Have you ever seen one of those slick sales pitches that seem to suck the money right out of your pocket? You know, like those vacuum cleaner demonstrations where they show you how their vacuum will pick up nails and screws, and even lift a bowling ball with its superior suction.
These are the sort of clever sales tactics where they show that even after all those nails and screws, it will still pick up the dirt that your tired old machine leaves behind. The dirty “proof” is right there in front of you, and you don’t really want your home to be that filthy, do you?
With all the filth of nasty bacteria and dust mites, it is only a matter of time until your kids get asthma, and the doctor bills will cost you a squillion times what their vacuum cleaner will cost. So, really, they are not selling you a vacuum cleaner. They are saving your kids’ lives, and keeping you from going bankrupt with all the medical bills.
This is really not a laughing matter, and it all goes to prove why you need the Sucker Sucker 4000! The massive power of the Sucker Sucker 4000 will suck up dirt better than the competition, but at a fraction of the cost. When you add in those medical bills, it actually pays you to buy this machine!
Plus, every spouse is more amorous when their back is not hurting. Think about how many times your wife complains about hauling that big old heavy vacuum up and down the stairs. She won’t be complaining of a backache with the Sucker Sucker 4000! You like sex, don’t you?
Guess what! Your tired old vacuum will do most of that stuff, too! It is a sales pitch, and it is not designed to save your kids’ lives. It is designed to get the money out of your pocket and into theirs.
The Tragedy of Social Media Pitches
There is no disputing the value of good marketing. Marketing is where the sales come from. Marketing builds companies, and puts the money in their bank account.
Marketing has changed, and many companies struggle to adapt. They are trying so hard to hold onto yesterday’s values, that their marketing sucks as strong as that vacuum cleaner. They are still trying to sustain the lies and deception of old-school pitches, and excessively boastful statements, while the market passes them by. The smart ones figured out that they just needed to provide the best offerings they can, and be honest, and their fans will do the boasting for them.
People Got Smarter About the SuckingPeople got smarter, and many cleverly devised mysteries were revealed. The semi-honest tactics that used to bring in customers may still work for a while, but not forever. It mostly works on the naive, who do not take the extra effort to shop around and pay attention. Those naive and impulsive people are wising up. The most naive of all were the same people who took the economic collapse extra hard. They were suckered far too often, and now they are mad! The ease of comparison shopping and more cautious spending makes the slick pitches less effective.
Just look at my industry for an example. How many people in the SEO (search engine optimization) industry do you think have built up sales with sleazy tactics? I see it all the time, and when customers find out the SEO is a fraud, and their tactics are more harmful than good, they change their company name and go into hiding like Osama bin Laden. It happens a lot more than you may think. It is like those traveling magazine salesmen. By the time you realize you never got the magazines you paid for, they are in another town, scamming another would-be reader.
What about social media marketing? Have you happened to notice the massive number of people who became “social media experts” in the last few years? How did that happen? They were not trained in marketing, or have decades of experience, but now they know a bunch of buzz words and how to suck up bowling balls with a vacuum cleaner.
It happened because people really want to have hope, and that is the big con job of the majority of social media marketing people. They sell ridiculous hopes that they will save companies from destruction by setting them up on Facebook and Twitter. As with other industries, people are figuring things out the hard way, and now they are starting to shop more carefully. Many of the “social media experts” are not so expert once you lift the curtain and turn on the lights.
A strong case can be made about the uneven distribution of intelligence among our population. Yes, there are a lot of very unintelligent people out there who will buy anything! You are different, and I know that, because you are here and reading my blog. You have a higher I.Q. than a potato, so you can surely see beyond the common trickery.
Some Truth About a Sales Pitch
The truth about a sales pitch is that they are designed to bring you to an emotional peak, and then close the sale while you are still excited about the product or service. The numbers may vary by industry, but there is generally less than one percent of people who will come back for the purchase if the sale is not closed immediately at the conclusion of the presentation.
That is the old school pitch, and it is very hard for companies to let go of that power, and to work hard enough to earn a customer’s business based on truth and trust.
Make Them Emotional, But Not Mad!Even in cases where the sale is not made right then, the buyer’s decision has often been made. They are either committed to the sale, or further consideration of the sale, or they are not. This goes for any pitch.
How this is applied to online marketing, and especially in social media marketing efforts, is that the buyer has a lot more control of the sales pitch. The process is more long-sighted, and it allows customers to make better decisions. It also requires companies to work harder to avoid “no” until they get the “yes” answer they wanted.
Along with a social media pitch, customers will Google your name, check for reviews, and see if your equivalent to the Sucker Sucker 4000 is what you claim that it is. If it really is, they may decide to watch you and think about your product or service for a while, until they are ready to buy. That scares the heck out of a lot of companies, because it is so foreign.
The good news about the sales that come from social media sources is that the customer is often far more aware of the offering, and will be a better customer because of their higher level of confidence.
If you are doing your job right, the customer will pay attention. They will bookmark your website, subscribe to your mailing list, and they will think about the wonderful day when they will own what you sell. Until that time, it is your job to make it easier for them to remember you, and how much better they will feel once they make their purchasing decision.
Once they are your customer, it is your duty to be sure they love your brand enough to tell their friends, and give you positive reviews across the Internet. When this happens, the sales cycle comes full-circle, and you are on a path to growth.
Some Options for Your Sales Pitch
The way I see it is that you have some options to consider. There are many degrees of how much you will incorporate these extremes, and finding your perfect balance is important.
Option One: You could just keep sucking up nails and looking for more people to present your pitch to. You can keep dismissing the non-buyers as idiots and child abusers for leaving their home so filthy by not buying your Sucker Sucker 4000.
Option Two: Another option is that you show more longevity, take a long-term approach, and help others to do the selling for you. You can give the real facts, keep the hype a bit less creepy, and cultivate a customer base who love you for your integrity and fine offerings.
Option One focuses on short-term drama and urgency, while Option Two focuses on long term success and building trust in a market segment. There really is a good balance between short-term and long-term objectives for any company.
Long-term social media objectives often come with more pain in the short-term, and short-term objectives often come with more pain in the long-term. Sometimes success is a matter of determining your tolerance to pain.
Oh, and by the way … did you Google me, check my background, and subscribe to my blog, yet? Come back any time to read some more. I’ll be here when you are ready to do business. đ
Candles Can Burn Much Brighter
I know, you may be thinking to yourself, “Lighthouse Candles, Mark, really?” Yes, it is true that I am generally likely to write about something more exciting and manly, and include things like guns, race cars, and motorcycles. That is mostly because I draw things right out of my real life, and my life is manly. Don’t make me prove it!
Not this time, my friend. Today, I am taking “SEO and Social Media Marketing Blog” to a whole new level of lace pink pantie-waist and foo-foo good smelling stuff. Just go with it, because if I have my way, Lighthouse Candles will be researching gunpowder and locker room scented candles by day’s end.
I realize that a lot of small companies are struggling with their marketing. It is very confusing to a lot of people. A common statement I hear is “We just can’t afford marketing.” The trouble with that statement is how stressful and difficult it is to keep paying all of those other expenses without marketing. Marketing is what sells products and services. It becomes a chicken and egg question of which comes first. Without marketing, there is not enough money to afford marketing. Something has to give, because unless a business does afford marketing, they can’t afford marketing. Without marketing, a company is better described as a costly passion than a business.
Lighthouse Candles SEO Marketing Example
Like so many other companies, Lighthouse Candles in Salt Lick, Kentucky has a strong case for marketing their business online. They produce a consumer product, and in order to earn profits, they must sell that product. In very familiar fashion, their market potential is huge, while their market reach is comparatively minuscule. In fact, I was challenged to find them at all.
Candles Blow Out Without Marketing
Lighthouse Candles is representative of many small companies in some respects. So, I am using them as an example to pose some questions about business, and why some companies thrive, and others fail.
If the product is as good as they say, then why is their reach so small? Is it because people don’t like them? Sure, that happens with some companies, but it is more likely that the company is better at what they do than they are at marketing what they do. These people make and sell candles. They have done it for over a decade and a half, so let’s assume they have become pretty good at it. It is their specialty, and they are smart enough people to concentrate on that specialty. They make candles … but they are not a marketing company.
It is easy to wonder why they don’t take more care to market their company better, but I think it is really foreign and scary to many companies. I frequently find the cause of under-marketing to be fear of the unknown, apathy, finances, or a combination of these. It is seldom because they want to keep their revenue and profit low.
It is a big challenge to help companies like Lighthouse Candles to stop being afraid, start caring more about their business, and to grow their finances. When that challenge is overcome, it brings consistency to a company, and levels the ups and downs in business, and that takes knowledge!
Reducing Lighthouse Candles Challenges With Basic Education
It is hard to make good decisions based on bad information, or information that is hard to understand. When it comes to marketing, especially online, there is a lot of confusing information. I think it brings a lot of people to see marketing as risky, rather than to understand it as an investment. So let’s clear that confusion a bit and make some sense of this.
Many companies treat their marketing budget like risk capital, instead of a required operating cost. Marketing should not come from a slush fund, and it is not a luxury item. It is an essential component of business, and it is what makes companies more profitable.
I have to admit that there are levels of understanding of the Internet, and of marketing, that I tend to forget. I have been in my industry for many years, and it is a constant challenge to explain things in ways that both novice and experts will benefit from. If you will give me your time, I will try to deliver on both counts.
A friend told me, only yesterday, that some of my topics are “way over his head”. I really didn’t understand it, at first. I guess I often just assume that people in business know that being more visible, with the right message, to the right people, will increase sales, profits, and make a company more successful. Good marketing accomplishes those things, and the Internet is an extremely good tool.
I am sorry for the instances when I get too deep with my geekish chatter about SEO, customer modeling, propensity marketing, data analytics, and anything else that makes your eyelids heavy. The thing is, I really want to make this easy. I seriously, with every cell in my marketing brain, intend for people to benefit from the tips and advice I write about here on my blog.
Today, I want to break this down and make it easier than ever, while providing a good reminder for the experts. The SEO acronym stands for search engine optimization. There is a lot that goes into those three little letters, but let’s keep this simple.
Being listed at the top of the page when somebody searches the Internet is one big piece of that success. Being listed for something obscure is not good enough. Knowing what the people interested in buying your products or services are inclined to search for is another big part of the job. Then, after they search the Internet, find you, and click over to your website, you must give them something interesting, useful, and trustworthy enough to become your customer. Even when all of that is done, good SEO marketing includes giving them reasons to come back, and to tell their friends about their great experience.
OK, but this is about Lighthouse Candles, right? Yes, that is correct. Lighthouse Candles is a company I will use for my example. The example is intended to get you thinking about their missed potential, and how you would run things if it was your company.
Useful Observations About Lighthouse Candles
I have not spoken with Lighthouse Candles, so I am working with what I know of them from the Internet. I have the same information that any customer or potential business partner finding them online would have, if they looked for it. The first challenge was just finding them. It was seriously not easy, and their website was buried deeply from view.
Note that this is not picking on Lighthouse Candles. It is absolutely not one of my “Suture Express” jobs where I take over 50 percent of the top ten Google search results for their company name. It is more similar to the examples I have made with fearful Smart Slate retailers, apathetic online cigar stores, and lazy car dealers who fell asleep at the wheel and missed huge opportunities.
This is just observation, and it is an example that I find extremely common with companies that buy a website and are left wondering what to do with it. It is what often happens when a company realizes they need a website, but decide that the cheapest website price will be the best option for them. Then, their misinformed question of “How much does seo cost?” leads them to realize that marketing is much less about cost, and is better addressed by how much it pays them. It is called return on investment (or ROI for short), and it is based in mathematics and science, not unicorns and fuzzy bunnies.
How I came across Lighthouse Candles in the first place was when I saw a visitor to my blog that seemed to really pay attention and read what I have to teach about online marketing. Of course, every visit to any website is logged. Since I know what to do with my user data, I will often go through and take a look at people who are looking at me. I learn a lot from their actions, such as how they arrived here, what they do while they are here, how long they are on each page, and much more. I filter through and find users who visit certain pages, with a special interest toward anybody verging on an hour in a given week, and viewing 20 pages. These are the kind of website visitors I just want to reach out and hug. These are the kind of website visitors you should be reaching out to hug, too!
Fortunately, I discover a whole lot of users like this, which feels great, because it means I am doing my job well. Certain visitor actions will catch my attention when I don’t get a call or email. Here was a visitor who caught my eye.
Lighthouse Candles Wants to Learn
Whenever I see this level of activity, and when specific pages are viewed for given amounts of time, there are a couple of likely conclusions as follows:
a.) Somebody is really trying to learn and implement suggestions I make. b.) They are finding out what I know about SEO and social media marketing before they contact me to do the job. c.) They have a rogue SEO next door who has hacked into their wireless network and is reading my blog.
There are just not a lot of other reasonable possibilities. I don’t know which is the case here just yet, but those are each distinct possibilities. So, let’s split a, b, and c into some likely conclusions.
First, I want to applaud Lighthouse Candles for being more proactive in their business and trying to improve their online market. I think it is a grand idea for them to try and reach out to capture a larger market share. There is a reason Yankee Candle has hundreds of thousands of website visitors per month. They sell candles, and although race cars and motorcycles are popular, people apparently really like candles.
So, we must ask the real questions about why Lighthouse Candles is not making a more aggressive play at that Yankee Candle market. Some companies will say they just don’t want to grow, out of principle. We can rule that out, because Lighthouse Candles is researching how to grow. They wouldn’t be on my blog otherwise. We could assume their budget is insufficient, but budgets must begin somewhere. That “somewhere” is what determines how well a company reaches its market growth objectives. That can mean reaching several different market potentials such as the market of investors, the market of retailers and distributors, and the market for potential acquisitions. There is a lot more possibility than just setting a goal of keeping the lights on.
The first reliable market to reach, in order to attract those other potential markets, is the consumer market. After all, who wants those candles in their stores, distribution networks, or investment portfolio, if the consumer doesn’t want them?
I know that it is a scary thing to believe in your own company, and to see things from a clearer view of potential. I have built successful businesses for over 20 years. It will age you faster than nearly anything else. However, success would not be so alluring if everybody could do it. That would cause the whole complex of “survival of the fittest” to come crashing down! Let’s not make it that scary. Instead, I will try to offer my possible answers and solutions to the a, b, and c speculations listed above.
Speculation is guesswork based on limited evidence. When that evidence is enhanced by experience, its feasibility increases. So this is based on calculated guesses, rather than just randomness. Breaking this into simple terms, in my estimation, the answers to those earlier possibilities are as follows:
Speculation About “a” (trying to learn and implement): This often happens when the company either does not have enough funds, or belief in their market potential to hire a professional. You can give them all the facts, case studies, and trustworthy reputation, but their confidence will not waiver. Their hopes to gather enough knowledge from reading blogs and do it themselves is what gives them confidence, because if they fail, it was probably just “fate” anyway.
Possible Solution to “a” In this instance, I would suggest an investor, or a bank loan, or pulling their teeth and selling their gold dental fillings. Just like any field, an experienced and accomplished professional will do a better job 100 percent of the time. No, not 90 percent … don’t even go there.
Example:Suture Express tried to cut their expenses and do things the cheap way. Search Google for them and look at the top ten search results to see how well that went.
Speculation About “b” (seeking the right option): This shows a diligent business person who understands that one of the greatest assets a company can have is the right people to do the jobs they are trained for. Many famously successful businesses have credited their success to discovering the right people, and knowing when to delegate what is not within their area of expertise.
Possible Solution to “b”Try driving a car like in this video. If you crash, it should help to emphasize the importance of training and the difference between a professional and somebody “testing the water”. If that doesn’t work, a frontal lobotomy may be in order, but I am not qualified to give medical advice.
Example: I don’t try to make candles, and I don’t do my kids’ dentistry either. I know when to hire outside professionals, and I am far more successful for it!
Speculation About “c” (rogue SEO): I suppose “c” is a good example of just how badly they need somebody on their side who understands the Internet from every angle.
Possible Solution to “c” Buy a better firewall, use better encryption, and change all passwords to something a little more challenging than “candles123”. Then, spend some more time at that computer to find out how easy it really is to hack a network.
Example: This is what a password looks like … o*D#kV$j2X&c7X
Some Painful Truth About Lighthouse Candles
In the case of Lighthouse Candles, there is such a huge opportunity, but why aren’t they doing things right? Why is their first marketing statement on their website a disclaimer. Yes, seriously, the first word after their company name is “DISCLAIMER”. Is it likely that a professional marketing consultant suggested that, or is it the work of a candle maker? Would Yankee Candle do that?
Why did they hire an inexperienced website developer who does not have good design or programming skill? They hired him for an ecommerce site, no less! I mean, surely he is a nice fella, but my guess is even stronger that he is cheap … very cheap! Not surprisingly, the one outside link to the Lighthouse Candles website I found was an accidental link placed on the privacy page of another company that their web developer built. If you are HTML literate, you will love this:
Lighthouse Candles Subdomain-Level Links According to Open Site ExploreraWebGuy.com Subdomain-Level Links According to Open Site Explorer
In the real world, marketing, and all of those tedious related tasks like feasibility studies, customer modeling, strategy, planning, budgeting, psychographic analysis, making good connections, and all of those other eyelid droppers really do matter. They are what make up the biggest differences between Yankee and Lighthouse.
If you like candles, maybe you’ll like this song, too. Candles by Hey Monday. It is something to listen to while you add your comments.
People ask me all the time, for ideas about how they can make their business better, stronger, and more profitable. They want to know what will convince more people to spend hard-earned money with their company.
I usually have some useful tips for them. I love to help, and I enjoy the look on their faces when they say “Why didn’t we ever think of that?” It is even more adorable when they call me to tell me that they implemented the tip and it is working for them.
It feels great to be helpful, and it keeps me sharp with new ideas. It is also why I write this blog, and why you see my direct phone line at the top of every blog post with the statement “I am always ready for a brainstorm. Call me at *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*.”
One of my best tips, in a single word, is “Awesomeness”. I will explain this, and how you can create greater awesomeness for your customers.
Being Helpful Grows Awesomeness!
I want to explain a principle that may seem scary to some people, but it is one which has served me very well in life, and in business. It requires patience and practice, but it has never failed me in the long-term. In order to explain it best, I will use my own experience. I could explain it in some fancy theoretical terms, but this comes from real life … my real everyday work.
It is my job to provide answers for improving companies and making them more marketable. I do a lot of my work free of charge. Well, at least I try very hard to blog about it in ways that people can use it. I’d call that work, so yes, I do a lot of my work for free.
Since I only work with a very small number of clients, and because a company has to be pretty serious about their marketing to hire my services, I make many efforts to help others without digging into their pockets. Don’t worry, it is not some kind of Jedi mind trick (video reference), and I am not selling something here. Being helpful gives me good karma, mojo, luck, or whatever you want to call it.
Being helpful is a principle that is used in abundance by successful companies, and successful people. You really don’t have to look around very hard to see this in action. It is a principle that is even more important when applied to the Internet, and I’ll tell you why. When it comes to Internet dealings, people have a very strong filter for noise. I wrote about this a while back, in an article titled “Will Your Social Media Noise Withstand 2011 Filtering?” They are also commonly very skeptical. There is a lot of “crap” on the Internet to overcome, as a consumer.
Many companies use blogs and other social media tools to be more helpful and interesting to their potential market. When they provide useful information, it brings attention to their brand. It is a means to express a company’s awesomeness and to put their helpfulness to work, and their company culture on the front line. There are many good reasons for companies to have a blog, in fact, I can offer you 10 really good reasons to blog.
I could stop right here, but I just told you this as a preface for the real point of this article. You can stop here, add your comments, tweet it, Facebook it, blog about it, and etcetera, but there is more! Yes, it is lengthy, but that is why there is a play button on my blog (at the top). If you don’t have time to read it, at least care enough about your business to push play and listen.
What Do They Pay For? That’s Right … Awesomeness!
The principle of being helpful is only one piece of success, but a huge piece that a lot of companies totally neglect. Somebody has to pay for all of that helpfulness, or the company would go broke. So, a lot of companies are left with a question of who will pay for that? Can you believe it? Companies actually treat it as a “dilemma” of whether it is a good idea for them to be helpful. This is why I find that even when they are helpful, they seldom make it to “awesome” status.
Awesomeness Creates More Business
The reason I mentioned this principle of being helpful is because I want you to pay attention without thinking I am here to sell you something. Call it a bonus, and whatever you do, please try to implement that tip. Be helpful … It is for your own benefit!
Now I am going to tell you what people actually pay me for, and explain ways you can benefit from it without having to pay me. Come to think of it, this may not go just right, but I am pretty sure I am not obsolete quite yet. In any case, I want you to use this for your own gain.
This May Not Be Awesome, But it is Helpful!
As a marketing guy, a huge amount of my work is not focused on helping companies with the obvious marketing task of getting their name in front of more people. Does that sound strange? It probably sounds totally crazy to a lot of people. In fact, you may be wondering, “Where in the heck do you find these idiots who pay you, Murnahan?” Yes, I am paid by aliens from another planet … but they are very successful Zarkmobians from Planet Narburloid.
It is true, though, because a significant amount of my work involves making them more marketable. That means digging into who they are, as a company. They pay me to develop a strong understanding of who they are, and to uncover what makes them more like sex, bacon, and other things people love. My job is to get a solid grasp on their “awesomeness” by viewing the culture of the company from a unique perspective. With this, it is my responsibility to create their best marketing strategy.
You can get a better picture of your awesomeness by talking to people. Ask people you respect. Ask people you don’t respect. Ask people who buy from you. Ask people who don’t buy from you. Ask without a word, by researching your market, and uncovering the real forces that drive your market. Ask a lot of questions, and pay careful attention to the answers. This will help you to discover your best customers!
Discovering the Model Customer
Once I know a company’s best assets (their awesomeness), I can begin the research to build a perfect model of their customers. Knowing the right audience is extremely important, especially if you want a return on your marketing investment. I wrote about this a couple times recently, and I hope you read those articles. I will add some links below, but if you are not a subscriber, do it now … it is free. I will say it again, though … ask a lot of questions, and pay attention to the answers. Below are some links to help you with your customer modeling, but note that they will only help you if you use them!
After the ideal customer models are in place, I can accurately direct my clients as to how they fit into their marketplace. Then, I can also provide steps to better adapt to their market. This is when the real awesomeness is unleashed. It is completely different for every company, in every industry.
If you do not know your competition, you probably don’t know your market very well. You need to know your market before you can even begin to get ahead. If you learn the forces working against you, it will be a whole lot easier to overcome them.
Spend some time knowing your market, including your competition. Most companies do a terrible job of this, so it is like low hanging fruit for you. Pick it!
Producing Awesome is Not Easy!
Most companies simply cannot see their business clearly from a marketability standpoint, and it becomes their Achilles heel. This destroys many companies.
Achilles Marketing Heel
Even when they think they have a good grasp on their “awesomeness”, most companies do not express it very well. I have said a lot about good reasons to blog, and good uses for social media. None of it centers on the use of destructive interruption marketing.
The challenge here is to present your company in a way that it is appealing to the customer, based on what they want, instead of just what the company wants.
I return to the principle of being useful. Most companies, including your competitors, will not have the required patience to be useful and give their customers a reason to buy from them. Many will just hope to flash a sale price and scream their selling message, but only a relatively few will put aside the selling enough to understand what will inspire buying.
Most companies (yes, most) will choose to skip the important research. It is not easy work, and it bores a lot of people to tears. It becomes too much hassle to actually build their understanding of the customer. For a lot of people, it would be cruel and unusual punishment just to finish reading this article, not to mention actually implementing the suggestions.
Here is where the punishment really pays off: If you understand your customers’ motivations to buy, and address it properly, they will tell each other. Your job becomes a lot easier.
Delivering Awesomeness to The People
Once the marketability factors are perfectly in place, it is a whole lot easier to deliver it to the people. Delivering something marketable to the people is simple! Have you seen how many amazing tools there are for delivering a good message to people? Just think of the first ones that come to mind. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, blogs … and the list goes on.
You want some awesome? Check this out! Here is some unsuspecting awesomeness for you. They didn’t seem all that amazing to me at first, but you would probably never believe me if I told you how many times these made my phone ring. These are just a couple of many examples, but the articles below make a good point.
So you must be asking, “How did these make the phone ring?” It was because those little pieces of awesomeness made people think. They made people laugh. They compelled people to share them with others, and they created a squillion new links to my blog. Bonus Points: They were also extremely relevant to my industry.
Those links enhance my SEO (search engine optimization), and reflect credibility to search engines by showing popularity. That credibility helps everything else I write about to rank higher in search engines. That is how SEO works! This matters far more than the mechanical approach to SEO. The trick is to be awesome as often as possible, or at least as a high percentage of your efforts.
Are you getting it yet? A little bit of awesome carries a long way. I don’t make “awesome” happen every time, and you will not either. I know when it is needed, how to do it, and why it matters. That comes with practice, so start practicing!
How much more can I say? I gave you a lot of good links within this article, and I did not include a single one to waste your time. I just gave you tools to learn and implement excellent marketing. I hope I have encouraged you to take the same approach of researching your market and to provide value to your potential customers.
I suggest that you give in order to receive. As an example that I mean what I say, I am giving $5,000 just to receive an introduction to somebody interested in paying for my services. That pretty well covers the “awesome” and the “helpful” in my book.
Of course, companies pay me for a lot more than what I included here. If you have the time to exercise your patience, and put some practice to use, you will find a whole lot more free assistance in my blog archive. I do it to be useful, and that works for me. I believe it will work for you as well.
I will allow you this moment to practice being helpful and awesome. This is your chance to add your helpful comment, and share how you apply these principles, or how you feel you could do better. If you want to get outrageously helpful, give this a tweet, a Facebook like, a stumble, a digg, or whatever it is that you do to share helpful things with others.
If I had an ounce of sand for every request I have received to help somebody become an SEO and Social Media Expert I could retire on my own private beach in a magnificent sandcastle.
As I consider all of the hype associated with SEO and social media marketing, I guess I can understand why so many people are attracted to the industry. The problem I see is that the hype has become far too believable, while reality and common sense have been left to rot.
I love to help people with their learning, and I take a lot of care to do it well. I will never intentionally lead you wrong, but in order to keep being helpful, it is important to understand people’s motivations. I will share some of my observations with you, and I would like your input as well.
My editor, Peggy, has already called this a “rant”, but it is a rant which I believe can be useful, or at least entertaining. I told Peggy this is something I think some people need to hear, and take seriously to heart as they consider their motivations for learning about SEO and social media.
I don’t want to be cruel, because I know that many fine people read my work to learn, and to pick up new ideas. The only cruelty here will come from within, if you find that you are doing things for the wrong motivations. Sometimes, my voice of reason must come out, and I have to be cruel to be kind. I want to understand my readers’ motivations better. Perhaps if I help you to reflect upon your own motivations, it will help us both.
Below are some observations that I find common among people seeking to learn SEO and social media marketing. I am absolutely not categorizing everybody, and I would not begin to tell you that you fit into one of these groups. These are just some observations I have found from well over a decade in this line of work. If you feel a bit awkward because you can relate to any of these, you should perhaps rethink your goals. Maybe you really are built for this, or maybe you should keep your day job. You decide!
Notice that I have lumped the two different disciplines of SEO and social media marketing into one. That is because they are more closely related than most people dare to believe. They often require similar skills, and anybody involved in one should have a good understanding of the other. They are also equally as scam-riddled because of the mythical glamour associated with the Internet.
Did You Think It May Be an Easy and Glamourous Job?
This industry is not lacking for participants. If you want a line of work where your demand will be high, try nursing. If you want a job that requires little training, try house cleaning. If you think that SEO and social media marketing is an industry that has a low barrier of entry, think again! The level of training, effort, and marketing talent required to be successful in this industry is not unlike becoming a rock star or a movie actor … only without the red carpet and paparazzi. Oh, and the groupies usually don’t throw lingerie at you or lift their shirt to get your attention.
SEO and Social Media Paparazzi
SEO and social media is not as easy or as glamourous as those people promoting their “get rich quick” online marketing schemes will tell you. Oh, I suppose you could grab some quick bucks if you want to lie to people.
If you are the type who will do anything for money, I have some wise advice for you: Customers are not stupid for long. They may believe you if you say “just wait … the profit is coming”, but then it will not be long before they wise up and realize that the industry is full of bullshitters like you. Then they look for people with a track record and a reputation. That may not starve you today, but it will starve you. It is an easy way to keep enjoying your canned beans and mac & cheese while living in a cramped apartment with cockroaches and worrying about how to ask Mom to move into her basement. Stop now, save your effort, and get a job. This is a career where you will not last. Even if you straighten up and do the right things, your reputation will follow you and haunt you until you are back to mopping the floor of a truck stop where you may actually have superior skill. Got it, lowlife?
Social Media and SEO are “The Future”
I Like This Future!
Maybe you heard what I heard back in grade school. In the 1980’s I heard “Computers are the future!” and I took heed and learned a lot about them. Maybe you heard it later and they told you “The Internet is the future!” I heard that, and I founded an industry leading wholesale Internet services company. If you were really late in the game, you heard that “SEO and social media marketing is the future!” Maybe it is, or maybe it is not, but unless you are innovating, you will be stagnating.
Unless you are seriously committed to this industry enough to give up a whole lot of sleep and work extremely hard, you are better off looking for the next big craze. Most people will not tell you how hard it is to become good at this business. They will also usually neglect to tell you how many extremely intelligent people there are who make up the top echelon of the SEO and social media marketing industry. Just when you think you really have a mind for this, you may find that you are just a little more average than you expected. Average people don’t last very long, because the average person in this industry earns about three dollars per day and they move on to something else.
There isn’t much room in this industry for earning a living with average efforts, average results, average commitment, or average intellect. It takes a lot more than average to even begin to earn a full-time living in SEO and social media marketing. I guess, that is unless you can con your way into an entry-level position where you look over your shoulder every minute for fear of the boss coming to fire you because he found somebody in India who will do your job for a tenth of the money.
Marketing Your Own Company with SEO and Social Media
I know that a lot of people want to learn SEO and social media marketing to improve their own company. I have also seen how badly most of them totally destroy an otherwise decent potential to reach their market and do more business.
Mike and Bob Are SEO Experts Now!
So, let’s say that this is the case with you, and business is so slow that you have time to take on a whole new job description on top of your regular job. Maybe you will delegate it to the receptionist, since the phones aren’t ringing anyway.
Even if you don’t make a mockery of your company by spamming to a disinterested audience in social media, it will be unlikely that you will do a better job than somebody who is already skilled in propensity modeling and market research.
Even if you don’t get your website banned by search engines for using SEO tactics you picked up at WarriorForum, you will never … and I mean never produce the same results as a studied SEO professional. I don’t mean the kid posting on WarriorForum who builds WYSIWYG websites with Dreamweaver or CoffeeCup. I mean the kind who will help you put your wallet back in your pocket before they would ever take your $699 for the instant-failure marketing plan you are asking for.
It is important to remember that for each customer you miss by doing things the wrong way, the cost goes up. You will also miss their repeat and referral business. If your business is already weak enough that you are trying to save money by doing your own marketing, it will likely become exceedingly worse the longer you do.
Have you ever heard that it is best to delegate tasks to people who know the job better than you? You will need a dentist someday. Do you want to take some dentistry courses so you can avoid hiring a dentist, too? What about auto mechanics?
Truly successful results in SEO and social media marketing do not come from people who are part-timers trying to be good at everything. Successful results come from people who do it all day and deep into night, and then lie awake in bed thinking about how they can do something bigger, better, and smarter tomorrow. You cannot get that from a quick course on how to become brilliant online. That comes from experience … hard-earned experience.
Enhance Your Existing Job with SEO and Social Media Marketing
Many people will try to learn more about SEO and social media marketing in order to enhance their existing job. This may have some benefit for people who are deeply entrenched in marketing, web development, web hosting, or other industry verticals. However, if you are not in one of these industry verticals, there really is not any value gained.
Social Media Recess
If you think that you will augment an existing job description by adding SEO and social media marketing to your task list, rub a lamp. That usually turns out about as good as the pool cleaner deciding to tinker on his client’s Porsche.
Do one job or the other, and make a decision. Being a little bit good at a lot of things is fine, but trying to be an expert with multiple things is about the worst career decision you will make. It may be helpful to know more, but do not expect it to be an enhancement, but rather a diversion. It will divert you from becoming even better at the job you already have.
Learning SEO and Social Media to Avoid Being Robbed
I think this is somewhat realistic, for a few people. I could see why somebody may want to know more about the industry to avoid being ripped off. This is even more important for a recruiter or hiring manager, but how much do you really need to know? There are some considerations to this which should eventually become obvious.
Avoid SEO Robbery!
First: You can shop too much. It is easy to become confused, and if you are comparing the wrong things, you will get the wrong results.
Second: There are a lot of great liars in SEO and social media marketing. Look for quantifiable evidence proportionate with your objectives.
Third: Seeking good marketing should never conclude with the best liar, nor begin with the newest fool.
I think a lot of people in my industry can relate to this: My clients do not need to know everything about SEO and social media marketing. They just need to know that I do, and that I am not a conman. Learning a whole new job skill just to be a buyer is like learning automotive engineering just to buy a car. It does not scale well.
Maybe you are looking for some cool factor in your social life. Heck, if you can learn SEO and social media marketing, maybe you will be better at arranging a tweetup or getting Facebook friends to love you. Maybe you could even use Twitter to get a bunch of people to go out for drinks with you.
Good luck, but wouldn’t it be more fun to just go out and get drunk without the curse of thinking about that new product launch. With all of those cell phone social media addicts around, you will never get drunk enough to have real fun. You don’t have to be an expert to make social media your party tool, just talk to any college student.
Aside from suckering people into paying your bar tab by sharing your expert advice, the return will probably be pretty low. I know, you may think it will help get them naked, and that is true, but so tacky!
In Summary of SEO and Social Media Marketing
Even with the very best alignment of the stars, and if you wake up to sex, coffee, and bacon every day, the job is still not easy. Finding people who are willing to do business instead of just talking about doing business is about as tough as pulling chicken teeth. There are so many bullshit sandwiches being served out every day that I am shocked McDonalds hasn’t put it on their menu.
Do you still want in? Tell me what you want to know, and I will give you my honest truth. Subscribe to my blog and I will give you some great tips and fresh ideas. If you just want to become an SEO and social media expert because it will make you rich and famous, back off … this industry will kill you and eat you before you will see success.
Geeky SEO Made Easy
This is an extremely important and yet simple to implement SEO tip about those “w’s” you often see in a web address. This will seem basic to many people, but it is shocking how often it is misunderstood, handled incorrectly, or overlooked. If you do not have this handled correctly this could make a huge improvement in your SEO efforts.
This is not just about whether somebody can arrive at your website by typing either domain.com or www.domain.com. This is about how Google and other search engines may see it as duplicate content, because it is actually the same thing in two locations. It is also about how all of the links pointing to these duplicate versions of your website are treated, and their value split in two – thus diluted. It will not cause a penalty imposed by the search engines, but there is still a real penalty to it, all the same.
Either version of www or non-www is fine, but it is important to choose one version and funnel your efforts toward the chosen version. If your website has more high quality existing links pointing to one version, that is the right one to use! If you don’t know, be sure to check both versions with a tool like Open Site Explorer.
Don’t Let the Big “Canonicalization” Word Scare You
Relax! I will make this easy for you. The abbreviated Murnahan version is this: Canonicalization means there is just one outcome for multiple possible actions. In this case, it means telling search engines to favor the outcome of your choosing (“www.” or no “www.”).
That big and scary word, “canonicalization“, reminds me that everybody is not familiar with technical SEO (search engine optimization) issues. There are even fewer people who understand and enjoy things like web server architecture, DNS, htaccess, 301 response codes, and other geeky delights which make me excited to wake up in the morning. Yes, I truly enjoy the geeky details of how this Internet works. I hope to make this easy enough that you will enjoy it, too! Well, I will at least make it easy, and I’m even going to provide a simple tool so you can check what your website is saying to the search engines.
WWW. is a Different Domain
When you go to a website, you will find that some of them use “www.” in front of the domain name (example: www.awebguy.com), and some of them do not. It is very common that both options will take you to the same place on the Internet, or at least the same information. That still does not mean search engines see it the same way as humans.
You can skip right to the bottom of this article to read the fix for this, but I think you will benefit by first understanding what is wrong, and why you should fix it.
Note: Even if both versions of www or without www show the same content (web page, video, image, etc.), the problem is not solved. It is common for web hosts to direct both versions to the same place using DNS (domain name service), but that is not the same as a 301 redirect telling search engines which version is the authoritative domain where the content should be indexed.
It is important to know that the domain name (example: awebguy.com) is the “root domain”. Anything coming before the awebguy.com, such as ftp.awebguy.com, pop.awebguy.com, smtp.awebguy.com and etcetera denotes a SUBdomain. Yes, of course, this includes www.awebguy.com, because it is a subdomain, too! An easy way to drive this home is to go to mail.google.com or to www.google.com … they are clearly different.
Now that we understand this point, let’s think of the www and non-www versions as two completely different domains. If somebody links to your website (and let’s hope they will) which one should they be linking to? Using a 301 redirect will actually reflect the correct address in the browser address bar, making it more likely that they will choose the right version when they want to link to your website. That is because before your web server even sent the page to the person visiting your website, it knew which version to send. In the event that somebody gets it wrong, a 301 redirect will tell search engines that the content they linked to is actually at the other location where it should be indexed.
Note: In order to know for certain what your web server is telling people, you must check your server’s HTTP response headers. Don’t worry, I made you a handy little tool to check your website.
What you want to know is whether the header begins with a “HTTP/1.1 200 OK” response, or a different response such as “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”. Only one of the versions will return the 200 OK, while the alternate version may return something else … and perhaps even something unexpected. I made this really easy to check your server’s response headers here:
An easy way to see this in action is to type my web address into a browser with either version. If you type it in without the “www”, my web server will know what you meant, and it will deliver the document (web page) at the proper address at the www subdomain – with a “200 OK” status. This will also work similarly for every page on the domain / subdomain, because I use a 301 redirect that simply redirects everything at awebguy.com to its exact equivalent representation with the correct www address.
The SEO “WWW” Fix: HTACCESS and 301 Redirect
Since many people do not configure and manage their own web servers, this is the easiest fix for most websites. If you have access to your main server configuration, use that, but this is simply not the case for most website owners. This solution uses very simple “distributed configuration files” known as “htaccess” which allow you to configure functions on a directory level.
OK, now that I drove you out of your comfort zone with some big techie language, just breathe slowly and get your heart rate back to normal. I am not going to force feed you a bunch of web programming. The fix is actually quite easy, or at least it will be easy if you pay attention. If you own a website and any of this is just too complicated, it would be like owning a car and not knowing how to put gas in it. Should that person really be driving? This is not like rebuilding your car’s transmission … it is like filling it with gas.
The “htaccess” is just a simple little text file you can create and edit with a text editor such as Notepad, SimpleText, or Vi. If you already have an existing htaccess file, you may simply edit it to include additional functions at the bottom of the existing content. Don’t be afraid of it, because it is really not very tricky. It may sound tricky when you consider all the things it can do, but it is normally just a small file with a minimal amount of text in it.
Htaccess is a configuration file that tells your server certain things to do when people ask for your web pages or other website content. It can be used for functions such as password protecting a directory, blocking selected people from accessing your website, and much more. The file name does not look like a lot of them you may see, such as hello.txt or mynameisfred.html, but don’t let that scare you. The htaccess file will begin with a dot (yes, a dot … like this one .) and the full file name is actually “.htaccess“.
You can have multiple of these “.htaccess” files within your website, but the one we are talking about is in the “root directory”. Stop! Don’t get frustrated … that just means it is right there in the same place where your home page and other files are. For example, the file http://www.awebguy.com/murnahan.pdf is in my root directory, but if it was at http://www.awebguy.com/other-directory/murnahan.pdf it would be found in the “other-directory” directory.
If you do not already have any .htaccess files in your website, don’t worry. You can just create one from scratch with a text editor, save it to your computer as htaccess.txt, and then upload it to your website and rename it “.htaccess”.
Within this magical .htaccess file, it will look almost just like plain old English language, and should not be overwhelmingly technical. I will use my own domain name for the examples, but you would of course want to change that to your own. Well, unless you want to redirect your website visitors to my blog, and that is fine, too. There is a lot you can do with this, but I don’t want to explode any heads with all of this technical junk. Technical junk really is like using explosives, sometimes!
I mostly want to explain how to create a 301 Permanent Redirect from either your www to non-www or from non-www to www. In order to do this, all it takes is either editing your existing htaccess file and adding the selected version below into the file, or creating a new htaccess file with the same. You can change the domain to any domain you like, but you will probably want to change it from mine.
Remember to always create a backup copy of anything you edit. If you mess it up and you want me to play a sad tune on my violin, I get paid overtime for that! đ
Example of a 301 Permanent Redirect of WWW to Non-WWW
This is the code to use in your htaccess file for redirecting content to the non-www version of your website.
There are many other handy things you can do with this, and some examples are below. Note that each of these should be created on a single line within the htaccess file.
Example of a 301 Permanent Redirect (note the local address then a space, and then the new URL)
Know Your Server’s Response Codes!
Even the difference in a slash at the end of an address makes the difference of a good “200 OK” response or a “301 Moved Permanently” or worse. You should be aware of the difference it makes.
I will reiterate … I made this really easy to see what your server is returning for any given web address. Check it here if you are not entirely sure:
Here are some additional resources about htaccess usage:
Well, there you have it … my answer to www vs. non-www and how to fix it easily with 301 redirect using htaccess. I told you I would make it simple. I welcome your feedback!
