Having Dessert With Seth Godin

Okay so I didn’t actually have dessert with him…  But I did just finish his book Meatball Sundae.

I finished Meatball Sundae two days ago and I am still trying to digest everything.  (Bad pun intended.)  In his book Godin outlines 14 trends that as marketers and small business owners, we need to pay attention to.

I think the biggest “Aha!” moment for me while reading this book occurred within the first 10 pages.  It came with these realizations.  Whether they know it or not, when a company builds a factory, they have just made a marketing decision.  When they hire a salesforce or lease space for the outlet store, they have made a marketing decision. By doing those things first they have determined how their products will need to be marketed in order to make the foundation of their business work.  If you have factories and outlet stores you have to sell massive amounts of product to support them.  In order to sell massive amounts of product they will need to mass market, ie TV, radio, etc.  Their marketing was decided by the way they set their business up.

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Is Your Website Self-Service or Self-Serving?

Most Entrepreneurs are well aware of the importance of having a website. If you wish to have any sort of online presence, you need a place for your customers to look you up, learn what it is you offer and take some sort of action. But is your website serving your customer or your own ego?

In Gerry McGovern’s recent post, Web professional: Are you ready to serve?, he nails it right on the head. In short, Gerry explains that a website is a self-service tool. Self-service is made of two words, “self” and “service”. If the customer is the “self”, who is the “service”? It is the organization, or more precisely, those responsible for managing the website.

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Small Business Wisdom Wednesday

A turkey was chatting with a bull…

“I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree”, sighed the turkey, “but I haven’t got the energy.”

“Well, why don’t you nibble on some of my droppings?”, replied the bull. “They’re packed with nutrients.”

The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, and found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree.  The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch.  Finally after the third day, the turkey was proudly perched at the top.  He was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot him out of the tree.

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SEO Your Resource Box

Assuming you have given your readers original and quality content, the resource box of your article will give you the opportunity to generate leads, promote your brand, and start to develop trust with your readers. Your resource box also allows you the opportunity to get some link love back to your site for your keywords.

The top article directories will allow you to use html in your resource box. This means that you can hyperlink your keywords and everywhere your article, and hence your resource box with the hyperlinked keywords, are posted there is a keyword that links directly to your site. If you have the chance to do this, by all means take advantage of it. It is very easy to do and doesn’t require extensive knowledge of html.

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Free Article Marketing E-Course

Just a quick note…

Ezinearticles.com is offering a free 12 part series on article marketing.  This is great opportunity to freshen up your article marketing skills or get started on building some skills from scratch.  I have always found EzineArticles to be a source of quality information and insight.  I have already signed up myself. 

Here’s the link: EzineArticles 12 Part Training Series 

I Have Been A Victim Of Customer Assault

As soon as we entered the store she had us locked in her sights.  

“Hi, Ladies.  Have you been here before?  Are you looking for anything specific?”

“Yes, we’ve been here.  We just want to look around.”

“Are you interested in our Credit Card Disguised As A College Savings Plan?”, she asked thrusting the flier towards us.

As we involuntarily stumbled backwards my sister politely explained, “No.  And every time I come here you offer me that and I am really not interested.”

A flicker of comprehension flashed across the salesgirl’s eyes.  ’Ah, they have been here before and have already told me they don’t want any of my crap…  Pay no mind.  Keep going!’  “Well let me just tell you how the store is set up…”

We eventually break free and begin to navigate the store.  As we shop the salesgirl puts ‘just a couple of things’ in the dressing room that my sister might want to try on.  A couple of things being 5 pairs of pants, 2 of the ugliest shirts I’ve ever seen, and 5 bras.  Throughout our shopping she made sure we were ‘finding everything okay’ at least 5 times.

We finally make our way to the register.  We’ve been here before.  The salesgirl knows that we have been here before.  We told her.  We have also told her that we are not interested in her crap.  Let’s see what happens…

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Protect Your Business by Removing Pages from Google

Sometimes webmasters make mistakes. Yes, even I admit I’ve made a mistake once (or twice) when it comes to managing our websites. But what do you do when you or your webmaster makes a mistake, the mistake is indexed by Google, but you don’t want it to be? There’s so much focus on getting into Google, what do you do if you want a certain pages removed from Google?

Some may wonder why you’d want to remove pages from Google? Well, like I said, mistakes happen. Maybe you or your webmaster accidently published the social security numbers of your employees or personal information of customers. You certainly don’t want this type of information to be made available if someone searched Google for right combination of keywords. These mistakes can be quite costly if not dealt with quickly.

Good news is that one of the features built into Google’s Webmaster Tools allows you to remove specific pages from their index by request. In the following video, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, covers how to best remove pages from Google’s index as well as various ways to make sure certain pages remain out of Google’s index.

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I Didn’t Get Into This Business To Be In Sales

I was having a conversation with my trainer the other day about goals.  Oddly enough, we were talking about her goals instead of mine for once.  She was saying that one of her goals was to make more money this year.  And in order to do that she said that she was going to have to sell more, meaning she was going to have to walk the floor of the gym and approach people about training.  And that is the hard part.  She can’t stand the idea of selling to people.  She didn’t become a personal trainer to be in sales.

And this is the kicker for a lot of us, isn’t it?  We start our businesses because we have a belief in our products, we think we can help people with what we have to offer, we enjoy our fields, we have an interest in making the world a better place, we want to achieve more success, we want to build something that we can leave to our children, we think we can do it better than the other guys already out there, etc, etc.  No one ever starts a business because they really want to be in sales.

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Book Review: Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble & Shel Israel

Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel was published in January of 2006.  While that is a short 2 years ago in people time, it is an eternity in Internet time.  I am a little behind in reading this book and I was concerned that because things change so rapidly in technology and on the Internet that this book would no longer be relevant.  I am happy to say that it was still extremely relevant for people that want to gain a better understanding of how blogging has changed the way business communicate with consumers. 

I am not a Fortune 10 executive board member of a major car company.  I do not own a NBA team.  I do not author a Top 10 Technorati Blog.  When I click ‘Publish’ and my favorable review of this book goes out into cyberspace, sales of Naked Conversations are not going to soar through the roof.  What I am is a small business owner.  When I read a book, a blog, or an article, I am constantly asking myself, is this relevant to me?  How can I use this information for my small business?  Do I have to be a large corporation to take advantage of this advice?  So when reading this book I was very happy to see examples of how small businesses had used blogging to achieve great things - increase sales, increase brand awareness, avert crises, open a dialogue with their customers, improve their products, and more.  Scoble and Israel use real life examples to show you how to do it right and how to do it wrong -  examples of unbelievable blogging successes as well horrible blogging failures.

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Get Someone Else To Write Your Newsletters For Free

Some of the content marketing that we do includes the use of newsletters.  We have one geared toward small businesses and one for real estate agents.  Both groups are in our target markets for our virtual telecommunications services.  Newsletters are a good way of getting your message in front of people for a number of reasons.  Here are 6 of them:
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Blogging Success: Learn From The Pros

I am always on the look out for helpful tips and insights on how to become better at what I do.  It doesn’t matter if it is something I have been doing for long time and I feel like ‘I get it’ or whether it is something I am just starting to undertake.  There is always someone out there that knows more, or just different things, than you.

Today I came across 2 great blog posts that I think everyone who is blogging, or is thinking about starting a blog, should read.  In these you have tips on the vital mix of content and design for a successful blog.

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The Secret to Marketing Your Small Business Online

There’s a secret to marketing your small business online. Some companies get it, but most do not.

Marketing on the Internet is relatively cheap and easy, especially when compared to offline marketing. Consider the fact that today a small business can go online and start marketing their product or service to just about anyone, anywhere in the world in less time that it takes to get traditional business cards printed and in some cases, for about the same amount of money. This quick and inexpensive means to reach customers offers tremendous opportunity for many small business owners, but it also posses a problem. The problem being that it’s just as cheap and just as easy for the competition to market to those same customers.

The response that many small business owners take is to set out to go nationwide, international or even intergalactic in the hopes they’ll attract more customers. The problem with this approach is that the longer their reach, the harder it will be to try and grab what they want. Keyword selection gets less specific and the more common the keyword, the more competition and the harder it is to land on the first page of search results. When this happens, they often find their message getting drowned out by the thousands of other messages being served up.

So what’s the secret?

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Do You Need To Fire Your Content?

What is your web content doing?  Is it simply taking up space on the page or is it working for you?  Did you spend as much time and/or money on your website content as you did on your graphics and design?

It seems that many people feel the content on their site is something that they have to put in there to make it look like they have something to say, but they are relying on their catchy design and bold graphics to do all the work.  Design is very important in a website but so is your content.  You can think of your graphics and design as your pretty spokes-model that will help set the mood and guide your visitors while your content is the bespeckled librarian that is going to give them all the information they came looking for.  They work as a team. 

The content on your site should be doing one or more of these things.

• Making sales.
• Generating leads.
• Making tasks easier for your web visitors.
• Solving problems for readers.
• Educating.

(Did I miss anything?)

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I Won! I Won!

You are looking at the proud new owner of an iPod Shuffle!

A couple days ago I told you about a contest that I had entered that asked the authors at EzineArticles.com to write about their most successful article of 2007.  Well my entry won.  While I was not thrilled with their description of the reason they had chosen my entry, I was very happy to have won the contest.

“Her selected article wasn’t the best ideal article when compared to other contest entries, but she did meet the requirements of an ideal author having her author photo uploaded and Brandi submits original content….”  Read more…

Not exactly a glowing testimonial.  To me this reads… “The article wasn’t all that great, but she isn’t so bizarre looking that she was afraid to upload her picture and she is not a plagiarist so…”

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Can Blogging Rid The World Of Self Importance?

As I was out shopping the other day I was struck, once again, by the complete lack of common courtesy people have for each other today.  It is something that I encounter all the time and one of my biggest pet peeves. 

Would it hurt to smile and say “Hi” if we happen to make eye contact in the grocery store?  If I open the door for you a “Thanks” would be nice.  When I allow you to cross the street in front of my car, could you not slow down as you start to make a call on your cell or stop right in the middle of the street to share a joke with your girlfriend.  If you know the lane is going to merge, please don’t race to the end and then cut me off at the last possible moment.  If I turn my blinker on to change lanes, would it be asking too much for you to let me in instead of speeding up to block me out?  And please don’t make everyone behind you wait while you wait for someone to back out of a parking spot when there is an open one 10 feet away.  Count those 10 extra steps that you might have to take as your exercise for the day.

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