Internet marketing Archives - Page 14 of 47 by Mark Murnahan

Google PageRank Changes and Fools Still Listen

Remembering Farrah Fawcett and Google PageRank

Google PageRank? Seriously, just get out your checkbook right now and write me a blank check. Don’t worry, I will go ahead and fill in the dollar amount. You just be sure to sign it.

I was thrown back into yesteryear by a blog article I read at Search Engine Journal that discussed Google PageRank. No, it was not something from deep in the bowels of their 2003 archives, but rather a real life demonstration of sad linkbait published only yesterday. I don’t need a pissing match with these guys, but it was sad to see a long-dead topic like PageRank being exhumed for public consumption.

It reminded me about who I write for, and why. I write for you, and I try to make useful facts and good ideas spring to life with a touch of entertainment value. Once in a while I will throw in my Murnahan Cheez Whiz style to keep you on your toes and make you say “what?!”

My objectives include reducing the abundance of blatant SEO lies and myths that search engine optimizers promote. Sure, I may not be able to fix the whole world, but I can do my part to blow the “bullshit whistle” on bad SEO information.

Since I want you to subscribe to my blog and come back, I try to overlook topics that will be genuinely useless and guide you wrong. You know, topics to scare you into putting crap in your brain like Google PageRank changes.

The article I am talking about brought acid to the top of my throat and reminded me just how easy it could be to scam people out of a blank check. It touched on just how “unknown” this SEO business I am in really is, and it made me feel like one hell of a nice guy for telling things straight.

I will go ahead and link to the article, so I guess their “linkbait” idea worked. The article is titled “New PageRank Formula May Change Your SEO Priorities.” Below is my comment, in which I replied to my friend and fellow long-time SEO who also criticized the article, Jim Rudnick of Canuck SEO:

OMG, are people seriously still writing about PageRank? Maybe we can throw some meta tags into the conversation. While we are at it, I want to break out my old Farrah Fawcett poster and leave my mom a “surprise” under the bed, too.

Agreed, very old news. It is funny to me that somebody recently mentioned the PageRank of my blog and my first thought was as nostalgic as my Atari 2600.

I have not even looked at the “Green Fairy” of PageRank in half a decade. If you are doing the things you should be doing, people will love your stuff enough to link to it. If it is relevant content for a given search, on a reasonably decent website, and other people crave it, the site will rank well. Isn’t that a whole lot easier than waiting for Google to give you a number?

The remembrance of Google PageRank brought to mind the different qualities of search engine optimizers that I enjoy just enough to squash them to pieces and bury them in a shallow grave.

It is easy to understand how people could get confused about SEO. It is an industry that begs for naivety, ignorance, greed, and dishonesty. Sadly, these things are in great abundance among website owners and want-to-be SEO providers, alike.

Lay Down Your Google PageRank Gun and Listen!

Don’t shoot the messenger, but if you are looking at measurements like Google PageRank as an indicator of progress, your efforts are a hot mess. Save yourself some grief. A far better answer is to create something useful, creative, interesting, and relevant to people. These are the things which compel people like crack cocaine. These are the things which cause people to reference you and link to your website content. These are the things which make a difference, and not some misunderstood 1-10 measure that Google itself tells you to ignore.

I do not even understand why there is still a Google PageRank measurement, because Google has made it damn clear for many years that the most important thing is to give people what they want. If you concern yourself a fraction as much about what you are delivering to people as you concern yourself with Google, you will very likely rank a whole lot better. Plus, your PageRank will go up, too!

Note: I am not one of those people who only preach the gospel of “Content is King” and that writing a bunch of stuff on a blog will make something rank well. There are a lot of things which go into good SEO. Google PageRank is not in my list of SEO lessons, and I don’t think it was anywhere in my SEO blog archive, either … until now.

OK, doubters, now that you have heard me out, go ahead and fire your PageRank guns and tell me how wrong I am in the comments section below.

Image via Wikipedia

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SEO, Social Media, and Marketing Balls

I often try to relate concepts of SEO and social media to things that people in other industries can use. After all, who really cares about all of this, unless it can help them do whatever it is they do for a living.

If you don’t have anything to sell, you probably aren’t very concerned about your marketing. But you do have something to sell, so let me give you a hand.

My challenge is to help you translate this into earning profit for your company. In the big picture, two important questions I must address are as follows:

What do you do to earn the food you eat?
How can I relate this Internet stuff to something that will help you eat better?

One way I hope to relate this into your line of work is to use analogies. This time, I will use tennis balls, but it could really be about anything.

Now let’s look at what others competing in your industry are doing.

How Others Sell Balls With SEO and Social Media

A common approach to social media that you may see with your competitors is to create a website and then start tweeting and facebooking things like “I have balls”, “Check out my balls!” After a while, they will figure out that people get really tired of the same old balls, and nobody wants to see them anymore.

This is a common outcome when companies neglect the people they are trying to reach, and overlook creativity in their value proposition. So, it will take a different approach, and they may turn their focus to SEO. They will often fill up their blog with a whole bunch of articles about their balls and hope that will work.

The trouble here is that it will take a lot of time and effort to produce all of that blog content. They may decide to outsource it to India or The Philippines but all of the sudden find themselves sending really mixes messages. Balls are different in other countries, and a lot can be lost in translation.

This is not the path you want to take, so put this out of your mind and let’s think about a better way to move your balls.

A Better Way to Move Your Balls

My experience in SEO and social media has led me to this: I have never found an industry that, with enough dedication, cannot be made more interesting when looked at from the right perspective.

It takes some research and creativity, but every industry has something that makes it interesting. Even paper clips can be more exciting … yes, paper clips!

One of the first things to do is to carefully research who wants your balls. You want to understand them, and what they are likely to look for online. You want to reach them where they are … on their turf. Then you need to get a picture of what drives them to take a desired action. In this case, you want tennis players. More precisely, you want tennis players without balls. In order to find them, you need to think more like them, and develop a sense of what will attract them.

Sometimes you have to look outside of the tennis-related industry to find your potential customers’ other interests. I wrote about this not so long ago in an article about customer modeling titled “Facebook Marketing: Pages, Customer Modeling, Promoting, and Awesomeness“. It addressed how to gather information to produce a better model of your ideal customer, and it is worth a read.

Get Others to Talk About Your Balls!

Once you know more about your model customer, you need to produce information that interests them. If you consistently produce quality information about their interests, it will be much easier to keep their attention. If it is compelling enough, they will subscribe to your blog, your Twitter, your Facebook, and etcetera. Now you have an audience that wants to hear about your balls.

With an attentive audience that likes what you do, it will be a lot easier for your balls to be ranked well in search engines. This is because your attentive audience will share your information with other interested people, in the form of website links. They will tweet it, facebook it, and even blog about it. Now, unlike your competitor who talks about his balls all the time, you will have other people talking about your balls.

This is a huge reward to you, because all of those links to your interesting website are crucial to making it rank higher in search engines than the competition. You will want to be good to these people, and keep them fed with more interesting and useful information. So you add more to your blog, and it grows bigger and bigger and eventually gets even more popular.

The cycle has begun, and you are on your way to greater things. You may even decide to grow your business with bigger balls, like softballs, volleyballs, and basketballs.

Selling Balls Takes Dedication

When I claim that this all requires dedication, it means spending time researching, and doing more than just the same old thing the competition is doing.

Before you put this all to use, it is best to develop some degree of marketing talent. Since you are not in the SEO and social media marketing business by profession, I want to recommend subscribing to my blog and reviewing my blog archive to learn about other things that can help you.

I do a bang up job of ranking in search engines for things in the SEO and social media marketing industries. I am supposed to, right? That way, new people can find me.

This was not always the case. I had to work really hard to discover what people want, connect with them using social media, and produce a lot of compelling information, just like I suggested for you. It does not happen overnight, but with dedication, it does happen in time. It will be worth it.

Now, back to those two questions I mentioned earlier:

What do you do to earn the food you eat?
How can I relate this Internet stuff to something that will help you eat better?

Since you can’t just eat your balls, you are going to need to sell them to buy food!

If you do everything just right, before you know it, people will be begging to play with your balls.

If you need more help promoting your balls, there are a lot of people in my industry who can make this happen for you.

I am always looking for people with balls. In my line of work, I encounter a lot of people every day who have no balls, and I will be happy to help you connect with them.

Balls image credit to shawnzrossi via Flickr
Old ball image credit to basykes via Flickr
Ball in mouth image credit to TCL8TO7 via Flickr
Splashing Balls image credit to ingridtaylar via Flickr
Bored ball image credit to greenkozi via Flickr
Begging image credit to sunsets_for_you via Flickr

The Biggest Fallacy of Social Media: More is Better

I want to discuss the biggest fallacy of social media for a moment. It surrounds a tightly held misconception that many people will refuse to let go of, because somebody with perceived authority told them it is “how social media is done.”

It is made worse every day because of all the people who have the mentality that “if they are doing it, it must be OK.”

People often want examples to follow. It makes them more comfortable with their decisions. Sometimes it turns out just great, but it often leads to a whole lot of “imitation marketing” with horrible results. Didn’t your dad ever use the line about your friends and a cliff with you?

“If they were all jumping off a cliff without parachutes, would you just follow along with them?”

–Dad

Enough of the crescendo, let me explain this famously popular trap that has become the biggest fallacy of social media. Did somebody tell you that you need whole bunch of people to “follow” you, “like” you, and “friend” you? The odds are great that the person saying that is full of crap about other things, too.

The truth about the biggest social media successes, and in fact, the way that things actually become “viral” is quite the opposite from what it seems. It does not happen because of a huge number of followers, friends, and fans. Success happens because of thinking, creating, and doing something amazing enough that your dearest core group of true listeners, who care what you have to say, share it with emphasis. Before you even consider anything else, it is important to concentrate on the “amazing” part.

Who are those “core listeners” I am referring to? They are the people who like what you have to say, enough that they subscribe to your blog, follow you on Twitter, Like your Facebook page, and link with you on LinkedIn. They pay attention because they want to know what you have to share, and not because they just want you to add to their numbers. They are often great people to have as your friends, too!

This topic was inspired by a discussion on Mark Harai’s blog, in an article titled “How to Build Online Influence“. My comment there was as follows:

“It is absolutely true about the numbers. I have enough “followers” in some circles to properly seed a new landfill. Without bilateral communication, that is where those relationships are.

I even wrote a book that gave strong caution to the big numbers game of social media. People really want so badly to believe in big numbers, unless they have big numbers, and then they understand.

The mentality is not so unlike like desire for wealth. Many people want it badly but they use it unwisely if they get it.”

What most people do is called “conventional”. Convention is lazy, and conventional will not make you stand out! It is why “The Pareto Principle“, also known as the 80/20 rule, always holds true.

No, I am not that guy who will tell you that successful marketing is only about building relationships to make your social media marketing successful. It takes a lot of other things, too. If you want my “short list” of things that make social media marketing successful, go to my blog archive. The list includes 267 (often lengthy) topics I have written about. Not a single one of them says to get more followers, but many of them certainly do address the importance of relationship building.

Social Media’s Hardest Lesson to Learn

I have argued against the mentality that more followers is the key, but it seems that as with most other things, people just have to learn it for themselves. They learn it the hard way, just like people dying to win a lottery who are broke a year after they collect their squillion dollar jackpot.

If you just can’t stand it, and you need proof that I am right about this, let me show you some numbers: 24 28 45 49 52 2

Those are your Murnahan lottery picks for this week. That will be easier for a lot of people to understand and accept than what I would say about the horribly over-valued hype about big follower numbers. By the way, this is last week’s winning Powerball Lottery numbers. Maybe they will “hit” again, you never know!

If you really want to know what I think, I offer you these previous articles which address the matter.

Social Media is Not Just Who You Know … It’s Who They Know!

I urge people to remember that social media is not just about you, and who you know, or who follows you. I know very well that I can bore the heck out of some people with things they have no interest in. I also know which people will find value in things which I produce, and I know which ones may be a good match to connect with other people in my circle of friends and “core listeners”. My friends and “core listeners” know these things about me, too. It is called networking, and it trumps all that you may hear about having a massive number of followers.

All it really takes to make something extremely popular is about 150 people who are connected to you the way I have described. Ironically, and conveniently, 150 is also the number that is commonly referenced as Dunbar’s Number. If you can focus on those people, the rest comes down to simply having brilliance, and you probably have a lot more than you are using.

Social Media Backlash of Extended Reach

Social media is a funny thing. Most people can figure out the basics of how to use social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, and the squillion others. A few can figure out how to use social media well, and enhance their business. A tiny fraction of those people will use social media in a way that does not irritate or offend somebody, somewhere, for some reason.

Yes, social media popularity has its drawbacks, and there will always be some people who hate you, just for breathing. I have often said that if I don’t get a death threat now and then, I must not be reaching enough people. Even the littlest things can set some people off, but it is not my job to make everybody happy. I just want to make a few of the right people happy. Would you believe I actually had a death threat come as a result of this humorous article titled “Hookers Write the Best Blogs“?

You don’t need “death threat” levels of popularity to get all that you want and need from social media … nobody does. You just have to concentrate on your core listeners, and the awesomeness you can create for and with them. Let the rest of it come into place naturally and those followers will come to your awesomeness like a Murnahan to a plate of bacon.

Photo credit to scorpio58 via Flickr

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How to Make a Blog Popular: Consider Your Intent!

I read a lot of blogs, and I gather a lot of great ideas from them. There is a lot of amazing talent out there on the Internet, sitting at their computer every day to blog about what they know, what they think, what they do, and what they sell. A few of those squillion blogs will become popular with readers, but how?

It is easy for me to answer why I read the blogs I read. They help me to keep my thinking sharp with new ideas. My brain needs a lot of daily exercise to keep up with my industry.

It seems easy to define why the popular blogs I read are successful at their mission, but harder when I turn it around and look at my own work. I hope you can relate to this. I find that it is always harder to scrutinize myself than to scrutinize others.

I have been a bit blessed with having a solid readership for my SEO and social media marketing blog. I appreciate that very much, because I work hard at it. Once in a while, I have to consider “What makes it popular, and why do people subscribe and come back?” Then, on a bad day, I find myself questioning “Why do I keep doing this?” That is when I have to go and re-read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” and I am back at it again, quick.

Today is a good day, so I am asking myself the earlier question. Is it because I am in a popular industry? No, because there are a lot of SEO and social media marketing blogs with just three readers (spouse, mother, and author). Is it because I take my shirt off to blog because the ladies like that? No, although it may not hurt, because I am yummy like bacon (I should post more pictures). Is it because I have a squillion friends who love me? No, I am generally a nice guy, but I don’t try to please everybody, and I piss a few people off, too (like this Bhashkar guy). Is it because I throw down a clever line here and there to be entertaining? No, because I will never be as funny as this cat video with 47 Million views (damn them cats).

When I begin to think about things which make a blog popular, it seems that my thoughts keep leading me back to “intent”. Good blogging tools, a lot of coffee, and just a slight touch of insanity can help, but it is not enough!

I know, I know … people say that “content is king”, or that “engagement” and “social equity” are important. Sure, we can throw a whole lot of silly buzz phrases on the table to sort through. It really does take a lot of things coming together just right to produce something that people want.

I think that in the end, even if you get every other piece right, but your intent is flawed, it is as fragile as a house of cards.

What is Your Blog’s Intent?

Let’s define this: Clearly, if you have a blog, you have an intent. Whether is just to pour your mind out to the Internet, or to bring more brand recognition to a product or service, nobody does this without something that drives them to do it.

I will share my intent with you, and I hope it will help you start thinking about yours. So, let’s see, why do I write this blog?

The focus of this blog is to help educate people about things which can help them. I like to help people think and create their own ideas. I like to teach people about things which they may find useful. I also like to dispel the many SEO lies which are common in the industry.

When I say that intent is important, here is how I look at it: If my intent was centered around selling something rather than educating and helping people, the direction would be totally different. The intent would show through, and the value to others would be far less.

Stop Seeing “Everybody” as a Potential Customer!

I hope that sharing my intent will help you think about yours, and your strategy. Here I go, trying to be helpful, again. Now, you may wonder “How is there any room left for a strategy, and how can a blog possibly be worth all of the headache?”

When I think about my intent, it is what I wish to provide for others. That does not have to mean there is no benefit in it for me, but when I focus on these things which benefit others, my work is far better and it makes me a swell guy.

The good news is that I don’t view you as my potential customer. Sure, maybe you are, but probably not. Most people that land on any blog are not there to buy stuff. In the case of company blogs, the smart companies already know this.

Pssst: Let me whisper a thought in your ear:

People know other people, and they communicate with them … a lot. If people like what you do, and they think highly of you, they will do the heavy lifting for you. They will share your blog with friends, and maybe those friends will share it with other friends. All of the sudden, you have your hands on something valuable. Somewhere down the line, there is probably a customer in it for you, and you didn’t even have to be pushy … just useful.

Keep Your Intent Dear to You

It can be easy to wander off the path of your intent, but don’t! Always remember the overall purpose of being useful, and know that it really will make the difference in reaching longer term objectives. If you have a very purposeful intent, it will be easier to stay on track.

My blog’s intent is sincerely focused on being helpful. I go out of my way to do that. As a benefit, it enhances my resume as a SEO and social media marketing professional and reflects my knowledge. A tiny percentage of people will contact me with an interest of hiring me as a consultant, or as their new Director of Marketing.

I ask myself: “What if somebody offers me a salary so big I can barely spend it all and puts me in a big shiny office building as their head marketing guy working 100 hours per week?”

My answer is: “I will still be right here to share what I know with others, just as I have been for years.”

That is how I know that my intent is right.

If selling something was the primary goal, I would not ask for your input, your brainstorms, or your time. I would also not expect anybody to subscribe and keep coming back. Although, I probably would still ask to pass my name along to somebody who may need me … but that is just my eensy little selfish side talking. (Hint: See sharing and bookmarking links below.) Hey, I have a family of five to feed, after all.

What is your intent, and how are you expressing it to others?

Cat Photo Credit to lincolnlog via Flickr

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Social Media and The Absurdity of Implied Reciprocity

If you are one of those people who expect social media favors because somebody owes you something, just stop it! If you like something and find value in it, share it with others or do whatever it is that you do with good information. Just don’t assume that it means people owe you anything.

In business, and in life, reciprocity is a wonderful thing. It feels good to do business with people who do business with you, right? You have probably heard the old saying, “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”

A problem with reciprocity comes when people start doing things they would normally not do, only in hopes of demanding favors in return. It is nice to reciprocate, but this does not mean it is implied.

I received a message on LinkedIn yesterday that read as follows: “Hi. I liked ur PAGE through LINKEDIN GROUP. Expecting ur LIKE and SUPPORT.” I thought to myself, “Really? You liked my page in order to add to my number of people artificially interested in my work and you want me to do the same? Oh, and ‘SUPPORT?’ Does this mean you want me to feed your kids, too?” I guess I just didn’t see that as any kind of favor.

If you like what I do, and you think you could learn something from a guy with over 20 years of successful marketing experience, by all means, “Like” my Facebook page. If you think you have done me some great favor and I am going to do you a favor by liking your Facebook page which has absolutely no interest to me, you need me worse than you think!

Why would you have any desire whatsoever to have me “Like” your Facebook page if I will never, ever, be a customer or recommend you to anybody because you are a a demanding douchebag who expects something from me?

If You Like Me, Just Like Me, But Stop Expecting Favors!

Rather than to rewrite the whole thing, I want to share something I said in a previous article titled “Do You Tweet and Retweet Seeking Favors?” Here is the closely paraphrased version:

People in the social media field often build relationships in which they will work together to spread a message. As long as there is honesty and integrity in the message, I am generally happy to help. However, I have been hit over the head with some of this recently. It seems that I get a lot of requests to scratch somebody’s back. It is all fine and good to be reciprocal, but is it good to take away the human filter that makes us who we are?

If all I was doing was tweeting, retweeting, blogging, Facebooking, YouTubing, Digging, Stumbling, and etcetera, because I hoped people would return the favor, would people still care what I had to say? I do not imagine the answer is “yes”.

Reciprocity Has Its Place

Don’t get me wrong, reciprocity certainly has its place, but if you are doing things with expectations of others doing things for you in return, don’t you at least think it should be something meaningful or useful?

The only time I recall actually being a little hacked by lack of reciprocity was from a car dealer. Hell, I purchased three brand new Corvettes and a Cadillac Escalade (total cost over $240,000) from this guy in under a year’s time, and I sent him many new customers. When he went to somebody else for his web hosting because it was cheaper than my recommended $209 per year plan, I kind of thought that was a bad business decision. Then when he asked me about a new website and used my website proposal to shop around, I wanted to kick him in the nuts. Yeah, I kind of felt slapped in the face, but I will still buy a car from him based on the merits of his business … not mine!

I Did Not Buy These Just to Sell a Website!

In summary, don’t “Like” my Facebook, subscribe to my blog, follow me on Twitter, link to this page, kiss my butt with kind comments in my blog, or anything else of the sort if it is only because you want something. Do it because you know I am not full of crap and because you receive value from my hard work.

I may reciprocate, but not because I feel guilty if I don’t.

I have just one more thought for you, and it is what my wife said when I mentioned this subject to her. Here is another way to look at it, and a brilliantly performed song.

Note that since I wrote this, I have replaced the Bonnie Raitt version of the song. Apparently she stopped allowing her YouTube videos to be embedded in web pages. this guy performs it nicely, too!

“I Can’t Make You Love Me“

Dog Photo Credit to wsilver via Flickr

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