggerated.

It all Boils Down to Your Target Market(s)
The debate between eNewsletters and blogs boils down to knowing your target market and what they are comfortable with. For example, my clients and prospects are corporate executives and small business owners. They tend to be service providers such as coaches, accountants and lawyers. Since it’s my job to help them connect with their clients via the internet, I have to know just as much about their target markets as they do.

One thing I can safely say about my clients and their clients is that they tend to use the internet in similar ways. They do not consider themselves to be “technology savvy.” They are not early adopters of technologies and don’t care to be. They’re too busy running their business to spend time diddling around on the internet. In general, they prefer to stick with what is currently working for them and email works for them. Signing up for an eNewsletter is a process they are comfortable with. They only have to make that decision one time and they are on your list until they unsubscribe.

Most of my clients find their clients by face-to-face networking, speaking engagements and professional conferences. It is a rare case when they get a client from the internet. The main benefit to them of having a website, blog and eNewsletter is to stay in front of prospects and build the perception of being an expert in their industry. As a result, I advise my clients when networking face-to-face to ask the person they are talking to if they would like to receive their eNewsletter. If they are asking the prospect questions about the issues they are facing instead of babbling on about what they do, it can seem very natural. I have several clients who have gotten the majority of their subscribers from doing this. Somehow, asking people to sign up for an RSS feed of your blog doesn’t seem like it would work nearly as well.

Multiple Target Markets
Another benefit of eNewsletters is that you can control who gets what content. For instance, I have a client who hosts local networking events in addition to selling informational products and teleclasses on her website. Obviously people outside her geographic area are not going to be interested in information about her face-to-face networking events. So, she has two lists on her eNewsletter sign up form to accommodate these different groups. She sends to networking events to the local people and her informational eNewsletter to everybody. You can’t break down content this way with a blog.

Push vs. Pull Technologies
The main difference between eNewsletters and blogs is how the recipient receives the information. An eNewsletters is a “push technology” while a blog is most commonly used as a “pull technology.” With an eNewsletter, you are in charge of when they receive it; while with a blog, they are in charge of when they read it. Yes, people can easily delete your newsletter email but it’s even easier not to visit your blog. Personally, I prefer to send people content than wait for them to find it

Sure, a blog can be a push technology too if your readers sign up for the blog’s RSS feed. However, few people know what an RSS feed is, how to sign up for it, how to use a blog aggregator and then remember to check the aggregator regularly. For my clients and their clients, it’s just too high a bar to jump over. It’s far easier to sign up for a eNewsletter. (I know. It is now possible to sign up to receive blog posts via email but in my experience far fewer choose this option than signing up for an eNewsletter.)

Internet User Does Not Equal Blogger
The proponents of blogs over eNewsletters tend to assume that everyone else is on the “Blog Bandwagon” too. They seem to think that everyone loves to spend hours poking around on the internet to see what others are saying. They don’t realize that while there are millions (if not billions) of people on the internet, only a fraction of those people care about blogs at all.

So What if Anyone Can write a Blog?
The #1 claim to fame for blogs is that anyone can set one up and add posts to it. So what? If all you do is write blog posts, you quickly realize that you’re talking to yourself. If the purpose of your blog is to make connections and ultimately get clients, this is a huge waste of time. What the Blog Gurus don’t tell you is that writing content is only half the battle. You also have to put just as much effort into attracting readers. Since most people have no idea how to do that, they have to hire someone to help them publicize their blog and build readership which kind of negates the benefit of being able to do it yourself. (Plus, how many of us have time to write a blog post twice a week?)

Beyond Information Overload
Another argument I see against eNewsletters is the claim that subscription rates are down. The Blog Bandwagon assumption is that as blogs become more popular, eNewsletters become less popular. This is an erroneous assumption about cause and effect. I think the decrease in subscription rates has more to do with the quality of eNewsletter content.

For the first time in human history we live in an age of too much information. Where the challenge used to be in finding information, today’s challenge is to sort through it all, figure out what’s important and what to do with it. In my experience, popular eNewsletters not only provide pertinent information, they also tell the reader why they should care and what to do with it. General trends about subscription rates are not your problem and should not deter you from having an eNewsletter. If you provide quality information, you will get more subscribers.

It’s Not an Either/Or Situation
I realize I sound like I’m coming down on blogs but I’m not. I really enjoy working on my blog and it has made me a better writer. Because of my blog, I have made professional connections I wouldn’t have made otherwise. I also find that writing for my blog generates ideas for eNewsletter articles and articles I can submit to other publications.

My purpose in writing this article is to help you make the decision that’s right for you when deciding whether to have an eNewsletter, blog or both. The most important criteria in this decision has to be who is your reader and what are they willing to do to get your content.

Business Blogs Worth Reading & Commenting On

2007-12-26T21:36:00.000-08:00

I’m a big fan of reading and commenting on other blogs as a way to network online with an eye toward building readership for your own blog. While blogs on technology and politics abound, it’s tough to find good business blogs; especially ones with a large enough readership to expect that your target audiences might actually be reading them.

It’s been my experience that the best place to find business blogs is not the blog directories but the websites of major newspapers and magazines. It makes sense. We’ve all heard the stories about how circulation numbers are down. I can’t think of a better way to stay relevant. Not only are newspapers and magazines finding and reporting the news, they are using blogs to enable readers to create more content by participating in the process.

So, with this in mind, I’ve started compiling the following list of good business blogs my coaching and consulting clients can reasonably hope their target audiences are reading.

Got a recommendation? Let me know! I'd be glad to add it to the Squidoo Lens I'm creating on business blogs.

NY Times: Floyd Norris – Notions on High and Low Finance
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/

International Herald Tribune: Daniel Altman - Managing Globalization
http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/

The Big Picture
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/

White Collar Crime Blog
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/whitecollarcrime_blog/

Washington Post – Small Business blog
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/small-business/

Jeff Matthews Is Not Making This Up
http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/
One of the few blogs I’ve read where every post is great!

Shifting Careers
http://shiftingcareers.blogs.nytimes.com/

Entrepreneur Magazine Blog
http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/index.html

Fast Company Blog
http://blog.fastcompany.com/
(Be sure to peruse their extensive blog roll.)

Tips for Writing an Informational eBook

2007-12-15T19:15:00.000-08:00

I’m helping a long time client create an ebook about writing a business and marketing plan for the new year. She has a treasure trove of stuff she’s written on the topics of business planning, marketing planning and face-to-face networking over the last ten years. So you’d think it would be easy to just throw it all together into an ebook, right? Nope. Just because you have a bunch of great content, doesn’t mean it’s ready to become an ebook. Here’s why:

Throwing things together when cooking can be brilliance. In ebooks, it’s garbage.
Every good article, white paper or report was written with a specific goal, call to action, publication and target market. Although there might have been common themes, each article had its own unique recipe of factors. So just because each original document was brilliant doesn’t mean the combined effect will be brilliant. Start by pulling together all the material you want to include but plan to do some major rewriting. Other wise it won’t make sense, it will sound disjointed and you will annoy your reader.

Before you edit, answer these questions:

Who is this book for?

What problem does this ebook address?

What will the reader have or know when they are done with this ebook?

What steps am I asking them to take? (Be specific!)

Why am I asking them to take these steps?

Do I have the steps in the right order?

Are they getting their money’s worth?

You need an editor.
If you’re a good writer and editor, you might be able to get away with writing the whole thing by yourself. If you’re writing it by yourself to save money, you’re wasting your time and you won’t save money. You will write a bad ebook that won’t sell. You’d be better off doing client work.

When it comes to formatting your ebook, just pay somebody.
Unless you or your assistant has spent ten years learning the ins-and-outs of formatting long documents for digital publication and has an amazing eye for detail, you will wind up very pissed off. Many times over. Why punish yourself? Just pay someone who knows what they’re doing. You might wind up paying them $50 an hour for 5 hours ($250) which is cheaper than paying your $15 an hour assistant for three days worth of work ($360) and it’s still screwed up and she’s ready to quit from frustration and she’s done nothing else in those three days… You get the idea. Just cough up the money.

P.S. Not only can I edit and format ebooks, I can set up the payment process on your website and help you creatively sell/market your ebook. Just hire me. We’ll all be a lot happier.

Keywords in Page Names. How Much Do They Really Help?

2007-12-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

In a recent issue of High Rankings Advisor, Jill Whelan answered a question from a reader who was worried about potential ramifications from changing the page names of his company website. He was changing them so they would include keywords in the name in the expectation that keywords in the URL’s would improve the website’s rankings.

(For those of you new to search engine optimization, DO NOT change the page names of your website without consulting a professional. It is not a decision to take lightly. It would be the same as if you changed your phone number on a whim and didn’t tell anyone. That would make it tough for clients and prospects to find you wouldn’t it?)

In Jill’s reply she cautioned the reader against it for several reasons most of which boiled down to her belief that the perceived benefits of keywords in page names were actually due to other factors that got ascribed to the new page names. I think the most valid point she makes is that although web pages in the top of the search results often have key words in the page name, someone is intentionally trying to get that page to rank well and are probably doing many things to improve its rankings.

Now I’m not entirely sure I agree with her but Jill is a well respected expert in SEO so I definitely have to give her opinion a lot of credence. One thing I did learn from the post was that if you’re going to use keywords in your page names, separate them with hyphens instead of underscores. Rats. I’ve been using underscores. I think they make the page name easier to read but apparently Google doesn’t read an underscore as a word separator but they do with hyphens. Oh well, what Google wants, Google gets.

I Am NOT an Audible Fan

2007-12-05T20:35:00.000-08:00

I recently got a Zune (Microsoft's version of the iPod.) and I really like it. Being a long time NPR listener, I've heard about Audible for downloading audio files and decided to try it out. They have a one month free trial. (Or so they make it sound. Read the fine print.)

First Red Flag
Audible required a credit card for this "free" offer. They're hardly the first company to do this but it still says to me, "We're going to try to get every penny we can out of you. Please forget when you signed up for this service."

Second Red Flag
In order to get the book I wanted, I had to download special software to download the book. That's baloney. You shouldn't need special software to download an MP3 file. (I've already got all the usual programs used for downloading audio files.)

Third Red Flag
I wasn't downloading an MP3 file or any other commonly used file type. I was downloading a file type proprietary to Audible. They do this so they can control what you do with your purchase.

Fourth Red Flag
Once I installed their special software and then downloaded the file I wanted, I was asked what device I wanted to download it to. My new Zune was not one of the options on their list. Granted, a Zune isn't an iPod but it's made by Microsoft for heaven's sake! There are more than five of them out there!

I'm not going to describe how I finally got my "free" download onto my Zune. What's important is that it took another hour and a half to do.

The Final Straw
Since it required an advanced degree to download files from Audible to my Zune, I obviously wanted to cancel my account. Once I logged in and re-confirmed my password (Fortunately I keep track of passwords because they didn't send it to me when I created my account.) I was able to find the directions for canceling my account. In the cancellation process, I was asked why I was canceling my account. The first time I selected "unhappy with service." I was then sent to a screen telling me to call an 800 number during East Coast business hours to cancel my account. I then selected "technical issue" as the reason for canceling my account. I got the same screen. On the third try, I selected "financial" as the reason for canceling my account. I was then taken to a screen offering me a reduced rate for the next three months. I had to decline that offer to actually close my account.

I don't know what Super Genius thought is up but they need to be fired. This is no way to build a business. A service I really wanted to like, I now hate. And now I'm telling you about it. That's not good for business.

P.S. I sent Audible customer support and email about this experience. If I hear back f rom them, I'll let you know.

P.P.S. The next day I got a very nice reply from an Audible customer service rep letting me know that she personally didn't know that it was so difficult to cancel your account. She was going to bring it up to her supervisor. I wanted to send her a reply but noticed that they Reply To email address was a generic email address and probably wouldn't have gotten to her which is another pet peeve I have about big company customer service departments. It's kind of hard to build rapport when your customers have to talk to a different person each time the contact you about the same problem.

I Love It When People Say Nice Things About Me!

2007-12-01T15:43:00.000-08:00

If you've read my artilce about Google Alerts, you know that I've got alerts set up for my name and business name. A few days ago I got an alert directing me to Tom Pick's Web Market Central blog. His post was about the Top 100 Social Media & Social Networking Blogs for 2007 according to VirtualHosting.com's blog. Although mine didn't make the list, Tom was kind enough to suggest that maybe it should have.

Thanks Tom. Right back at'cha!

Stuff I Found when I Should Have Been Working

2007-12-01T11:31:00.000-08:00

The Newbiew Guide to Social Networking - This is a good primer on social networking. It does a good job describing how to find niche social networks and things to consider when setting up your account.

The Blogger’s Guide to SEO - I don't agree with everything they say in this guide (sucha s telling you not to use a service like Blogger) but it does give you good info for how to think of your blog from an SEO perspective.

SEO Digger - With this SEO tool you can find out for which keywords your site ranks high enough to be in Google Top 20. You can analyze your own sites as well as sites of your competition. The only problem is that you can't tell it which key words to search for.

Tips for Using Digg - I'm doing reserach for an article on social media and came across this video on SEOmoz. I had to watch it several times to understand the points Matt makes but it's worth the effort.

Are You an Internet Wall Flower?

2007-11-27T18:41:00.000-08:00

No matter how much we wish it were true, you can’t just hang out a shingle and wait for clients to show up. Yes, it’s anxiety provoking but in order to find clients you have to network face-to-face. Even if there isn’t an entrance fee, networking isn’t free. At the very least it costs you time; the time in attending the event and the time in preparation. So when attending a face-to-face networking event you wouldn’t put on your best suit, get a haircut, make sure you’ve got your business cards, practice your elevator speech – and then go stand in the corner. So why do you do it on the internet?

You don’t think you do that, eh? I bet you put dozens of hours and hundreds if not thousands of dollars into your website. Then when that didn’t get your phone ringing, you spent more time and money on search engine optimization, a newsletter and maybe a blog. Phone ringing yet? If it is, it’s probably not enough to cover the expense of all that work.

Maybe you’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t find clients via the internet. That’s not true. The reason why you “can’t” find clients via the internet is that you’re lurking in the background.

You Are a Wall Flower.

Don’t think you’re a wall flower? Let’s start by looking at your blog. (This example could apply to your website and your newsletter too.) Here’s the litmus test: of the two questions below, which did you spend more time thinking about?
What will I write about?
How will I get people to read this?

If you spent more time on the first question, you are a wall flower. It’s easy to do. You spend more time thinking about infrastructure than connecting. You ask yourself: What blogging system or newsletter system will I use? When will I post to my blog or send my newsletter? What will I say? How does it look?

Not that these questions aren’t important, but in these questions you have focused on what you can directly control instead of what seems nebulous i.e. getting people to read your blog, sign up for your newsletter or visit your website. That’s only half the equation.

“If You Build It They Will Come” Only Applies to the Movies

Yes. You have to build a website, blog and newsletter. But, that’s not enough. You have to think about “Who do I want to read this?” and “How do I get them here?” The answers to those questions are longer than I fit in this post. But you can start to answer those questions by asking yourself “Where does my target market hang out on the internet?” Then go there. Really. It’s that easy. Stop being a wall flower and go say “Hi.” If you can do it in person, you can do it on the internet.

Don't Want Those Holiday Catalogs?

2007-11-08T19:45:00.000-08:00

I live in a house built in 1935. It was built for mail sent in 1935. My mailbox is a hole in the wall next to my front door that takes a sharp downward turn. It’s great for expending expensive heat and terrible for accepting mail. My magazines get mangled and my important mail winds up hanging in the breeze waiting for anyone who wants it.

Now that the Holiday Season is approaching, I know the mail hole is going to get really bad. I do most of my shopping online. Unfortunately retailers assume that because I buy things online I buy from catalogs. I don’t. But these “savvy” retailers send me catalogs which clog up my 1935 mail box.

So, Guy Kawasaki, I’m sorry you had two hours to kill in the Monterrey Airport, but you’ve probably saved my sanity this holiday season with your mention of www.CatalogChoice.org/. I signed up for it. It was easy. And now I won’t have to put these catalogs in the recycling pile.

Is There a Social Media Expert in the House?

2007-11-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

I'm working on an article about blog promotion and needed a definition of "social media" so of course I looked it up on Wikipedia where I found the following message:

So, if you're an expert on social media, you might want to sign up to be a Wikipedia editor. (Personally, I wouldn't want to paint such a big target on my back but maybe you're braver than me!)

Is Self Publishing Right for You?

2007-11-02T11:44:00.000-07:00

It seems like every service professional has either written a book or is planning to write a book. They’ve heard time and again that writing a book will build credibility and attract new clients. And increasingly, they are turning to self-publishing or print-on-demand as a way to publish their book.

It seems to me that professionals turn to alternative types of publishing because it’s less intimating than the traditional publishing process. When you self publish you don’t have to write a book proposal, you don’t have to pitch your book and you don’t have to deal with rejection. However, there are real drawbacks to self publishing you need to consider before you inadvertently waste all the hard work that goes into writing a book.

Mike Schultz of “The Service Insider Blog” has an excellent article “The Self Publishing Fascination” that includes points to consider about self publishing. He also writes about at what sales point you can expect various business benefits. I strongly recommend reading this article if you are considering writing a book.

It Was too Good to Be True. Blog Comment Links Don’t Count After All.

2007-10-31T10:22:00.000-07:00

When RainToday published my article "How to Blog Without Having a Blog” earlier this month, they requested a few edits and called it “Using Blogs to Attract Attention”. Prior to publication, the editor asked me to address the question of whether or not links in blog comments help your website’s rankings.

I posted the question to a trusted SEO forum and while I didn’t get a definitive answer, no one said “No. They don’t count.” So in the article I made the claim “You can improve your website’s rankings with links from blogs.” My reasoning was that when you either put a link in your comment or put your domain name in your signature, the links will be counted by the search engines. It seems reasonable, right? A link to your website counts as a link to the search engines. That’s where I was wrong.

I should have realized that the search engine spammers had already thought of this, abused the hell out of it and Google had to put a stop to it. To prevent “comment spam” Google uses the “no follow” tag. The “no follow” tag tells the search engine spider not to follow a link which prevents the search engine from counting the link toward a website’s rank. So while humans can click on the links, they don’t help your website’s rankings after all.

It’s not all bad news though. Links in the blog post still count; just not the links in the comments. Also, humans can still click on the links and wind up on your website which is the ultimate purpose of SEO after all. In the quest for better rankings, we tend to lose sight of the fact that SEO is not an end in itself. The purpose of SEO is to get visitors to your website. It doesn’t matter if they got from doing a search on Google or if they got there from a blog as long as they get there.

Wonder What Other Bloggers Are Reading?

2007-10-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

I'm testing out www.BlogRolling.com to see if it really is an easy way to add blogs and websites to my blogroll and I came across the BlogRolling.com Hot 500. This is a list of the 500 most linked to by other BlogRoll.com members.

Check it out if you’re interested in seeing what others are reading. Keep in mind this is not a list of the 500 blogs on the internet; just the blogs most often linked to by other BlogRolling.com members.

Turning a Blog into a Book

2007-10-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I had the great pleasure of attending a lecture on personal branding by Thom Walters of Coraggio Group. Mr. Walters, formerly of Wieden & Kennedy, has worked with several Fortune 500 companies on building and promoting their brand.

I came to the lecture skeptical about the whole concept of branding. The landscape is littered with failed attempts to influence brand and it seemed to me that controlling or driving brand is akin to pushing the river. You can try but you’re just going to get all wet. Mr. Walters’ lecture was the first time I had a sense that maybe it is possible to build and influence brand in a way that actually works. More about that later.

At the beginning of his speech, Mr. Walters mentioned that he was working on book. By the end of the speech I was so excited to learn more that I just couldn’t wait a year for the book to come out. I wanted to explore these ideas right now! After the lecture, I waited around to talk to him and when I got the chance I suggested he start a blog about branding while he was working on the book. Fortunately, he liked the idea and I’m crossing my fingers that he actually does it.

Turning a blog into a book is not a new idea. You just have to do a Google search on “turning a blog into a book” to find several programs ready to show you how to do it. Considering the content of many blogs, that’s a scary idea. The internet does not need more useless content. However, there is at least one example of a blog that became a book that is worth knowing about and learning from.

The Long Tail – a Book that Started as a Blog

The book “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson started out as an article in Wired magazine. Mr. Anderson started his blog The Long Tail when he began writing the book. If you’re not familiar with the book, here’s a brief description from the blog:

“The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

I doubt Mr. Anderson realized what an important component of writing the book the blog would become. As he wrote the book, he posted sections on the blog and solicited feedback about it. Since the theory of the book is based on some pretty heady science and is a new theory in need of testing, I’m sure the feedback he got helped strengthen the content and make it more robust. Readers also connected him with sources and information he might not have found on his own.

Another equally important way the blog helped is that Mr. Anderson was able to build an audience ready to buy the book when it came out. I know several published authors who had a painful learning experience when they realize the publisher expected them to handle the bulk of the marketing. It takes months if not years to build an audience and having one in place when the book comes out can profoundly impact sales.

Did You Know There’s an Award for Blogs that Became a Book?

Something I learned while researching other books that started as a blog is that there is now an award for such books called the Blooker Awards . I’m not familiar with any of this year’s winners but if you’re considering turning your blog into a book, you might find some inspiration.

What to Ask about that SEO Company's Guarantee

2007-09-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

There are hundreds of companies doing search engine optimization; many of which are on the up-and-up. However, because the industry is so competitive, many make guarantees about results that sound good but are often of little or no value. They use linguistic smoke and mirrors to make it sound like you’re getting a good deal but in reality they are doing very little for the money they are charging you. So how do you tell a valuable guarantee from a useless one with out having to become an expert in search engine optimization?

Today’s issue of the RainMaker Report has a good article “Leprechaun Repellent And Other Meaningless SEO Guarantees,” by Scott Buresh of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing, that tells you what to look for when evaluating the guarantees made by search engine companies.

The one point I would add to the article is about local versus national search engine optimization. My sister owns a tattoo shop in San Francisco and she recently got a sales call from a scammy SEO company. They claimed they would get her top rakings for phrases like "tattoo shop." Sounds good right? Wrong! Her shop is in San Francisco. Why should she pay hundreds of dollars every month to rank #1 for "tattoo shop" across the country? It’s not like people in New York or Boston are going to fly across the country to go to her shop. For a fraction of what this company was going to charge her, she could rank well for “tattoo shop San Francisco” which is much more likely to drive qualified traffic to her website and her business than the general phrase “tattoo shop.”

Podcasting: You Might as Well Start Learning About It Now

2007-09-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

In my travels on the Net today, I came across a very good article about podcasting called "The Art & Science of Podcasting". Podcasting might seem too cutting edge right now but I'm willing to bet many of you will be seriously considering giving it a try in the next few years.

Where’s the Google Shopping Cart?

2007-08-30T16:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve been looking for an inexpensive online shopping cart for clients who want to sell ebooks and accept payment for workshops and seminars via their websites. Sure, you can install a shopping cart on a website but that costs hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars and just isn’t a practical solution for most small businesses. Additionally, you have to have a merchant account which is complicated and time consuming to set up. So what options do you have if you’re just testing the waters of selling informational products online?

Paypal looked promising at first because you don’t need to have a merchant account to use it. However, it’s got a major drawback. You can’t customize the message the purchaser receives once they’ve completed their order which means you can’t automatically deliver the ebook. You have to do it manually order-by-order. Web based shopping carts such as 1Shoppingcart.com enable you to automatically deliver ebooks but it starts at $50 a month and you have to have a merchant account to use it.

I mentioned my dilemma to Franz Mura, the owner of Concrete CMS, and he suggested I check out the Google shopping cart. My first reaction was “What?! Google has a shopping cart?”

I’d heard about Google Checkout but I hadn’t heard that Google had a shopping cart. Google Checkout is geared toward shoppers. It enables them to store their purchasing info and have one-click check out capabilities.

Alas, it was too good to be true. Google shopping cart doesn’t appear to be coming any time soon. There was a flurry of blog posts about Google trying to take a bite out of Paypal’s business in June of 2006 but there hasn’t been any news since.

See these blogs posts for the full story:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060612-100806
http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/2006/06/google_adds_a_s.html

I sure hope Google launches Gbuy because Paypal doesn’t get what an opportunity they’re missing in going after the information products line of business.

Got a suggestion? I’m all ears! If I wind up using it, I’ll donate $50 to your favorite charity.

PassiveAggressiveNotes.com

2007-08-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Need a reminder why the direct approach is less likely to make you look like a jerk? Check out www.PassiveAggressiveNotes.com for inspiration.

“Which newsletter format should I use” - I OWN this search phrase!

2007-08-22T20:08:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I wrote an article “Text, HTML or PDF: Which Newsletter Format Should I Use?” I posted it to my website and I distributed it through www.SubmitYourArticle.com. As far as I know, I haven’t gotten any clients from it but just for laughs and giggles, I did a search on Google for “which newsletter format should I use” (with quotes) to see how well it ranked. There were 36 results. All of which were my article!

How is this possible? When I sent it out via www.SubmitYourArticle.com, I gave subscribers to about 60 article database websites permission to reprint my article. On the plus side, they have to include my copyright info. On the down side, they don’t have to include a link back to my website. Fortunately, my website is first in the results.

Lessons learned:
- I don’t know how many people actually use this as a search phrase, but if they do, they’re going to find me.
- It’s more important to use a functional article titles than it is to use a “sexy” article title if your goal is to rank well.

At Least My Boss Ain't so Bad!

2007-08-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I get frustrated with the challenges of being self employed. I miss knowing I’ll get a pay check on the 1st and 15th and I miss being able to go to the doctor and not have to worry whether or not I can afford it. But then I read some of the stories in the My Bad Boss Contest sponsored by the AFLCIO labor union and remembered why I love working for myself.

How to Use Webrings for eMarketing

2007-08-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

What is a webring?
A webring is a group of websites and/or blogs linked together by topic or interest. In each webring, member websites band together into linked circles.

So far they’re used primarily for hobbies and special interests but as is the case with social networking, they will quickly catch on in the business community. Personally, I’m thrilled because they fit right in line with my business philosophy of “Let’s be successful as a team.”

Webrings Can Drive Traffic to Your Website and Improve Rankings
When a visitor lands on another website in the webring, there will be a link to either the next website in the ring or a link to the list of websites in the ring. Visitors are more likely to explore the other websites in a webring than explore a typical list of links because they know that the other websites are going to be on the topic they’re interested in.

My guess is that a link to your website from the webring would be considered a high quality link by the search engines and would help your website’s rankings.

How to Use Webrings to Your Advantage
To use webrings effectively, you have to have valuable information on your website such as articles and other resources. When submitting your website to a webring, I suggest that you don’t submit your home page but instead submit a link to your newsletter archive, your blog or a resources page. Remember, webrings are about information first and promoting your business second. Keep in mind that providing helpful information is the best kind of promotion on the web.

How to Find Webrings
There are a couple of ways to access a webring Some are displayed in list format while with others when you land on a page that is part of a webring there is a link to the next website in the ring. I started by using the search phrase “webrings” in Google and came up with tons of results.

Visit eMarketingStrategist.com for a list of webring directories and systems.

Let me know if you start a webring. I’ll be glad to promote it here on my blog.

Why does Google under-report backlinks?

2007-07-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

I have spent hours in recent weeks trying to answer this question. So far I’ve come across three reasons why Google under-reports backlinks:

Google only gives credit for what they consider to be high quality links. An example of a high quality link when a website links to an article or product description on your website because it has relevant information.

Google only gives credit to web pages with a page rank of 4 or higher. I would take this claim with a grain of salt because ther is sooo much mis-information about page rank out there. To learn more about what page rank is and how to use it, read this post about page rank on the High Rankings forum by Scottie Claiborne.

Google Deliberately under-reports backlinks. Read the post “Why Don’t My Links Show Up in Google?”

The Search Engines Don’t Know You Changed Your Name

2007-07-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

I’m working with a new client who contacted me after their website rankings dipped. The Director of Sales mentioned that they had recently renamed a bunch of web pages and asked me if that might have had something to do with the problem. As soon as she asked, I felt a thud in my chest. It’s never fun to give a client bad news. Yep. That had something to do with it.

Changing domain names or page names without doing a redirect is like moving and not putting in a change of address with the post office. You don’t have to put in a change of address but don’t expect your mail or your website traffic to find you if you don’t.

So what’s a redirect? It’s essentially a change of address for your website or web pages. It’s a way of telling the search engines that the website or web pages formerly names ABC are now named YXZ.

A “301 redirect” is a permanent change of address while a “302 redirect” is a temporary change of address. You’re probably thinking “Then I want to do a 301 permanent redirect.” But wait we’re talking about SEO so it’s not that simple. Read the article Switching to a New Domain Name Without Losing Your Google Rankings in the High Rankings Advisor to learn more.

If you need to redirect a domain name or individual pages, all you have to do is type in “301 redirect”, “directions for a 301 redirect” or “how to do a 301 redirect” and you will get lots of help.

Fortunately things will turn out okay for my client. The name change was a good idea since the new pages contain nice juicy key words in them. In a few months they’ll be back where they were and moving upward.

The Power of a Domain Name

2007-06-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

I knew the words in a domain name were important but yesterday I got a lesson in just how important a domain name is to ranking well in Google.

I’m working with a new client who is a mortgage broker in Virginia. His domain name is http://www.theresponsiblemortgagelender.com/ and we’ve been working on his website for about three weeks now. The site is live but there is no content on the pages. It’s just a shell right now while we fine tune the graphics and work on the content.

So, when he called me yesterday to tell me he got a call from a highly qualified lead who found him by searching Google for “Virginia responsible mortgage lender”, I was pretty surprised. The first two results were my client’s blog but what was especially surprising was that his website ranked #8! This is a website that has no page content, no meta tags or links to it…and within three weeks of being live ranks on the first page of Google for one of his most important key phrases.

At first, he thought I was a super genius but I had to be honest and tell him I really couldn’t take credit for it. Other than designing the site to be search engine friendly, I hadn’t done anything to justify such fast results. The only reason I could think of for why he ranked so well for “Virginia responsible mortgage lender” was because “responsible”, “mortgage” and “lender” are words in his domain name and the word “Virginia” is in his address at the bottom of each page.

What’s the lesson in all of this? You’re probably tempted to use your business name as your domain name but in most cases you’re going to rank well for that any way. Besides, any one searching on your domain name knows who you are. Most of your prospects don’t know your name, so why not rank well for the phrases they’re searching on? If possible, use the words your clients and prospects use in your domain name. Your website WILL rank better as a result.

So What Do You Make?

2007-06-09T16:38:00.000-07:00

I had the great pleasure of seeing the poet Taylor Mali perform a poem at a private fundraiser associated with the Wordstock Book Festival last year. Tim Boyle, the owner of Columbia Sportweare donated $5,000 for the poem and it was worth every penny.

I was just poking around on YouTube and came across a different poem for teachers and anyone else who's ever tried to make a difference.
Check it out at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw1MFobWD_o

You'll Enjoy Opening This Pandora's Box

2007-02-20T17:50:00.000-08:00

I’m embarrassed to admit it but sometimes I can be a real Luddite. A few months ago a client started a weekly podcast I needed to listen to in order to help her market it. Listening to her podcast was no simple matter. I had to crank up the volume, lean in to the speakers and focus all my energy on deciphering the whisper in the distance. When I thought about it, I realized that I’d purchased my computer speakers in 1999. In computer years, that’s so old you’d need carbon dating to figure out their true age.

So last weekend I finally splurged and got new speakers. For $30, I got two speakers and subwoofer that make my surround sound stereo speakers sound like two tin cans and a string. I couldn’t believe the difference. It was like my monitor went from black and white to 3D color. All of a sudden, I’m willingly spending more time at my desk.

The first thing I did with my new world of audio was try out the music website Pandora. Pandora instantly became my new favorite website. You create "stations" by telling it what bands, composers or songs you like. Pandora then searches its database and plays music akin to your selection. You can then give it feedback, telling it what songs you like and which ones you don’t. It then further customizes play list. You can also listen to stations created by other users to find more music. Oh yeah, did I mention it’s free?

Check it out!

How to Use Title Tags to Your Advantage

2007-02-16T15:59:00.000-08:00

Many of us have heard that meta tags are important when optimizing your website for the search engines but most of us don't really understand what they are, how they help and what we can do to use them to our advantage.

Wikipedia defines meta tags this way, "Meta elements (or meta tags) provide information about a given webpage, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly, and are inserted into the HTML code in the format illustrated above, but are not visible to a user looking at the site."

One of the most important meta tags is the title tag. If you go to Google and do a search on "eMarketing Strategist", the following is the first result returned. The title tag is the text that reads "eMarketing Strategist - Internet marketing that gets results..."

As you can see from this example, your title tag is usually the first text a searcher sees so you definitely want to have a good title tag. The challenging part is writing a title tag that makes both the search engines and searchers happy.

Recently, Jill Whalen, author of the great SEO newsletter High Rankings Advisor, wrote a very helpful article on title tags called All About Title Tags. Check it out and be sure to sign up for her newsletter while you're on her website.

Jill Whalen of High Rankings® is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and host of the free weekly High Rankings® Advisor search engine marketing newsletter. Jill's handbook, "The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines" teaches business owners how and where to place relevant keyword phrases on their Web sites so that they make sense to users and gain high rankings in the major search engines.Jill specializes in search engine optimization, SEO consultations, site analysis reports, SEM seminars and is the co-founder of Search Engine Marketing New England (SEMNE) a local networking organization.

Thinking about blogging? READ THIS FIRST!

2007-02-08T12:12:00.000-08:00

I was browsing the most read posts on Guy Kawaskai's blog and came across a gem of a post on blogging "The 120 Day Wonder: How to Evangelize a Blog". It's a good companion piece to my article "How to Blog With Out Having a Blog".

The Many Uses of LinkedIn

2007-02-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to figure out how to utilize profesisonal networking sites such as LinkedIn and Soflow for a couple of years now. Professional networking websites pre-date MySpace but are only now being looked at as a serious source of clients and partners.

Guy Kawasaki has wirtten an article Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn that's got some interesting facts about people with a LinkedIn profile page such as "People with more than 20 connections are 34 times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than 5." He also describes some great potential uses of it such as gauging the helth of a company or industry.

The Google Sandbox Scoop

2007-02-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

If you’ve launched a new website in the last couple of years, whether you know it or not you’ve encountered the Google Sandbox. What happens is that when you launch a new website, Google watches it for several months before displaying it in search results. This can be a big negative for a new company or an existing company using a new domain name. Google started the sandbox to make sure that websites they display in the search results are “real” websites and not just link farms or websites with duplicate content.

“Google Sandbox” is a rather euphemistic phrase. It should be called the “Google Quagmire”. SEO consultants have been trying to figure out how to get out of the sandbox since it first sent shock waves through the industry in 2004.

Andy Hagans—who knows his stuff when it comes to SEO—has written a very helpful article “Secrets to Beating the Sandbox” on what you can do to minimize the amount of time your website spends stuck in the sandbox and maximize the time it spends attracting visitors.

The Cleaner the Code, the Better the Deliverability

2007-01-28T13:43:00.000-08:00

The quality of the HTML code you have in your newsletter greatly affects whether or not your HTML newsletter gets to your recipient’s inbox. Programs like FrontPage add gobs of extra code that will trigger the spam filters for email addresses at MSN, AOL and Yahoo. It’s hard work to write, format and send a newsletter so why not make sure your message has the best chance of getting into inboxes?

I recently came across an article “How HTML Code Affects E-Mail Deliverability” that gives specific examples of what to do and not to do to maximize deliverability.

Keeping Your Sensitive Data Secure

2007-01-09T19:41:00.000-08:00

I take computer security very seriously. I have several friends who work in tech support and computer security so I’ve heard all the horror stories. I also take my business very seriously and my clients trust me with sensitive information such as credit card numbers and login information for their websites.

I would feel absolutely terrible if any of my clients suffered because I failed to take every security precaution necessary. I also know that there are an alarming number of people who have nothing better to do than figure out how to access that sensitive information.

Recently, I gave some friends who work in computer security a wish list for a program to keep track of sensitive information. I wanted something that was as secure as possible so that if someone broke into my house and stole my computer, the still couldn’t get into it. I wanted something easy to use and inexpensive.

Their answer: Password Safe. It’s a free open source software program written by a guy who the security experts I know say is a genius. (Geeks are extremely reluctant to acknowledge that someone is smarter than they are.)

At first, “open source” might sound insecure. What open source means is that anyone can add to the original code as long as their additions are approved by other experts. In a field that evolves at the speed of light, this is a good thing.

So far I’ve been pretty impressed with Password Safe. Try it out. Let me know if you have any questions.