Podcast Archives - Page 4 of 28 by Mark Murnahan

Social Media Popularity Addiction and Why I Quit

Illicit Drugs Are Popular, But Still Illicit

I believe the popularity addiction that many people suffer from in social media is downright pathetic. I’m going to tell you, in plain business terms, why I quit putting that drug in my bloodstream and stopped caring about appearances of popularity, having a squillion followers, or stressing about having the highest Klout score. In short, it is because those things aren’t what pays the bills, and they can even be quite destructive pursuits.

If you will look at it rationally, for just a moment, I’ll show you why the fashionable illusion of popularity fails the test of real business value. If you are ready to breathe a sigh of relief, you may want to pay attention and join me on the road to recovery.

For the most part, you probably don’t follow people on Twitter or “Like” them on Facebook because you’re planning to do business with them. Sometimes, perhaps, but how often? Really, how often do you use that long list of people you are connected to as a reminder for your shopping list?

When you need to pick up something on your next shopping venture, you don’t go and see who you’re following to decide what to buy or who to buy from. No you don’t! OK, maybe you do … but if that’s the case, you are in a very small minority. If you buy from them, it is likely because they built a positive brand image, and became more memorable.

Then why is it that so many people out to sell something have it in their head that other people are using social media for formulating their shopping list? They aren’t thinking in rational human terms … that’s why! They are thinking in terms of appearances and what may make them look more important or popular, rather than building a sustainable brand recognition. I guess that must make sense to some people, but not the successful ones … not for the ones with two brain cells to rub together.

Let me explain it like this: If you saw only 426 people following Subway Restaurants on Twitter, it probably wouldn’t alter your thoughts about buying a Subway sandwich. You buy from them because they make an awesome sandwich, and you’ve heard of them because they built their brand based on those awesome sandwiches. That is also why they don’t have 426 Twitter followers … they have 184,847. They produced something people want, and they made it memorable.

Conversely, if you see that a small real estate firm has 184,847 Facebook fans, it doesn’t mean they’ve got a house you want … or that they will be any better at selling your house. In fact, it may mean they are playing the popularity game, and prioritizing poorly.

People often get this all mixed up and think the popularity is what creates success, while the opposite is true. It works the other way around … successful branding creates the popularity. If you try to fake it or shortcut it, you will only deceive yourself … and I can back it up with facts, figures, and common sense.

You can lie to me, but don’t lie to yourself. If you try lying to me, I’ll break out the real numbers. Try this on for size: Here is a recent snapshot of a random hundred people who followed me on Twitter, along with the results I put together from over 1,000 tweets of my previous ten blog articles. See “Twitter in Numbers: Marginal, Not Magical“. Click it and read up if you really want the truth.

Perhaps too many people latched onto the fallacy of “more is better”, or the crazy idea that social media marketing is just about the networking … but it’s not!

The Psychology of Social Media Popularity

Nobody is fully immune to the notion that a perception of popularity will somehow serve them. I’ve even heard it from people who have absolutely no business case to have a big audience. When I have asked people about it, they are often confused by why I think it is unimportant. A small number of them are honest enough to admit that they want the popularity because it makes them feel good … and it makes them feel more productive, or more important.

In itself, a Twitter follower or a Facebook fan or friend is a terribly weak way to measure your brand’s love, but I see it all the time. I have heard many instances of companies wanting to know how much it will cost to acquire “X” number of friends, fans, followers, and other useless measures. A much smaller number is asking how to breathe awesomeness into their brand and earn faithful brand advocates and customers.

Something those who participate in the popularity contest are reluctant to admit is that more social media connections alone does not actually equal true popularity, or value. What it can do, however, is make them feel like they are making progress, even when there is no true progress at all. It often just means those connections had the same psychological need for validation, and they are participating in the absurdity of implied reciprocity. These people are completely confusing cause and affect, and they are wasting precious resources, like time and money.

The hope is often to have hundreds of people tweeting and facebooking something about them. That is a different kind of popularity, and it means your message is spreading. I don’t begrudge anybody for that, and I won’t call them a fool. In fact, it is just great! That may actually have value, and it may land the right person to become a customer. It is a sign of doing something well. That kind of popularity is often due to legitimate reasons.

Many people think the perception of popularity is really important, but try for a moment to believe me that it is wildly overrated. Maybe you think a large faux-following will help your business, but what will really matter is who they are and how they feel about your brand.

Look at how you use social media, and then consider why you think everybody else is so different. Unless you are doing something totally different, and awesome, it really seems arrogant to believe that they are paying more attention to you than you are them.

What's your social media addiction, and is it time for an intervention?

You may find a number of people or companies that you find interesting, but don’t tell me for a second that you found thousands of people you really intend to keep up with and give attention to what they have to say. It simply doesn’t work that way. Have you ever heard of Dunbar’s Number? It works both ways, and unless those people are really interested in you, it is worthless. For the truth, just picture yourself as one of those random names or faces you see as you look at who you are “following” or “liking”. Do you really pay attention to them? Do you really think they are paying attention to you?

The Little Company That Couldn’t

I want you to imagine the little company who couldn’t. They set out to find popularity, and they paid a “social media expert” to help them amass an audience, but they wanted it done quickly and at a low cost. The social media expert could be blamed (and should rightfully be hung by the short hairs) for delivering them a group of totally disinterested people to follow them on Twitter and “Like” their Facebook page. The thing is, it is exactly what the company asked for, and they refused to see it any other way. It was what they were sure would work, and it was all they were striving for. They dictated exactly what they wanted, and now they’ve got an untargeted audience.

Months later, they wonder why they are still not seeing a return on their social media investment. They have a huge audience, but those people just aren’t rushing the gates to buy their stuff. It is often because they were too concerned by the cost of time, money, and hard work that they never questioned the return. As the company resentfully struggles with “What in the heck is wrong with those people?!”, the competition is doing great.

The competition saw the value of a strategy, and they stopped trying to be like everybody else. The competition realized that having a disinterested group of people to follow them, “Like” them, and pad their egotistical desires for appearance without substance will not be worth a box of frog toenails if they are the wrong audience.

Here’s My Theory on The Value of Popularity

I guess should know a little about this … I have a metric squillion readers of my blog, and a reasonably sizable following across my social networks. I don’t need, nor want everybody to like me, love me, or follow me. I don’t concern myself with a bigger audience, because I would rather focus on the right people, and give them something they want … something useful. That’s why the audience is there in the first place!

Without a focus on people’s interests, and doing something worthwhile, it has very little business value. I guess you could say that I am reasonably popular, but I am still working on the awesome factor, every day. That matters a whole lot more to my business and personal pursuits than just looking popular.

Even with a great audience, it still requires a lot of effort. The most valuable audience is often the smallest target of all.

Since I know you’re curious, I’ll share what my intended audience looks like. Maybe this will work for you, too. In my case, I seek people who understand the value difference between doing something, and doing something well. I like to help them visualize the difference. When it comes to the way it all helps my business, it is because I seek people with enough faith in their company to become my next marketing client. It is a small target, indeed, but a falsely inflated audience is not how I intend to reach them.

No, not at all. I reach my best audience by creating something valuable enough to you that you feel confident to pick up the phone and call me, recommend me to your CEO as a consultant on your next marketing campaign, share my knowledge with somebody else who will find it useful, or otherwise appreciate my work enough that you help the right clients find me. That is real social media business (as opposed to monkey business), and it is far more important to me than a popularity contest.

That’s my take on the subject. What do you have to say about it?

Photo Credits:
Heroin and Syringe by Michael Velardo via Flickr
“Red Face” sells? by Daniel Axelson via Flickr
Héroïne by Alexandre Duret-Lutz via Flickr

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Remember Who Your Friends Are … And What They Do, Too!

Everybody Needs Friends: Treat Them Right!

Do you remember who your friends are? If you care about them and respect them, why not consider how they earn a living? Times are hard for a lot of businesses, and it may mean more to them than you think. More than that, you may eventually regret going elsewhere … where they will appreciate you less.

I am reminded of a story of two friends, John and Mike. I introduced them many years ago. John was the number one real estate agent in town, and Mike was seeking to sell his house, and buy another. One day, Mike called John and asked him to evaluate his house for market, and make suggestions for improvements to increase the sale price.

John was glad for the call, and he offered his professional time and efforts to help Mike. A few days passed, and John discovered that Mike had listed the home for sale … but chose a different listing agent. As the top agent in town during a good time in real estate, John certainly did not need the commission, but was disappointed because he had wanted to assist our friend Mike in the sale, and subsequent purchase. Plus, he had been somewhat crudely taken advantage of professionally, by his friend.

John was a bit confused as to why his friend chose a different agent. He feared he had somehow offended Mike with the suggested listing price. No, Mike took his advice on the price. Was it the suggested improvements, the commission, the way he combed his hair? No, no, and no … the agent Mike listed with was a young sexy lady. Mike hoped he may have a chance with her, so he took all of John’s suggestions and listed the house elsewhere.

Once the house was sold and Mike was ready to buy his next house, he still overlooked John. He went with a different agent, again.

I really don’t think John ever felt the same about Mike after that. Whether it is right or wrong, I can understand how John could feel insulted. After all, he would have done the sale transaction and the purchase transaction for his friend, without a commission at all. Ironically, Mike had done a similar thing to me, years earlier, and he was on his way to building a reputation for it.

I am certainly not a fan of implied reciprocity (as you can see if you read that link), but you can probably imagine (or remember) how it feels when a friend overlooks you and buys from your competitor, right? It actually kind of stinks, and it is easy to take it as an insult. It also feels even worse when the friend is hurt by a competitor, when you know you could have saved them the trouble. No, it does not feel satisfying … is stinks!

Have you ever witnessed a friend go somewhere else when they needed something? I have heard speculation about the mindset, but I refuse to understand it or adopt it for my own use. I know that some people think you shouldn’t do business with friends, but I think that is largely a horrible attitude.

I will always try my best to give my business to a friend or acquaintance above a stranger. They may really appreciate that you thought of them, and they may really appreciate the business.

Now I’ll tell you what got me to thinking about this.

What Reminded Me of This?

I recently had a friend ask me if I knew a good option for web hosting. Now, when I say “friend”, I don’t mean just a random acquaintance on Twitter. She has sat at my bar for drinks, she co-chaired a school fundraiser with me, and we have celebrated kids birthdays together. She has sat in my office, and she has even seen and touched the corporate YourNew.com, Inc. Race Team Corvettes. She has also been my friend on Facebook for years. So, I know she knows I do something “Internetty”, and she knows I do it very well. She knows I know a lot about this Internet, so she asked me about web hosting.

The sad thing is that she didn’t really know much about what I actually do, or just how much I am able to help her. It bothered me, but mostly because of how I could benefit her, rather than that her business would pay me a dollar or two per month. That’s why I decided that I am going to start letting more people know.

I know that a lot of people who know me don’t really know or understand my work. I do more than a couple things here on this Internet, but I don’t really promote them very much. It’s mostly kind of an “obvious secret”, in a way, because the majority of my work is operating as “the geek behind the geeks”. I generally don’t promote my services to a retail market, or to friends.

You see, aside from my work as a marketing guy, I founded a company sometime over a decade ago, as a merger of two other companies. That company sells Internet services to wholesale clients … who often sell those same services to resellers, who sell them to the public. We’ve been very successful at that market segment, and retail sales are a minimal part of what we do.

We sell web hosting to web hosting companies. You knew it had to come from somewhere, right? In fact, if you have used the Internet very long, there is a very high probability that you have used services I have created or brokered. The company is still my full-time employer after all these years, and I work there as the CEO.

So, why don’t I promote that to my blog readers? It is mostly because I have enough search engine traffic and recognition in that specific area of the industry that it is just a distraction to what I do here at aWebGuy.com. In any case, if you are in need of any of the many Internet-related services we provide, I’m always happy to help … I am just not out to push those on you. In fact, you may even see Google ads for my competitors right here on my blog. It’s ironic, right? 😉

Let Me Show You Why I Have a Reputation

I want to show you why I have a good reputation in my industry. I’m going to start with this: If you have been a reader for a while, you probably have some sense of who I am. You may even know a good amount about my principles and my ethics. You can probably tell that this is not some big scam waiting to suck you in.

Today, I have decided to offer web hosting to my readers and friends at a rate of $10 per month, or $5 per month for ten or more websites. I was going to say free, but come on … having a guy to call who really knows his stuff has got to be worth something, right? I’m not just offering basic web hosting, either. I will include the same web hosting system that is used here at aWebGuy.com … which clearly exceeds an average demand when it comes to web hosting. I’ll even include all the bells and whistles like website builders, ecommerce tools, plenty of email, and support for about any technology you can dream up … just ask me.

Better yet, I will provide your web hosting technical support, myself. Sure, I will have my tech support folks waiting in the wings in case you encounter something really pressing and I am in the shower or otherwise cannot take your call … but I will be the live voice at the other end of the line if you need web hosting help. How many CEOs do you know who will do that? I’ll bet that “Daddy” guy won’t take your call on his way to pick the kids up at school.

In fact, to take me up on this offer, I want you to contact me directly, and I will personally help you to set up your account and walk you through the basics. Now that doesn’t sound like such a scary offer, does it?

The one caveat is that you subscribe to my blog and keep reading to learn more about how to use that web hosting to build your business. If you are a subscriber, just ring me up and introduce yourself. I’ll be delighted to help you.

If you need web hosting, or you need better web hosting, contact me. I’ve provided web hosting for over a decade, including many websites you know and trust. Maybe even your bank, your city, your hospital, or your university. It’s better to trust somebody you are familiar with than trusting a total stranger.

I also want to add that if you know somebody else in the industry … by all means, call them! I really do believe it is valuable to do business with people you know and trust. I think it is always important to know who your friends are, know what they do, and remember them when they can help.

Oh, and one more thing … this is just for new web hosting accounts. I can’t just give away the whole farm. If you are already paying me more, I’m confident there’s a good reason for it. 😀

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Hard Lessons I Learned About Marketing and Success

Some people say that you can learn a lot from successful people. I think it is largely true, too. It makes more sense to learn from somebody who has been successful than to learn from somebody who has not. At the same time, one thing that becomes very valuable is to learn from the mistakes they made, and use those things to avoid repeating their mistakes.

Some would say that I took a bit of an uncommon direction to learning about marketing. I dropped out of school about 25 years ago at age 15, regularly held 2-3 jobs as I built my first few companies, and nearly worked myself to death by the time I was 25. It sounds glamorous, doesn’t it?

My career path would certainly not be comfortable for most people, and I would never encourage it for my own children or anybody else I care about, but it worked for me. I learned my way through it the hard way. I read a lot of books, and I studied a lot of concepts from successful people. They were often people I knew first hand, and there were many instances when I should have listened more carefully. Since I was stubborn, I still had to learn some things the hard way, by making my own mistakes.

Lesson one: Don’t be stubborn! There really are people who know more than you about a given topic.

OK, I’ll admit, my path to learning was not totally awful, and there were a few benefits along the way. I earned more money by the end of those ten years between 15 and 25 than most people will in a whole lifetime. I retired for a few years, and it mostly seemed worth it. Yes, indeed … I had become one of those successful people like the ones I worked so hard to learn from.

Some of the greatest benefits I received were the marketing lessons I learned. Those tough lessons about marketing taught me how to bounce back from nearly any business calamity. That is because if you can market something, you can sell something, and if you can sell something you can earn profit, and let’s be honest … the majority of things that can go wrong in business can be improved with more money.

I want to share some of what I learned with you. I’ll offer a glimpse of my early years in business, and some valuable lessons it taught me about marketing. I hope it will save you some of the frustration of my mistakes. At the same time, it may scare you to imagine what it really takes to build success in a business. It is not for everybody … “average” is for everybody.

If The Doors Aren’t Swinging, The Cash Register is Silent

In my early days of business ownership, nearly 25 years ago, it was pretty easy to recognize that my business was much better when the doors were swinging open, or the telephone was ringing. Without enough customers, I wasn’t selling enough, and selling something was how my company generated revenue … money … profit. You know, the stuff that sets the difference between a hobby and a business.

I needed to attract customers, and I knew it would take some pretty clever marketing to keep my company moving forward. Without marketing, even the best companies fail. I had seen such failure in other companies, so I knew I needed to get that part right.

Of course, marketing comes in many forms, and it involves many aspects of a business. It includes product assessment, pricing, merchandising, public relations, and more. Focusing on just one area of marketing is short-sighted, and leads to a lot of waste. What I knew for sure was that if I didn’t do something and do it right, I would never grow the company into anything sustainable. First things first, I needed to generate some money to make the whole thing work.

Sales reps were not worth a garage sale necktie to me if I didn’t have the right product offering. So, I worked on our offerings to be sure they were better than the competition. The sales reps were also no good to me if I could not legitimately define why the offerings were the best option in the market for our given customers. That meant I needed some product research. That’s when I realized the product research and the customers had to match up just right. It would not matter how awesome the offering was, or how well we could merchandise it, if we did not understand who would benefit from it the most, and would have a greater propensity to respond to our efforts. That’s right … “everybody” is not a target market.

I researched like mad to put all the pieces together. I got the products just right, the pricing was attractive, and I ran great ads to get bodies through the door, but then I figured out that there were good customers, and then there were great customers. I needed to determine how to get the right customers through the door. When I learned how to do that, our profits grew like mad. With all that research to my advantage, advertising cost went down because it became more effective.

You see, it took a lot of little pieces to be put in their proper place in order to grow. It took a lot of very time-consuming and often high-investment efforts to create success.

Putting all those little pieces in the right order and in their rightful place is even more important now than ever, in the digital world. The competition is broader, the offerings are sharper, and getting people to a website is not at all the same as getting the right people to a website. Once you get them there, you will need very compelling reasons they will want to do business with you. My early experiences really helped me to understand this.

Here comes a lesson that came really hard for me, but it makes a huge impact once you get it right.

Who You Are is Not a Microcosm of Your Market!

You are not the same as your customers and potential customers. You may try to be like them, you may try to speak their language, and you may even be part of a very similar demographic, but the truth is that they are different. We each want to believe those warm and friendly lines like “people are not so different after all” … but they are!

It is very challenging to try and understand your perfect market segment, and how to reach them with the right message. It is a bit unnatural, because it requires thinking in a way that is not your usual way of thinking. They are the customer, and they will always have their own perspective, their own experiences, their own mindset … and you will have yours.

During my earliest days in business, I remember a constant nagging question of “Who are these people?” I’ve got to say that as much as I tried, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I understood them in concept and in statistics, but I still could not relate to their ways of thinking. Fortunately, I didn’t need to nor want to become more like them. It is true but misunderstood that you do not have to “become your customer” to provide their best option … but you will need to know a lot about them. I was selling very expensive things to very egotistical people. I knew exactly why they would buy, and I knew that it was all about stroking their ego.

What I couldn’t grasp was why they were so willing to endure all of that opportunity cost just to splurge on luxury items. They were buying things that I felt I could never afford. The crazy part was that I would constantly find that my customers were actually earning only a fraction of what I was.

The big separation for me was that I was in a different stage of my life, and in a different mind capsule of my own. I believed in taking every dollar I earned to further build my businesses, and buying showy things just didn’t fit into my model (until much later).

There are many things which can separate us from the mindset of our customers, and it is usually not a simple task to figure it out. In my case, it became my most monumental career objective to understand the gaps between customer and seller perspectives … and to bridge those gaps.

One of the best and hardest lessons I learned was that it usually takes a fresh set of eyes looking from outside. That means outside of the buyer’s perspective, and outside of the seller’s perspective. Analysis from a complete outsider is one of the best ways to understand the gaps between sellers and customers. I am lucky I learned this early, and I will always value the outsider. This can be a friend, an associate, or a trade organization, but it is even better when it is their job to serve your company needs and expectations. You can be afraid of the truth, but it will not change the truth. The best outsider is often in the form of a trained and experienced marketing consultant.

The funny thing is this: I am a marketing consultant, and in fact, I am a very accomplished marketing consultant … but knowing what I know, I will never stop using them. Yes, it probably sounds totally nuts to you, but I rely on outsiders to provide the same services that others pay me to provide.

The reason I use outside marketing consultants is that for as much as I can do the research, bring you to discover me, know your hot buttons, and even address them fairly well, I will never completely understand you, or why you are not buying my services. If I tried to understand you all on my own, without influences from the outside, I would destroy many of my greatest opportunities. I would also likely go even crazier than I already am.

You really must have a plan if you want to get ahead in business. I started with a plan, but I found a lot of changes to make along the way. I also found a lot of roadblocks, and often by being hard-headed and not taking good advice. I cannot share all my best advice in one blog article, but I have a pretty lengthy blog archive full of good information.

Delegating Saved Me More Than Once

I learned that one of the most profound commonalities of successful people is knowing when and how to delegate things outside of their expertise. They realize their limitations, and the value of concentrating their efforts on the things they are best suited for. They recognize what they don’t know, and they become good at finding the right people to handle those things.

I learned to delegate. It was terrifying to me, and I never got really comfortable with handing the controls over to somebody else. I hated that my accountants and attorneys often knew more about me than my own mother. I also hated the thought that my marketing consultants have often known enough about my businesses to try and mirror my company and become my competition.

I thank my lucky stars that I got over it and realized that I cannot be the very best at everything. I am absolutely terrible at accounting! All I want to know is that there is enough money in the accounts to carry out my purchases. I generally grasp the whole legal thing, but I hate writing my own contracts, and I understand why they say that “the lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client.” A similar principle holds true in marketing. If you rely on your own brilliance, without outside influence, you will make mistakes … and often very costly mistakes.

Whether it is a friend, a colleague, a trade association, or a trained marketing professional, you will need to trust and learn from an outsider at some point. Tell them your goals, tell them your business pains, listen to them, take their guidance, and grow your business. Otherwise, don’t be surprised that if you keep making the same mistakes, you will get the same results.

If Building Success Was Easy, Wouldn’t Your Market Share Be Higher?

Building a successful business is not easy, and it requires a lot of uncomfortable decisions. If it was easy, it would be easy for your competition, too. A key factor lies in your will to achieve more.

There will always be people to dislike you for doing the things they are unwilling or unable to do. There will always be people to try and roadblock your success. You may often create your own biggest roadblocks based on other people’s frustrations. I know this, and I can almost bet that it is like fingernails on a chalkboard to many people when I say I’ve spent much of my adult life in the top fraction of a percent of money-earners in the USA and in the world. Yeah, that’s annoying to the people who have not joined me there, and have no hopes of achieving the same or similar results.

I really enjoyed and related to an article my friend John Falchetto recently wrote titled “5 reasons jerks are successful“. I hate to give away the ending, but the fact is that they are not jerks at all. They just work very hard and have very strong commitments. I encourage you to read it and also read the comments on the article. I had a lot to say about it.

I know that there is a huge deluge of information telling you that you can do it all yourself, and that you can reach a huge audience of all the right people with the perfect message about your company and make your product or service offering so popular the phones will ring all night and day.

If you really believed it was so simple, I think you must ask yourself “Why isn’t my market share higher?” or “why am I still reading this blog?” You want more business … that’s why.

Let this roll around in your head for a while: If you were given all the right resources to market your company, would it become as successful as you hoped it would be? Either way you answer, this should require you to consider what mistakes you are making and which required resources you are missing. It very likely has a whole lot to do with your marketing.

Photo Credit:
Separation Anxiety by j bizzie via Flickr

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Is Today’s Marketing Mostly Just Lies?

Have you ever felt so sick of people feeding you lies about marketing that you can still taste it the next morning? Those lies often leave us, as a society, with a bad taste in our mouth for the whole concept of marketing. It creates a heightened level of cynicism that was not there before, and it spreads like a bad rash.

Isn’t it time to take inventory of what you’ve been accepting on faith, and start to question it? I think so, and I think it should apply to marketers and their clients alike. Of course, that will require a shift toward using due diligence and common sense. When you wonder if what you’ve been told is a lie, do you accept the responsibility to find the truth, or do you just give in and believe it because it is what you want to believe?

It is not my full-time job to be a whistle-blower about the abundance of bad marketing, but I’d say I definitely have a knack for it. I also have a sense of industry responsibility to balance out all the worthless junk and cons with some common sense and honesty … brutal honesty. Maybe I shouldn’t harp on it so much, but there are many instances when I see just how badly lies about online marketing can hurt a company. It is true that many marketing efforts can cause a net loss even greater than the upfront price paid.

I’ll wrap this up with a real life example of a company that was scammed for many thousands of dollars, but this is also about the course that brings them to accept their defeat rather than fight back. I’ll begin with some observations, and I’ll include some links throughout this article to extended resources on related topics. You may like to give attention to those.

Convincing Evidence of a Marketing Decline

I am fully convinced that the majority of things people are promoting to fix your online marketing is a string of lies. I see it all the time that somebody lied to somebody else, and now they are out to sell it to you. I suspect that many of the people lying don’t even know they are lying … they believe what they have been told so completely that they actually see it as the truth. There is a huge component of the blind leading the blind, and taking inspiration from even the slightest of success stories they read about on the next amateur marketing blog. I can prove the concept, too … just have a good hard look at this piece about the sad state of SEO and social media marketing experts.

Consider this: How many times have you heard how important it is to use Facebook? I like Facebook just fine, and it can be very useful for marketing, but how much of what you hear is hyperbole and lies? After all, how much do you actually expect to buy from that guy on Facebook trying so hard to sell you his stuff? Do you think the answer is completely different if you asked him the same question about you?

This is not about Facebook, and I actually know for a fact that Facebook can play an amazing role in a marketing strategy. Facebook has performed wonderfully for my wife’s cakes and confections company (of course, she is far sweeter than I am), and it has become invaluable to many of my clients. What I am very unsettled about is the utter loss of common sense I see surrounding “miracle cures” like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and the rest of the wagon full of assorted snake oils.

Sure, maybe snakes have great oil, but do you rub it on your feet, fry with it, put it in your bath, or what? There is no perfect single-source cure for your every marketing objective, and it takes much more than just showing up! It is important to note that “everybody” is not your target market, but that’s how I see a majority of marketers promoting marketing these days. If you are hoping to earn squillions of dollars, or even a few dollars, just by being on Facebook without a strategy, you will be disappointed. Let’s try to be more realistic … please!

The Internet has largely become a society of marketing. Whether it is marketing to have more friends, more business, or just to feel more connected with society, it becomes a reflection of how we each market ourselves, our ideas, our thoughts, and our beliefs. We must question “how much of this is real versus imagined, and accurate versus lies?” Otherwise, don’t we all suffer?

For your enjoyment, I have included a video about lying.

It is easy to see how the industries related to marketing a business online became so hard to trust. After all, who doesn’t want a commission … a job … a paycheck? Many people will lie to get those things. You will find a massive abundance of them in marketing … especially online marketing. The end result is that it does not matter if the lies are due to ignorance or greed. Lies are lies, and there are no innocent lies, nor innocent victims, as long as the truth is available. There are just the willingly confused.

Great Marketing Professionals Are Not Just Mythical

I’ve got to say that there are some amazing marketing people out there. There are also many of them with a lot of integrity. I know they exist, because I’ve met many of them. I’ve also trained many of them. The trouble is that the field of marketing was flooded with newcomers like a tsunami. Now that it all looks so “easy” to reach a huge audience online, there is little wonder why everybody wants to be an expert. It is a mathematical truth that most of them are not, and will never be very good at marketing. Marketing takes training, it takes experience, and it takes aptitude, but since the majority of today’s online marketing newcomers have very little of these things, they lie … even to themselves. I suppose it must seem easier to lie than to go through the hard process of working and learning their way to the top. Only the few with high integrity and strong work ethic will survive in the long run, but there is a constant flow of new liars … so look out!

There is also a huge audience who are swallowing those lies like a free bacon sandwich and washing them down like sucking free grape soda through a garden hose. It is maddening that they are in even greater abundance than the lying newcomers shamelessly taking their money. They are getting more gun-shy with each leap of faith, so it makes me wonder what it will look like when the whole thing collapses like a house of cards, and there is nobody left to believe it when they actually do encounter the truth. Have you seen the housing market? Most people thought that would never collapse, but it did!

The Marketing Con Job I Promised

I told you I’d wrap this up with an example of a company that was scammed. In this case, it is a friend of my friend and colleague. It is driving him nuts to see his friends get ripped off, so he asked me to help.

The company is paying thousands of dollars per month for search engine optimization services. They have previously paid multiple SEO companies to optimize their law firm websites to reach their target market, but each time, the results were just as bad. They have largely lost faith that online marketing can help them at all, but at the same time, they are strangely afraid to stop sending the checks … just in case.

The latest rip-off has performed so horribly that more than five months into their $36,000 contract, they are receiving under 30 monthly website visits that are even from the same country as where they provide their legal services. The last report I saw showed just over 600 monthly website visits from Southeast Asia, while only 28 were from within the United States. When the law firm asked for a list of the work performed, the marketing company replied with what one could logically estimate at under an hour of work … total … after months of being paid thousands of dollars per month.

The law firm has said they want my help, but they are “waiting it out” to see if the crooked SEO provider will do right by them. It becomes really upsetting as I consider how frequently I hear stories just like this. They keep hoping the lies will somehow miraculously become the truth, even when they have been presented with concrete proof that the SEO company is actually hurting their efforts … quite likely well into the future.

What do you think? Why do people allow themselves to be ripped off? Should marketing companies be willing to lie, just because it is how others do it? Shouldn’t we all use more due diligence and common sense? Am I doing this all wrong by trying to be honest in a dishonest world?

Please answer me!

P.S.

If you question how it can possibly be the majority of marketing that is plagued with lies, be sure to notice that there is a lot more marketing that you never see than what you do see … but yet, somebody is paying for it.

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Google Panda, Google Bowling, and How Bad SEO Can Kill Your Business

Google's: Watching from Above — Google's Panda: Watching from Above

Your search engine ranking efforts may be hurting your business a lot more than you think! Whether you are the person handling your search engine destiny, or you have hired a search engine optimizer to handle it, this is information you should know. I’ll start with some simple facts.

Google makes frequent changes to their algorithm (roughly 500 per year). Yes, algorithm … the mathematical methods used to determine which websites will rank higher or lower in searches. On occasion, the changes are quite significant, such as the “Panda” series of updates (most recently Panda 2.5). We should expect changes, and it is a very good thing.

Google has a lot at stake in continuing to deliver the most relevant results when we go searching. From a search user’s standpoint, it is excellent, because it helps us find what we are looking for, easier and faster than ever. From a business standpoint, it is a huge cause for concern to many people, and often rightfully so.

Should you worry about Google’s changes? Perhaps yes, and perhaps no. Let’s see if I can answer that question. I’ll address some changes in layman’s terms, including a blast from the past that seems to be making a resurgence, which is “Google Bowling”, and it is not to be overlooked. In fact, I’ll explain how the methods of link building which many SEO sell to their customers is the same tactic other companies use to negatively affect competing websites. Please don’t click away if some of this seems too basic, or too advanced. There is value here, and I’ll make it easy to understand.

In Google’s Own Words:
“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”
Source: The Official Google Blog

I often challenge search engine optimization providers for their abuse of people’s fears by telling them SEO requires constant technology changes to keep up. What the abused SEO-buying public hesitates to understand is that SEO is not a function of technology. It is generally very untrue that search engine changes will adversely affect rankings based on technology issues. I have extensive proof of this in competitive markets where I have ranked websites at the top of searches, but made absolutely no changes. Some have not been touched in a decade, but still rank in the top one to three positions for competitive searches. Of course, that only happens if you are doing things above board, and not trying to cheat your way to the top … or paying somebody else to do it.

The problem that is hitting many websites hard with the new Google changes is that they have, either knowingly or unknowingly, used practices which Google has recently cracked down on harder than ever before.

What Google Changed in Panda Update … In Simple Terms

Some of the most recent Google algorithm changes are making a broad impact across the Internet. Big change always sends the cockroaches of the search engine optimization industry scurrying for a new patch of darkness. This time, the changes are in a series of updates called “Panda”, with the latest to date being called “Panda 2.5”. The focus of the updates is to wipe out some of the most prevalent and slimy tactics companies use to try and trick their way to top search engine rankings. I’ll share some reasons this could affect your online business future.

Panda Update is Good News ... Unless You're the Bamboo!

Unique Content Matters: Copycats Don’t Have Nine Lives!

One hard-hit area is companies taking content from other websites and re-purposing it on their own website. This can be as simple as a retailer re-using a manufacturer’s description, or a lazy content producer stealing somebody else’s work. An extremely hard hit area is auto-blogging, which automatically scrapes content from other websites to increase blog content. The more “innocent” instance uses automated means to replicate product descriptions from a manufacturer or supplier database. It happens a lot, and has been widely accepted for years, but many companies are finally seeing the downside. If you are unsure whether this is being done with your website, you may soon find out … the hard way.

What’s worse, is that a lot of people are paying search engine optimizers who use links from this kind of reduced-quality website to link to theirs. These dirty SEO tell the client that more links are a good thing, so they create thousands of them, but they don’t tell the client the rest of the story. It is extremely common, and very destructive, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

A huge number of websites are hit by Google’s more hard-line approach with Panda updates. It is often because somebody opted for the easy way, instead of the right way. This is the way of the dark side of the SEO industry, but somebody keeps feeding the SEO monster, and it’s not me.

I cannot call anybody a victim if this hits them in the wallet, because there are no victims. There are only “willingly confused“. Due diligence and common sense often go out the window when it comes to marketing, and especially as it applies to the Internet. People really want to believe that “easy success” actually exists.

Many people previously decided that the easy way is the better way, but its not true, and Google is proving it. It takes a lot of work to create truly excellent unique content that will perform well in searches. A lot of companies fell for the notion of trying to save money by using cheap SEO tactics and taking shortcuts, but Google is fighting back. Now people are finding out that the cost of shortcuts is a whole lot more than doing it right in the first place. If you who want to know “How much does SEO cost”, I suggest searching Google for it … but be sure to look for this article while you are there: “How Much Does SEO Cost?” is The Wrong Question. It won’t be hard to find … I wrote it.

Links Are Not Created Equal!

A tactic that Google is aggressively punishing is buying or trading links from other websites to make your website falsely appear more credible and “important”. This has always been a sore spot for Google, but more today than ever, as the Internet’s growth accelerates. Google wants to judge the Internet by what people like and find useful, and not things which have been falsely inflated by “content farms” and low-quality link gathering. It is why I have always spoken out against such tactics. An example is my article titled “Reciprocal Link Exchanges Don’t Work!“. I don’t think I can be a lot more clear than that.

Acquiring links is something that most search engine optimizers will tell you is very important. What too many of them don’t explain is that doing it the wrong way will, with near certainty, cause more harm than good. Link building strategies are not created equal, and a huge number of SEO are doing it totally wrong! It is another in a long list of lies SEO tell.

Google knows who links to your website, and who links to the websites that link to your website. There are no secrets here … if there is a link in a public place on the Internet, it is Google’s intent and responsibility to know about it. From all of those links, Google creates and evaluates the website’s overall link portfolio. It is a primary factor in determining what will be listed in search results, and where it will appear on the list. If the links in a website’s overall portfolio of links are not relevant, or are not what Google can logically (algorithmically) expect as a natural conclusion, the website will suffer.

Google Bowling and Bad SEO

I touched on some of the things Google does not like, but now, let’s imagine reverse engineering this. What if somebody else tried to make it look like you used these tactics? One way that seems possible is “Google Bowling”. That is the practice of buying or otherwise acquiring low-quality links to a competitor’s website in hopes of affecting a penalty against them from Google.

Wait! It seems crazy if there is actually a value in this kind of links that they could be used for harm, right? Well, there is not a value in them, and Google Bowling is a real thing … just google it. Directing a high volume of those low-quality links that so many SEO are selling is actually often used against competitors. It is an old trick, but it appears to be making a resurgence since Google’s Panda updates.

That is a dirty tactic, but does it work? Many indications show that it can and does work. Before you worry, here’s the good news: It will generally only have an affect against websites with a weak link profile. The bad news is that if you don’t have a mature and high-quality link profile, it may include you.

This came to mind recently, as I discovered nearly 300,000 new links pointing to my blog, here at “SEO and Social Media Marketing Blog”. They all sprung up in only a few days, which is a bad signal to Google of somebody buying links. Some people would surely say “Wow, that’s great! Hundreds of thousands of free links!” To say the least, I was not so delighted. Somebody is trying to Google Bowl my blog. I discovered it because of excessive Google Alerts, and also signals in my Google Webmaster Tools. See the example screenshot below.

Note: A few days after I took this screenshot and wrote this article, the new link creation peaked at over 2.6 million new incoming links.

Screenshot of My Google Webmaster Tools Links Report

The good news is that I already had a baseline of over 150,000 incoming links. Some are good, while some are not so good, but it is a good balance. It is a mature link profile with a significant volume of high-quality links in the mix. If not for that, I would be worried, and with good reason.

With a good existing link profile, the worst scenario would be to file a reconsideration request with Google and explain the issue. With a link profile built on weak tactics, the challenge to recover becomes much more tedious, and emphasizes the value of being proactive.

Summary of Google’s Panda Update

When you have thousands … millions … billions, and even squillions of companies competing for the same space, it is pretty easy to see how trickery and fraud could flourish. It is easy for Google (and other search engines) to see this, too. They have billions of dollars at stake, and some of the brightest minds working to thwart that kind of trickery and fraud.

It should be no surprise why, as high search engine rankings became more challenging, the masses have scurried to try and figure out social media. Social media is an important signal which Google uses to measure a website’s value. In actuality, Google is the biggest example of social media there is. The links to and from websites are the most profound social measurement across all social media. It reflects what the people like and do not like. When that is faked, Google has a lot of ways to measure it.

As long as you are not sending false signals by trying to cheat search engines, you have little to worry about when they make changes. The sad fact is that many people are sending false signals, and they don’t even know it. They relied on search engine optimizers who offered a good pitch and a low price. The outcome is often far more costly than doing it right in the first place. Doing it right does not cost money, it pays money. Doing it cheap and haphazard is where the big cost comes in.

Search engine ranking holds many businesses’ success or failure in the balance. Where your website is ranked in search results, whether you accept this or not, can make a huge impact in your business. Most companies don’t fully recognize the degree of impact, because they have never been ranked very well. It is true … most … and that is because the space at the top of the list is very limited.

P.S. If you are the thumb-sucker behind trying to Google Bowl my blog, know this: People are sick of your kind of useless tactics. They already wasted their money trying it your way, and they are pissed. That’s why I often write about your type of SEO, and warn people. I suspect you are pouting like a wet toddler who never got enough love, but you won’t bump me from your favorite spot. Count on it!

Photo Credits:
Panda by geopungo via Flickr
Panda Floss by istolethetv via Flickr

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