Podcast Archives - Page 23 of 25 by Mark Murnahan

Blogging Tip: Use Your Experience and Blog What You Know

Blogging from experience may not seem all that revolutionary. After all, I suspect that if you write a blog, you probably already understand this. It is best to blog things you know, and know well. I want to drive the point a bit further and inspire you to use your experience, and to pull from the experience of others around you.

I will tell you where I find much of my inspiration, in hopes that it may help your creative process. When I reflect on my work, it is pretty easy to find blogging material directly from my daily life. I blog about things I know, but not just something I pulled out of the back reaches of my mind. I blog about things I have actually encountered … usually recently. Some of the best stuff comes from questions people ask me. When I hear something a few times, I start to think to myself “I’ll bet there are a lot of other people who would like to know more about this, too.” A great benefit of blogging this way is that it becomes “evergreen” blogging material which is useful for more than just the moment. It often becomes something people can look back into my archives and find useful months, or even years later.

Blog What People Ask You … They Are Not Alone!

If your work inspires questions from people, blog about it. It is usually true that others have the same questions, too. Listen to things people ask you over the phone, in email, or even in the grocery store line. If you are paid for answering the questions, don’t worry about giving something up for free. If you are not answering the question, you can bet that somebody on the Internet is willing to, and they will be a lot closer to getting the new customer if they are the one being helpful.

Blog from Others’ Experience, Too!

Do not limit it to just your own experience. Ask your receptionist, customer service representatives, sales staff, service technicians, customers, and others in your line of work what people are asking them or what challenges they face in their jobs. Keep in touch with your front line so that you will know what people want to know. These are the things people also ask when they sit down at their computer … with their favorite search engine.

Make it Easy and Make it Useful!

Don’t mess this all up by trying to sound too impressive or trying to use the most amazing industry buzzwords. In some instances it is best to keep it really simple and write it as if search engines don’t exist. Word it similar to the way it is posed to you. If you are an attorney and somebody asks you a legal question, blog about it in a useful, human, and conversational way. Don’t make it a lecture filled with a bunch of legal industry terms that we don’t understand, and don’t keyword it up just hoping to land people from every possible search engine query.

If you make it useful, easy to read, and it is something people want to know about, they will find it. Once they find it, the real search engine optimization comes into play, because it is relevant to people’s questions. Relevant enough that people will share it with others and all of the sudden you have yourself a blog that becomes popular. Then the SEO keyword stuff and assumptions about SEO being a bunch of tricky programming code and geeky witchcraft starts to look pretty darn silly. Sure, that stuff matters to a degree, but if it clouds the view of the people, you will be doing them a disservice.

Use your experience, and do not assume that just because it seems obvious to you that it is not useful to somebody else with a different background.

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SEO Blogging Tip: Blog Like Search Engines Don’t Exist

I am not going to tell you to ignore search engines totally, but it is important that you strike a balance in favor of people over search engines. It is really easy to get caught in a trap of writing and optimizing everything just to be listed the most prominently in search engines.

I have written about a lot of SEO topics, provided a lot of useful blogging tools, and shared some really good reasons to blog. One thing that I am not so sure I have really said enough about is the notion of writing as if the search engines never existed.

I try to have this thought in my mind with every article I write, but even I am often caught in a trap. It is really easy to get a little too keyword choosy and worry yourself with keyword density and all the other SEO magic, to the point where it is no longer useful or interesting to the people who are ultimately your audience. Without them, you are kind of like a dog chasing a railroad train. What would you do with those search engine results without the people? I mean interested people who receive benefit from what you have to share with them.

Ask yourself this question: “How much differently would I do this if search engines did not exist.”

SEO Blogging Tip Summary

In summary, my SEO Blogging Tip today is this: Don’t get caught in a trap of doing things just for search engines. Remember your audience, and that they are people … not machines. You can still sneak in some awesome SEO keyword value, but the people are what matter the most. Since you are one of those people, and I care about you, I offer you a video to help you remember what I have shared with you on this topic.

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Cheap Textbooks? Who Needs Cheap Textbooks?

You would probably never picture me as a smartass with a clever spin. In fact, I have worked for decades in the field of marketing just to be sure people take me seriously. Seriously!

So, I have this question for you that blows my mind. Who really needs cheap textbooks? Well, apparently a whole bunch of students think they do. Maybe once they get through their fancy-schmancy college days of partying down with a bunch of coeds and waking up with puke-breath, they will begin to see some value in things, instead of just cost. For now, they just want cheap. They want cheap pizzas, cheap beer, and cheap textbooks.

From my standpoint, these kids surely just want cheap and easy ways to learn all the stuff it will take to run our world while the rest of us just keep getting older. They surely just want some way to cheat the system and do things easier than grumpy old geezers like me who couldn’t pass a college course unless I bribed the professor or threatened to optimize the college dean’s name on Google for terms like “grades for sex”. I could probably pass the hardest of courses then.

Then again, maybe they just want the same things the rest of us old geezers wanted when we were their age. Maybe they really do have those same challenges, and there is the outside chance they even have a few more battles than we did. Probably not, but just in case, I still get a bit emotional when I picture a fraternity party running out of beer.

Cheap Textbooks Mean Cheap Thrills

If I was a college guy, I would be looking for the best course to be sure I was getting the girls. Hey, you like honesty, right? I would be picking something sexy like physics. OK, maybe I am not so sexy with my Michio Kaku and Albert Einstein dreams, but can you imagine being that dude who just wants with all his heart and testosterone to be the next veterinarian? He just wants to be able to walk a half dozen puppies around the park and earn more than the kid babysitting for him. That dude … he is my hero if he can do it! In order to succeed, he is going to need a pass. Not just a passing grade, but a break that helps to make it through college. It will probably take a lot of breaks, because this student of 2010 that I picture in my head is better at doing a keg-stand than performing surgery.

Starving Students Mean Dying Puppies … and Industries

I am not normally the best spokesperson for education. It took me almost 30 years just to spell college, and that was only because I kept waking up in coed dorm rooms through most of my twenties. What I have come to realize, now that I am almost up to the big four-zero doomsday and have some babies of my own is that if we don’t start giving these kids a break and offering them huge discounts on beer … oh wait … I meant textbooks, we are all going to end up with doctors who amputate the wrong limb and sue us for the emotional trauma it caused them.

Do we really want to go in this direction? Wouldn’t it be better if we could help to give them a break? Yeah, I thought so, too. That is why I have taken pride in representing a friend who became a client to promote his textbook price-comparison website at WeCompareBooks.com.

If you have read my blog for any time at all, you know darn well I don’t pick up the keyboard and say something nice about a company unless they have something more than money to show me. In this case, I feel good to work with these people, and I hope you will help me pass their name around.

If you know a college student needing textbooks, or just somebody who wants to find the best price on their book of interest, I will be pleased to introduce you to this resource. Check out We Compare Books for cheap textbooks and books of all types.

By the way … you will not be paying me any commission for going to seek and buy cheap textbooks at WeCompareBooks.com. These fellas money is already in my pocket, so I am just saying this because I like you … and I like them.

I suppose that until the gearheads in Chicago that I wrote about start feeding the gorilla and break me free to earn my Eleanor+++ salary with 99% marketing failure, I am stuck right here trying to make people smarter. So go buy a book!

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SEO Tip: Great Search Engine Optimization Means Paying Attention

My SEO tip today is about paying attention and taking action. There are about a squillion things that influence good SEO, and even more things are required to achieve great SEO. Paying attention to details can sometimes make the difference between good SEO and great SEO. Do I have your attention yet?

You are not, I repeat NOT going to get the best results that you seek from this article if you do not pay attention to detail. Good SEO has a lot to do with very fine details, and it often means paying attention to the details that the rest of your industry neglects. Today I am going to give you some thought-candy about the links which point to your website, but first, I am going to be sure that I have your full attention and that you are ready for this brain-exploding tip.

I think a lot of people try to make SEO seem a lot harder than it actually is. Really good SEO is actually quite tricky and time consuming, but there are many things that are pretty simple and tedious, but just need to be implemented properly. Knowing all of those simple and tedious tasks, and how they fit into the big picture of your search engine optimization strategy, and using them properly to receive optimal benefit is why people hire a search engine optimizer.

Squillions of people write tens of thousands of tips each day about search engine optimization. The good search engine optimizers choose their topic carefully, title it just right, tag the information well, add it to their search optimized website, and are sure to address it to the proper audience using just the right keywords. Then they emphasize the call to action, and make it clear why you found the information.

Good SEO (search engine optimizers) write their tips similar to the way they will perform SEO for their clients. In fact, you can tell a lot about them by the tips they give you (it is one of my top reasons to blog). Further, they provide the tips in the same way they expect their readers to implement their suggestions for those who try to take the do-it-yourself (DIY) SEO method.

The Great SEO will take a little additional time to do all of the things the rest of the world can only call “magic”. I do not want to let you down today, but this SEO tip is not designed to make a do-it-yourselfer a great SEO. It is just another piece in the puzzle that will help you to understand good SEO. I will say, however, that it is a pretty damn good tip that can help you move just a little closer to great. I still have to keep you reading regularly, so I cannot just give you that “SEO magic” all at once. Your head would explode, and I cannot have that on my conscience. Yes, imagine that, a search engine optimizer with a conscience … I guess there is just magic in the air today! Besides, I still want to leave you some reason to call on me when you have pulled all your hair out and get sick of letting business pass you by.

Now, on with today’s SEO tip!

Who Links to Your Site and Why Should You Care?

Links are at the front line of search engine optimization. The more high-quality links that point to your website, the easier it will be to rank for the things your site is about. The text within those links makes a huge impact on your ranking for certain topics. This is why many links to my blog include the words SEO and social media marketing. Those things are a focus of my blog, so it only makes sense that the links reflect this.

When important websites with a lot of authority start linking to my blog, I want to know it. I also want to be sure that they continue to link to my blog. I can control this in a couple ways, and the best of which is to keep producing consistently useful content. You know, the stuff people want to link to. Thanking them is not such a bad idea, either.

Another way to be sure the link-love keeps coming is to watch what received good links and write more of that. For example, a useful tip about a given topic (in this case, SEO) will often find its way into a lot of good streams of content, including both automated and manual linking. The automatic ones are pretty easy to manage, but the links created by people are a bit more tricky. You have to really blow somebody’s hair back to make them take the action of creating a link to you in their blogroll, or to submit your content to Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and etcetera. If you want them to write about it and link to you in a blog post, you practically have to reinvent electricity or come up with something so amazing that they want to print it out and rub it all over themselves. Short of that you must at least write about things that people want to read, and present it in a fashion they will keep reading.

Finding Your Best Backlinks

You should know who is linking to your website. I don’t mean just the links that are being clicked on. I mean the links that make your site more visible and valuable to search engines. Here comes a big fat juicy SEO tip for you. It is called Open Site Explorer and the information it can tell you is more than you may see on the surface. Yes, this is where you have to pay attention to the details. For example, I just looked at an Open Site Explorer report for this blog and found the interesting facts as follows:

The Technorati tag “guerrilla-marketing” has produced a link pointing to my blog article titled “Marketing Without a Budget: Guerrilla Marketing Tips“, but the new content under this tag has moved my link off the page as newer articles arrived. So it seems to me that since that link is from a valuable source page, I should probably write something about guerrilla marketing and be sure to tag it with “guerrilla-marketing”. Oh yes, this article is kind of Guerrilla Marketing related … gosh, I am glad I was paying close attention. I am going to add that tag in this blog post.

I also noticed that there was a pretty nice link from the tag “whiteboards” that pointed to my article titled “Smart Slate, Smart Airliner, and Other Interactive Slates“. Perhaps I should write a follow-up to that piece and tag it appropriately.

My point is that if you pay close attention to the things which make your website rank well, there is a lot clearer path to success. Knowing that I am in the blogroll of great blogs like the ones listed below can give me a lot of reason to want to throw back some link-love to them and also keep reading their work.

These matter to me, and certainly deserve my attention (Thanks Guys). After all, they show faith in my work by linking to me. To some people, this is just a small detail, but to me it is a really important factor.

Paying attention to the sites linking to you, both automated and manually, can make a huge difference in your success. Now the question that remains is this: What will you do with this information? Were you paying attention and will you use what I have suggested? I want to guess the answer is “yes”, but there are a lot of people who do not pay attention. I hope those are your competitors and not you!

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Marketing Fail: You Want to Sell Me What?!

Have you ever wondered how there came to be so many Internet marketing experts and search engine optimizers in the world? My guess is because it is so darn easy a caveman could do it. At least it seems that is what they were told back at marketing school.

I love marketing. It is the only reason I watch the Super Bowl. I love to see great marketing, and to watch companies take off like an eagle. The unfortunate reality is that unskilled marketing flies with all the grace of the dodo bird.

I want to share two extreme examples of marketing failure I have recently been assaulted by. I received each of these in just the last few hours, and they come in great abundance each and every day. I think these examples explain a lot about why I encounter so many people skeptical about their marketing efforts. It is this kind of marketing that damages my whole industry.

Marketing Fail One: “Mould Providing”?

I will start with an email message I received only a few hours ago offering to sell me molds. Molds? Yes, molds! Why somebody would try to sell me molds is way over my head. This marketing failure was not only way off the target audience, but they even spelled the product name differently (language variance) in the subject line and body of the email. Then they went on to write the email as if they were the SEO just out of search engine optimization school trying to make the most of their keywords. I guess they needed to search engine optimize their email for some reason. Needless to say, I will not be purchasing any molds (or moulds either), so don’t even go there!

This goes well beyond just a language or cultural barrier, so before you give this “Marketing Engineer” a break, consider how he and millions of other spammers like him damage the marketplace for others. They collectively hinder the attention span and trust of each of us and make us more stubborn about our marketing expectations.

Subject: Mould Providing
Dear Sir/Madam,

Our company, King Mold Limited is located in Shenzhen City Guangdong province of China. We are middle size of mold maker company and about 100 machines in house. We made about 500 molds last year and 90% molds were exported to Europe, North American and other oversea areas.We are able to make small and simple molds, big and complex molds, we have made some insert molds, overmolds, two shot molds, gas assistant molds, unscrewing molds, hot runner molds and complex molds with many sliders drived by hydraulic cylinder.

Thank you for your time in advance. Your prompt attention will be highly appreciated!

Sincerely yours,

Tony /Marketing Engineer

You may be curious how Tony the Marketing Engineer targeted me for this brilliant marketing campaign. Yes, I was curious, too. You know, I love tracking things, because I am a marketer. This particular marketing failure came by way of email addressed to “thebigcheese@veryimportantguy.com” which is an address that I used in only one place … ever. That was in a blog article I wrote at “Mobile – Local – Social” titled “Cc: How Social Media Killed Email“, and I knew at the time some email spiders would come and scoop up the email address.

Marketing Fail Two: First Page Google Listing

First, I want to explain that this email came from my contact page here at aWebGuy.com and the sender had to pass a Captcha form to send it. What makes me want to reach out and ring the collective neck of this form of marketing “expert” is that it has lead a lot of people to really think of search engine optimization (SEO) as a joke. Here is the email I received:

Want more clients and customers? We will help them find you by putting you on the 1st page of Google. Email us back to get a full proposal

I wonder what, exactly they would like to get me ranked on the first page of Google with. Maybe the term “how to sell SEO“? Oh yeah, but I am already ranked in the top two for that search, and it has nothing to do with spamming people. I am already there for about a squillion competitive industry terms. I mean, it is what I do professionally. Maybe they can get me on the Google home page just under the logo … how much does that cost?

What really drives me nuts about this is that although it separates the good SEO and bad SEO, it still gives a lot of companies a real reason to hate people in my industry. It makes it even harder to overcome that disgusting image of some fat un-bathed guy in a pair of filthy nylon boxers sending out email and tweeting some crap about his new “earn money fast online” scheme and how he is the real deal and he can make your company successful overnight.

Screw it … I think I’ll go back to bed. My head hurts from thinking about it. If you leave me a comment, that is fine, but I am not buying any damn SEO or molds, so put it out of your mind right now!

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