Internet marketing Archives - Page 5 of 18 by Mark Murnahan

SEO and Conversion: Increasing Website Traffic is Only Part of SEO

I write a lot about SEO (search engine optimization) and social media marketing. You expect that, and I am here to deliver. What I think a lot of people interested in SEO do not want to face is that SEO is a lot less about tricky technology issues, and a lot more about producing brilliant marketing.

The industry of SEO is ever-changing, but at the same time, many things are constant. For the largest part, the same things that mattered ten years ago still matter today. There have been many technical changes, but the technical aspects of SEO are not as individually important as some people may lead you to believe. The technology is really just a lot of little pieces which we fit together to assist the larger cause.

Early in the industry of SEO it became popular to chase information on the latest tricks to stay a step ahead of the search engines. Although there were cases when this became valuable, it seems pretty convenient that it is also used for confusing customers in order to seem more valuable. Many absurd yet popular myths about SEO such as meta tags still persist, even today.

There is value in understanding the technologies involved, but the truth is often less popular than myths. The truth is that search engine optimization and the value it represents is influenced a lot more by human response than by a computer. Giving people something which holds value to them has always been the most important part of SEO. This is the truth, and it is backed up with numbers.
Providing value to customers is not just a principle of good SEO, but marketing as a whole. When you give people something of value, they are more likely to share it with others. On the Internet, they often share it with links. In SEO, those links are like votes telling the search engines who should sit at the top as the “President”.

The Best SEO Trick Ever: Provide Value to Others

If you adhere to this one solid principle of providing value to others, your marketing will take a positive turn. A trick I have learned through two decades in the marketing business is that sometimes you must give until it hurts. Getting everything you want may not always work on the time frame you have set for yourself. I have often discovered that this challenge simply means that you are either not giving enough value, or you should have started sooner, and with better research.

Transforming a business from good to great is not simple. If it was simple, every business would have great results and everybody would win.

It is popular these days to award medals and ribbons to every kid in the race, but let’s face it … that will not translate well in the business world. We do not all get ribbons and medals.

Making the best of any market means knowing which people to reach and knowing what they want. It means knowing the customers’ needs and desires, and knowing the best way to solve them. When you take a close look, SEO starts to sound a lot like marketing, which is exactly what it is, but SEO is often viewed at as a technical trade. What many people are hesitant to understand is that SEO is more about producing great marketing in a very competitive atmosphere and less about geeky magic tricks. It requires an understanding of what people want, the unique ways they interact online versus offline, creating an appropriately compelling message, and being able to properly apply technology and mathematics.

SEO is a lot less about programming code and geek stuff than it is about people and psychology.

SEO Meets the Human Factor

The technologies surrounding SEO can help a lot, and increased website traffic is a great thing. I certainly love watching big numbers. I know that big numbers of website visitors will always impress my clients. They really want to see those new visitor statistics, because that is something they understand. What they have a harder time focusing on is that if those numbers do not inspire the conversion of lookers into buyers, or convert their brief message into a lasting one, most of the value is lost.

With any marketing message, there is a right group and a wrong group to deliver it to. It is easy to assume that if somebody performs a given search, they are the right audience for you. This is not always as simple as it seems, and often leads to spending a lot of time and money learning hard lessons. Taking a stronger approach to researching your market reminds me of something my father often advised, which is to “measure twice and cut once.”

Focusing on delivering the right message and presenting that message to the right people leads to higher conversion rates. The research to affect this result is in the top two most important roles of a search engine optimizer, second to getting out of bed.

Getting the research right is what tells us how to reach the right audience and what they will respond to favorably. It gives us the information we need to convert website visitors from lookers into buyers. Secondarily, it tells us how to bring more website traffic based on what people are searching for. Yes, bringing the people is secondary to knowing what they will want once they get there. Why should this concept be so difficult for smart people to grasp? Perhaps it is because they are blindsided by a lot of technical talk and SEO lies.

Educating a client on the importance of increasing conversion by producing a better message based on proper research may sound like an excuse to overlook the traffic numbers, right? This is not the case. More traffic is relatively simple to achieve, when you are actually providing high value based on good research.

The fascination with big numbers has created a culture of promoting valueless junk on the Internet aimed only at bloated traffic numbers. As the importance of traffic volume over traffic value grew roots early, many businesses overlooked doing the things that actually produce revenue. This misjudgment has lead many companies to underestimate the value of the Internet for their business growth. They may have hired SEO services which produced a huge volume of traffic, but then when it did not convert to revenue for the company, they lost faith. More often, they find that the SEO either did not really understand their role, or did not make a stand against the client’s preconceptions of the SEO being just a tech job. It is easy to see how these things could make a company stop trying.

Improving SEO Conversion Means Great Marketing

What can you do to convert more website traffic from lookers into buyers? This is an old question that every good marketer faces. The best answer is usually in finding the right audience. It is always easier to sell a product or service if you are selling to the right audience.

It is commonly accepted that good search engine optimizers who have done their research will know how to get more links by providing useful and compelling content. This will create a lot of website traffic, but that does not always mean the money train is coming down the track. If they are trying to sell tractor tires to race car drivers, they may gain a lot of website traffic, but they will probably have a hard time selling tires.

Good SEO also know, which I suspect a lot of people do not realize about the business function of SEO, is that they must produce reasons for those website visitors to take action and convert into something valuable to the website owner. This may mean a sale, a sales lead, a subscriber, or whatever it is that provides value and purpose to the effort. The first step is knowing who those visitors are and what will compel them to take action. The common tragedy is to get the traffic and then try to figure out why people are not responding.

Traffic quality is an area where it seems that many SEO (the good ones) would like to concentrate on more, but they get their hands tied by the client. The client often looks to the SEO primarily for the purpose of driving more traffic, but then neglect the value an experienced SEO has as a marketer and not just as a part of a tech field. This can create a case where conversion is viewed as secondary to a primary goal of traffic, which is totally backward and often a fast track to failure.

What do you think?

Photo credit to landofnodstudios via Flickr

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How SEO and Social Media Are Like Sex Drugs and Nigerian Scams

Achieve Stronger More Enjoyable Campaigns

The majority of the world’s population do not need sex drugs. Likewise, the majority of the world’s population do not need SEO and social media marketing. If you try to convince a spammer of this, their ears turn off. They just don’t get it, because they know that one in “X” squillion people who receive their message will respond.

It is easy to compare the propagation of false and misleading information about SEO and social media marketing to the false and misleading spam of sex drugs and Nigerian banking scams. It is also easy to compare the changes of social media’s growing spam to the way email turned spammy. A huge problem I see is that social media propagates the spam of social media. When SEO and social media is flooded with deception, it devalues the industry and creates much skepticism of these useful services.

I suppose I should define what it is that I am comparing to sexual aids and Nigerian bank scams. In case you have not seen the same kind of spam I see every day, I will just give you a quick note on each of these “sex drugs” and “Nigerian scams” of modern day.

SEO is search engine optimization, and it deals with creating higher ranking in search engine results, increasing website conversion, data analysis, and much more. Most of the world’s educated population do not have any idea what SEO means, or what it involves. This fact opens the floodgates for abuse and fraud by “SEO experts” who will stop at nothing to get your money and provide disastrous results in return. There are a lot of crooks out there actively selling SEO with a pitch consisting largely of “You need meta tags on your website to improve your listings in search engines.” Of course, that is a lie, and I can prove it, but I guess lies are easier than the truth for some people.

Social Media Marketing means marketing. Most of us realize that Twitter is not just for spouting off about what you had for lunch, and that Facebook is not just for talking about your kids, your spouse, or how drunk that dude got at the party last night. They are also not just for making more “friends” to pitch your goods to. Against popular adoption of the term, social media marketing does not mean spewing your latest specials and acting like a used car dealer. It means respectful, targeted, creative marketing and other customer communications that can withstand the scrutiny of others and provide sustainable value to a brand.

SEO and Social Media Are Like Futuristic Sex Drugs

The sex drug market took off like a rocket and ridiculous numbers of (low-life, sleazy, bottom-feeding, law-breaking, unethical) people wanted a piece of that market. It was presented as a fast way to get rich, and for a relatively tiny few, it came true. People like sex, and they like money, so this seemed like a perfect plan to get rich. You have probably been a victim of this dreadful pandemic.

If nobody has ever hit you up with their sex drug specials, you are an exception, and I will kiss your ring and address you as my Supreme Leader!

Perhaps the biggest craze to ever hit the Internet is the lure of easy money, and there are squillions of people who will insist that easy money is out there for the taking if you just sign up for their “plan” and give them a credit card number. Many will even tell you that they can make anybody rich with little effort and in just a few hours per day. SEO and social media are the obvious vehicles of choice for carrying out these get rich quick plans, and so they have become extremely popular. The glimmer of hope to have more tomorrow than they have today is just enough to create a spark in people that sets off an explosion.

I have to question the course of seo and social media marketing over time. Of course, it is my job, so it matters to me. It should really matter to a lot of the “innocent” people out there, too. I realize that most people have not been around the Internet or as utterly consumed by it for as long as I have, so the question may seem a bit innocuous to some. A lot of things seem pretty harmless until they get as annoying as a swarm of mosquitoes or actually reach out and cause you direct harm.

I have a lot of questions about the direction of this Internet space we all love. A concern that regularly comes to mind is how it seems that social media is moving the way of email. I remember when email was simple, and required relatively minor adjustments for email spam. Of course, that did not last long. As the use of email spread wide and fast, a lot of sleazy people found ways to make it far less productive, and eventually very costly to consumers. Once the sex drugs reached the market, email hit a really rough spot that it has still never been able to fully overcome. Now it is estimated that over 97 percent of email is spam. The overall percentage of unwanted business social media communication is likely even higher, as the world has been introduced to the “everybody is a marketer” craze and more people are dying to get their hands on all of that easy money available on the Internet.

The truth sucks for a lot of people, but I like to share it anyway. There are millions of people trying to market millions of products, while only a small percentile will take the care to be successful at it, or develop the required marketing talent. There is often no way to prove this to somebody other than to just give them time and watch them give up and fail. Tragically, this demographic are often lured back in when along comes another “plan”, another great “deal” that will make them successful … but this time it is different, and it is a “sure bet”.

I certainly love to dream big, and I never want to squash anybody’s dream. Instead, I just wish for them to have more dedication and better planning for their dreams than to assume it is as simple as what many people will claim.

The allure of easy money is strong, and because of this, it is easy to prey on people’s emotions by offering them an easier solution. That strong demand for a perfect answer to making more money has driven the need for SEO and social media marketing. In reality, SEO and social media are useful marketing tools, but unfortunately the candy brought in a lot of cockroaches.

The majority of the unwanted and spammy social media communication that I witness are attempts to either sell SEO and social media marketing services, or to recruit others to do the same spammy things with an expectation of earning a profit. With an eye on the future, does this really seem like a good plan for success? Sure, we can say that it will die out as more people figure out that it is largely fraudulent, but then, I seem to still find a lot of sex drug offerings in my email every day (thousands per day).

Is Social Media Going The Way of Email?

Social media has revealed and honed some brilliant creative marketers, and the gap between good and mediocre is constantly widening. Pareto’s principle of 80/20 will always apply to marketing, just as it does in any industry. The tragedy is that there is a constant spread of misinformation that SEO and social media marketing creates easy profit and that anybody can do it just as well as the next. I believe that as long as there are still people falling prey to these lies, the integrity of the industry will largely be shrouded in mystery and doubt.

What are your thoughts? Are you fooled by the “easy money” hype of today’s social media?

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Automotive Marketing Example: Selling Cars Online is More Than Cars and Dealers

Car dealers (the whole automotive marketing industry for that matter) are just an example I will use, but this is about a lot more than the automotive industry and car dealers. It applies to the automotive market, anecdotally, but this is mostly about overlooking the reasons people would want to buy from you, and being blind to what people are really looking for.

Without understanding people’s motivations and expectations, it is nearly impossible to deliver what they want. In the cases where you are able to reach the market and get the sale, it is usually only a small slice of the pie, and it is more blind luck than marketing talent. It is like driving a car with your eyes closed … you may not crash the first time, but it is just a matter of time.

Picture the car dealer for a moment. Maybe you know one who is doing things different and better than the rest, but it is pretty typical that they are looking for the immediate sale. They do a whole lot of advertising, but often lack a sustainable marketing strategy. Sure, if you throw out enough ads for the lowest priced cars, you will make a few sales (at the lowest possible profit), but sustainability suffers. The dealership marketing suffers in multiple ways, and here are just a few to consider:

The profit really stinks, because you are spending a lot of time and/or money to reach people based largely on their motivation to get the most for the least amount of money. Price is a motivator, but certainly the least profitable motivator.
Advertising without a people-focused sustainable marketing strategy diminishes the sustainability of referral business which comes with brand-loyalty.
Outbound marketing (marketing without ears) lacks the sustainability that comes with people having a reason and willingness to talk to you about your brand. It is important to realize that only a small number of brand-loyal customers and angry customers will tell you what they really think. When that limited information is what you use to make your marketing decisions, it is easy to make future mistakes.

I have criticized the automobile industry for their marketing shortsightedness, because it is a pretty easy target, and one that many of us can relate to. As an industry, they largely have a hard time looking beyond the next 30, 60, and 90 day cycles of their business. You can read more about my thoughts on that in my article titled “Topeka Kansas Car Dealer Social Media Marketing Case Study” which talked about car marketing and their self-centered approach.

Auto dealers’ urgency for more business stunts their vision, and diminishes their recognition of why people really buy cars. This is a challenge common to many industries. As I described in a recent article titled “7 Reasons That Your Marketing Sucks“, people buy cars for reasons such as freedom to roam, fun road trips, family safety, peace of mind, personal status, comfort, pride, dealership reputation, brand reputation, and other things. Buyers are not usually brand-loyal because of the screaming idiot in your commercials, and things like inflatable gorillas and guys in bad suits are tactics of the past. Today’s version of the loud mouth in the bad suit is to tweet and facebook your latest specials and hope it lands in the right place.

Automotive Marketing Goes Internet

These days, it seems that a lot of industries tend to mock the old-school marketing tactics of the pre-Internet automotive industry. Perhaps the flashy, screaming, “in-your-face” style of advertising was just all they knew, so they mocked it in hopes that it would work. It led to a significant amount of noise, but noise at a higher volume is still just noise.

While all of those “car dealer types” are out there making noise, it is a good time to move forward and market differently, using foresight, and giving people something compelling. The contrast between the good and the pathetic is stronger than ever, and for those who address the customer, the benefits are great. You know, the kind of marketing that addresses the things people want. The kind of marketing that doesn’t turn them off and allows them to feel comfortable enough to tell you why they are or are not buying from you. This is the kind of marketing that shows customers that you are listening.

On today’s “scan-and-click” busy Internet, you will have a lot less time to reach your market with your goods or services. Maybe you will blame “the Internet”, but let’s face it, if you are blaming the Internet; you are looking at this all wrong. The Internet affords companies amazing opportunities to reach their market and to create brand-awareness and loyalty, but it will require looking at things from a different perspective than it used to. It requires looking at things from the customer’s standpoint and discovering what it is that truly motivates them. This means you must listen to them.

Successful marketing today means that you have defined and delivered what the consumer wants. That means being able to look at yourself through their eyes and without your preconceptions and greed. You can have your greed back later, but you have to put it on the shelf at least long enough to make good marketing decisions.

Marketing Cars is Not Just About Cars and Car Dealers!

I use the automobile industry as a harsh example of short-sightedness and self-centered thinking, because many of us can relate to that. Now, regardless of your industry, just imagine what I said about some of the reasons people buy a car. Use it as an exercise and try to imagine how you would reach the people who may be in the market. Maybe their car keeps breaking down. Maybe they have a class reunion coming up and want to look good. Maybe they are not looking at all, but if they connect with somebody they like and that person happens to work in the industry, they may feel more loyal to a particular brand.

There are so many reasons for people to buy what you offer, but if you are trying to market to the wrong ones, at the wrong time, and with a message that is all about you and mostly addresses your interests, most of it will fall on deaf ears.

Perhaps instead of the same old price-boasting and deal-pimping, a look from the consumer’s standpoint is in order. How will you address them on their terms and based on their desires? How will you find what motivates them and makes your brand more interesting? If you want to sell more cars (or anything else) try thinking more like the buyer.

These are just a few of my thoughts. What are yours? I’m listening.

Photo Credit to Rmhermen via Wikipedia

Are You Ready to Market Like Einstein?

Marketing is what makes things sell, and it is what makes businesses profitable. Without marketing, whether word of mouth, television, radio, print, Internet, or some other medium, even the best companies with the best products will fail. Somebody has to make buyers aware of an offering, and do so in a desirable way, before it will sell. That is marketing in a nutshell.

Great marketing takes us by the nose and leads us to a brand. The best marketing makes us think. Sometimes it makes us laugh, and sometimes it makes us cry, but it always makes us think. When it makes us think enough, it makes us talk about it. It enters our conversations around the water cooler, at little league games, sitting at a bar among friends, and in boardrooms. When marketing is done at optimum levels, it permeates our conscious and our subconscious. That is the kind of marketing that makes the difference between Fortune 500 companies and all the others who came and left. It is also the kind of marketing that makes the difference between your little company and the little bigger company you want it to be. It only makes sense for you to want to know how to market better.

Marketing is not just about putting your words out to a bunch of people. Marketing also means bridging the divide between the way a producer thinks and the way their consumers think. It is not something that everybody is built for, but it is something they can practice and become better at. A lot of people can perform the more menial tasks associated with marketing, and millions of them can clearly send a tweet, update their Facebook, spam LinkedIn, or write a blog. Only a relatively few will make the necessary sacrifices of planning, learning, and stepping outside of themselves enough to do something truly brilliant that attracts people to them. It is precisely why marketing is not, and will never be a commodity.

Today’s Murnahanism: Good marketers must answer why their marketing is more expensive than others. Great marketers refuse to answer, because they don’t want the client who doesn’t already know.

Brilliant marketing comes with a cost. The cost can vary greatly, and I don’t just mean money, either. It often comes with the cost of a marketer who studies people and understands what drives them to take action. It takes somebody with a uniquely analytical mind who thinks differently than those around them. It comes with a whole lot of what I call “brain sweat”. If you are unprepared to afford these traditional costs associated with brilliant marketing, you had better be ready to sweat a lot, with your brain.

Are You Ready for Einstein-Style Brain Sweat?

If you are dedicated to your marketing, you must exercise your thinking. Einstein was a great marketer. Although it was not his vocation, in many ways he was one of the best marketers ever. After all, we have all heard of him, and he was quite effective at selling his ideas to the world. If you think it was easy, just try marketing theoretical physics and see if you can make a household name for yourself. Some of Einstein’s greatest struggles were in bridging the gap between his thinking and the conventional wisdom around him. He had to look at things from other peoples’ perspective in order to understand how to best explain his thoughts to them, and thus “sell” his ideas. The cost to Einstein was that he was criticized by many and became a bit “crazy” by some standards. Brain sweat does that to a person. It is a huge challenge to carry such divergent thoughts of both the producer and the consumer and know how to package them and sell them. In my estimation, this is the greatest challenge of marketing.

The best marketers I have ever met are all just a bit “crazy”. I think most marketers prefer the term “eccentric” over “crazy”. Trying to think like other people is tough. It was tough for Einstein to try and think like others around him enough to get his ideas through to them, and it is similarly challenging for many people trying to market their product or service. It tends to stretch a person’s imagination. It is like a rigorous brain exercise, and like any exercise, it makes you stronger with repetition.

I have often been called “eccentric”, but if you ask me, I am crazier than a shithouse squirrel (I wanted to say “shithouse rat” but my editor asked me to change it). I push myself just a little closer to insanity every time I try to understand people and how to most effectively market something to them. It is my job, and I quite enjoy it. They say there is a fine line between higher thinking and insanity. Personally, I try my best to straddle that line with one foot on either side. It beats being bored. It does not mean that I am calling myself smarter than others, it just means that I use what brain I have, and I push it to an uncomfortable limit where the competition is not willing or able to go. That is often what it takes to create the best marketing.

Einstein kept pushing forward even when other scientists were not on his side. He knew his product, and he persevered against the odds. Einstein was fortunate to have much assistance to see him through his research, but most businesses (and most other theoretical physicists) are not so fortunate. Albert Einstein’s marketing was often just good enough to receive his next round of funding and to continue his work. Most businesses only have one shot to get it right, and to achieve enough market penetration to sustain them through to the next higher level.

Are You Feeling Brilliant Yet?

The process of learning how to produce great marketing is long and hard. It would be great if I could just hand you a “brilliant switch” that you could turn on and instantly start thinking like your customers. I don’t have a learning course to sell, and although I say that I am for hire, I say “no” to the vast majority of the people who try to hire my services (largely because I am not cheap). What I can offer is a pretty sizable blog archive of marketing articles that may help jump start your thinking about your customers and how to address the challenges of marketing what you offer. I hope that it will help you.

If you are not ready to think more like your customers and dedicate more of your mind to your marketing, it is best to leave it to the people who do it for a living. Otherwise, you risk regurgitating the same old junk that has become so commonplace on the Internet. It does not work the way many people may lead you to believe, and it comes at a much higher risk of failure.

Grammatical Reasons They’re Taking Their Business Over There

There are spelling and grammar errors that can make you look astonishingly lazy, and then there are spelling and grammar errors which simply make you appear stupid. The lazy errors happen to the best of us. I have never read a book that did not have an error, somewhere, even after many rounds of professional editing. Hekc, you may even find an error here on my blog.

I cannot expect people to be perfect, but what I can do is have a whole lot of fun at their expense. Perhaps you do not feel strongly about these failures of education, but do you ever read something which indicates that you are shopping in the wrong place?

I encounter horrible spelling and grammar every day, and I often wonder how these perpetrators of illiteracy keep up their fight to grow a business. Below are some brain-failures I hope to one day see eradicated.

Your Prolly May Hate Me For This

I think the first time I saw “prolly” used in somebody’s marketing material, I wondered what other kind of seafood they had. A “prolly” is the deep sea cousin of a prawn, right? Otherwise, I am at a loss to understand how anybody could slaughter a word so horribly.

I later learned that they were probably referring to the probability of business failure for being so damn lazy. “Prolly” is not a word, but if it ever becomes a word, I imagine that it will probably be used to describe a deep sea crustacean.

You’re Not Using Your Head

“You’re” is a contraction that means “you are” and “your” is a second-person pronoun meaning something belonging to the subject, you. “Ur” is deep sea text messaging code that the prolly kids use to keep grown-ups from understanding what the heck they are saying.

If you try telling me “your going to love our stuff” you had better be giving it away, because I am not buying it. My what is going to love your stuff? My wife, my kids, my libido? If you say “your going to love our stuff” you need to add something to help me understand you better. Perhaps you meant “your prolly is going to love our stuff!”

If you use “ur”, I may boil you in a seafood gumbo. There is not even a “dumb camp” for people so dumb to try and pass off “u” or “ur” as words. That is, unless you’re a 14 year old prolly girl and want to disarm the boys by downplaying your intelligence.

The words “you’re” and “your” are not even close to the same thing, and they are pronounced differently as well. Maybe understanding the pronunciation will help you to remember the correct usage. “You’re” begins with the sound of the word “you” and since it is a contraction, it slurs in the word “are”. Try it out and begin with “you” and add “are” and keep slurring them together faster until it sounds right.

The pronunciation of “your” rhymes with lore, more, store, and whore. So if you think about using the word “your” try using it as follows: “Your store is creating more lore.” Now remember that if you are talking about somebody’s whore, you can use the word “your”, because it is something they posses. It is their whore, and it shows possession. On the other hand, if you say “You’re whore”, you just called them a whore, because you said “you are whore”. That makes it more personal and is more likely to start a fight than simply talking about the whore they possess. You might just as well talk bad about their prolly while you are tossing around the insults.

One more thing: “Youre” is another prolly word. Please refrain from using it unless you are deep in the ocean and related to prawns.

They’re Going to Take Their Money Over There

If you don’t get this one by the time I am done, you should be sent to swim with the prolly. Again with the damn contractions. I largely avoid contractions, in speech and in writing, but they are widely accepted in the twisted version of the Queen’s English that is used in my country.

“They’re” means “they are”, “their” means that they possess it, and “there” means somewhere else or the existence of something. Here is some practice for you to consider: There is a good chance they’re going to take their money over there if you screw these up. Now read this sentence again and think really hard.

There is a good chance they’re going to take their money over there if you screw these up.

“Their” is a personal pronoun. If you remember that lesson about “your whore”, just flip that around and now you are talking about their whore. If you get this wrong they’re probably going to take their money somewhere else … over there.

Your Till Will Ring Less ‘Til You Stop Abusing This

Note that I have edited this for clarification after receiving a comment (below) assuming I had a problem with using “till”, which is not the case. The problem is in trying to make a contraction of “until”. Think for just a moment about the word “until”. Until is just five letters long, but I see a lot of people who try to shorten it. If you want to shorten “until” consider how you may do so with the least absurdity. Would you add another letter to the word that did not previously exist and say “‘till“. That seems kind of useless, considering that you just removed one letter and added another letter plus one more character. In this case, maybe you mean the word till. Otherwise, “until” is still five characters long in this iteration ( ‘-t-i-l-l ), but it makes you look five times as stupid! I suppose you can get a down home feel by using “’til“, which would be the correct usage if there were an acceptable contracted version of until. On closer inspection you may notice that it is still only one character shorter.

A “till” is a place where money is stored, or something you do to the field before you plant corn to make your whiskey. Until you understand that “until” only has one letter “L”, and that till is not a contracted version of until, you may sound like you are drinking from a still. At least you will sound like a hillbilly for trying to make a contraction of the word until, in case that is what you are after.

The Alot Eats Prolly

I find a lot of people who like the “Alot”, but they abuse him. The Alot is a unique creature, and should not be taken for granted. I do not have a lot better way to describe the Alot than to introduce you to the creature in a blog article titled “The Alot is Better Than You at Everything“. Here is a snippet for you:

The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people’s grammar. It kind of looks like a cross between a bear, a yak and a pug, and it has provided hours of entertainment for me in a situation where I’d normally be left feeling angry and disillusioned with the world.

For example, when I read the sentence “I care about this alot,” this is what I imagine:
(see Hyperbole and a Half)

I have just one more thing to mention on the subject. Get your “‘s” (apostrophe s) and “s'” (apostrophe s’) right. If it needs an apostrophe or does not, you should learn the difference and also the correct placement. Otherwise, don’t blame me if your customer rides their alot over there to another store to buy their prolly.

What Makes You Want to Rant?

I could go on with rants about bad grammar until I am as blue as a prolly. What makes you want to rant? Perhaps it is people who correct your grammar? 😉