SEO, SEM, RSS, oh my!
Newbies just like you flinch when they see these scary acronyms. Sure you can read about what they are on Wikipedia, but what can they do for your business?
Lucky for you, VQC just built a Squidoo page about online business basics. I explain all the buzzwords and how they make your business profitable online.
You’ll find a ton of info there already. And if you have any other questions or suggestions about techie stuff, just email me.
If you like our Squidoo lens, rate it well! I’ll return the favor if you have one.
* 999,996 more entries coming soon. 
I got to thinking, what has been the most valuable thing I got from my internships and first few jobs?
For me, it wasn’t the experience, a line on my résumé, or even the list of contacts I met.
The most important thing I learned from my first couple jobs is:
The best way to work.
It took me four years of college to figure out the most efficient way for me to write a paper (write for an hour, do something else, write for another hour). It’s taken me nearly as long to recognize my best working environment. It’s different for everyone:
- Are you happiest alone at your desk, plugging away at a task unbothered by others?
- Or maybe you like sitting calmly in a meeting, bouncing ideas off of your teammates?
- Maybe the highlight of your week being cooped up with 4 or 5 coworkers, in a room, with a deadline, pressed for time to come up with a complicated strategy for a picky client.
Whatever it is, figure it out and stick with it.
For me it comes as a mixture of a couple things. My best thinking comes in the planning stage with a deadline and a team around me. When it comes to actually sitting down and doing the work, as long as I have my headphones on and Pandora blasting I can work just about anywhere.
What’s the best way you work?
My friend Chris plays football for Monmouth University in New Jersey. I planned to attend his last game and went to the Monmouth Hawks Football website to find the schedule. The left-hand side menu bar has links like:
- Roster
- Hall of Fame
- Marketing
Under the marketing tab there’s information about “Promotional Events,” “Hawks in the Community,” and the student-generated “Shadow Nation” fan club.
Now I know most organizations (including VQC) do promotional events, most of which are geared to help the community in some way. But should they be marketed as marketing?
Granted,
- Their purpose IS marketing
- The funding comes from the marketing budget
- Marketing professionals probably oversee them.
But actually referring to the programs as marketing to the public?
It seems insincere. Marketing isn’t supposed to look like marketing. When it is, it comes across as disingenuous.
Marketing works best when called something else. Every action a business takes has the accepted benefit plus an ulterior motive, like
- Sales calls
- Motive: add an account
- Marketing: “Match your needs to our expertise”
- Charity work
- Motive: get press
- Marketing: “Improve society”
- Infomercial ads:
- Motive: get you to buy cheap trinkets
- Marketing: “SOLVE ALL YOUR PROBLEMS BY CALLING NOW!“
These exercises usually work because they massage people’s sensibilities. People like being catered to, appreciate when a business helps to improve society and want to do basic tasks more easily.
But when the groups offering these services come out and say “we’re doing this to market to you,” it breaks the illusion.
Imagine if a sales rep called and said, “Your name is on my list and I’d like to make some money off of you.” Or a company at a benefit had a sign saying “LOCAL NEWS! Interview us.” Or an infomercial: “We’ll tell you every possible way this thing can help you, but it’ll break in three months.”
Is any of your customer communication breaking the illusion?
Last week Rohit Bhargava opened up a contest to bloggers to promote his book launch. Anyone who blogs (for their business or otherwise) was asked to submit a list of five questions about the book or personality online. Rohit would personally answer the questions and email the responses for publication.
It struck me as a great way to gain excitement for a book launch so I put in some questions about being an author in the internet age. Here are the responses:
My questions will focus on translating personality onto the internet, and also publishing your book:
* What have you found to be the most successful method of communicating your personality over the internet?
By far, the best method for me personally has been having a blog. It lets me share my ideas with other interested people, connect with marketers around the world that I would never have otherwise had the chance to do, and also have a platform for my personal brand online. A close second is having my social media bio page - which you can check out at www.aboutrohit.com.
* What’s one communication tool you had high hopes for but, after implementing it, were disappointed?
Interesting question. I’m not sure how I’d answer this, except to say that I join a lot of social networks and I am always interested in whether they become one that I use consistently or not. I would say sometimes my greatest disappointment is in not having the time to make the best use of a site that I have joined. I spend a lot of time on Facebook because there are people there. I feel like I could do a lot more with Squidoo, for example, but I just run out of time.
* How do you gauge “success” on your blog?
Success for me comes from several factors. One is conversation through comments or people emailing me to let me know they found some of my content useful. I love to see links coming to my blog from untrackable email related referrral URLs, because that means someone sent a link to one of my posts around by email. I also gauge success by getting follow up invitations to speaking events, invitations to review products and services or friend requests for social networks. In fact, I’d gauge this interview a success if I get a chance to tell people to connect to me on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (my top three communities) and it actually works!
* How much did your personal brand and online following affect the decision by the publisher to endorse your book?
I take it you mean how was my personal brand affected by signing on with a publisher? I don’t think there has been that big of an impact yet, because the book is only coming out today. I expect I might get some benefit from this now that the book is out - or at least I hope I do.
* Based on your experiences publishing online material and your book, where do you see hardcopy print media heading?
I think there will still be a place for hardcopy print media for a very long time. There is still no experience that can quite compare to holding a book in your hands … especially your own!