Before we get down to business, I wanted to note that I’ve updated the Glossary with some new terms I thought might be helpful. Click to read:
But on to other things. I read another great blog post from a few months back about “the changing face of search engine optimization.” It’s called, “The Face of SEO is Changing Are You?” and, bad grammar aside, it’s a good read.
I took the time to create a glossary for this page – it occurred to me that it can get pretty easy to get lost in the jargon that gets thrown around in these types of posts and sites. So check it out, and if you find yourself wondering what a widget is you can find out quickly and in plain English!
Right off the bat, if you’re unfamiliar with them, you should check out:
Let’s hear it for learning!
Our paths to the outside world are many.
I just read a great post on Dealer Refresh about “Your Future Manager.” Here’s a quick excerpt:
Your future manager is a multi-tasking fiend. She or he will embrace every form of social media and communicate with staff by email or instant messenger. Technology use will be first and foremost on his or her mind, with an understanding that it doesn’t always work perfectly, but incorporating technology into processes is crucial. They will demand it!
It goes on to discuss how the younger generation (about age 30 and younger) has been bred into a multimedia cauldron – you may remember how “multimedia” was such a buzzword in the 90’s. Now it’s just a fact of life. Those of us from the “Connectedness Generation” are a breed apart from the past… the information age has infected us to a much greater degree.
Alex Snyder, the author of the article, describes his siblings and cousins and how all of them live lives wired (and now wireless) in so many different ways. It’s an experience that matches my own – as I type, I’m listening to the podcast of last night’s episode of Pardon the Interruption, keeping an eye on my Twitter and Facebook feeds on TweetDeck, and downloading last week’s episode of Lost, which I missed because it conflicts with two other shows I record on my DVR – Lie to Me and Mythbusters.
By my count, there are nine items in my house that are connected to the Internet, and that’s just for me – the dog is only seven months old and hasn’t figured out the Internet yet. And the truth is, to a large degree, Alex Snyder is exactly right. We should be looking for people with a talent and comfort level that makes them able to learn and adapt to new technologies and technological habits as they emerge.
No matter the industry, online reviews matter.
It’s one of the axioms of branding that the best kind of advertising is word-of-mouth advertising. One person telling another about their experience, positive or negative, is more powerful that fifty TV commercials. The problem has always been, “How do we generate word-of-mouth advertising?”
Before the Internet and “Web 2.0,” this was a very difficult thing to do, requiring grassroots events, surveys, testimonials and other expensive and difficult-to-execute programs. Now, in the age of connectedness, it’s not at all. Because of the proliferation of online review sites, and the way Google and other search engines have started aggregating; these reviews from all over the web, word of mouth is simply a part of your online presence, whether or not you sought it out.
In all my work with car dealers, it’s been rare that I’ve ever been able to give blanket, one-size-fits-all advice on any particular subject. There are so many different types of dealerships and so many different markets that what works in one may not work in another because of a variety of different factors.
Naturally, this is true for the rest of the universe of products and services. Cars and couches may have very little in common, but do you know what is common about them? If someone is considering buying them, they are probably going to search for them online, either to shop or to find a retail outlet to visit to do their shopping. Likewise business cards, bed linens, video game consoles, and almost everything else. We don’t even think about all the items we research on the Internet before we buy them anymore, but there’s a reason that “google” has become a verb.
I’ll write some about how to use Twitter effectively later, but here’s an interesting primer from The New York Times on the basics of Twitter. Check it out!
All You Need to Know to Twitter
"Billions and billions" of websites.
There are a lot of websites out there. Like stars on a cloudless night, there are so many. So many you may have flashbacks to Walter Cronkite narrating your trip through Spaceship Earth. The truth is, there are too many to really know anything about most of them.
So what do search engines do? They use robots! Robots that manually call up every website on the Internet and “read” it. These “web spiders,” as they’re called, pick out items to categorize and classify websites in order to allow search engines to give you the results you want. I google “Spaceship Earth,” and Google finds all the websites and images out there that fit that set of keywords. The question we’re going to answer here is, “What are the basic items that search engines use to categorize your website?” Read the rest of this entry »
There isn’t one. There is no single technique or strategy that will bring you all the success you want. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
Well, to be fair, I’m selling something too. I sell marketing and search engine optimization services to companies far and wide. But I won’t promise you a one-stop, be-all end-all solution to your Internet marketing problems. What I will do is put you on the path to success by giving you a foundation of knowledge and several SEO techniques that will prepare your business to go out into the digital world confidently.
So what about those magic bullets? How do I avoid getting sold one?
To quote a bad movie adaptation of a good book, “A beginning is a very delicate time.“
No kidding. But here we are – poised to begin exploring this new world. We could start with a dissertation on why I love the Internet, but, really, no one wants or needs that. The Internet is all things to all people, and in the end, that’s all that needs to be said. What we need to concern ourselves with is connectedness.
What we have to learn, in order to make the Internet work for us, is how to harness that connectedness, because if we don’t, we’re either going to get burned, or we’re going to get left behind.
So what does “connectedness” mean, and why is such an awkward word so important?
“Connectedness” means that the traditional boundaries that we have used to delineate different types of behavior and experience are eroding. It means that, to paraphrase a song, “the Earth is moving under our feet.” It’s an exciting new world, filled with new ways to talk to people. New ways to learn about the world. And of course, new ways to sell to people. What companies need to learn is that in a world where people are connected to information and each other in an exponentially growing number of ways, you cannot rely on old methods to reach them.
This is a website about exploring the things that are necessary to win those battles for attention that are at the heart of Internet marketing and the whole “Web 2.0″ phenomenon.
