Tag Archives: Google

Marketing

Conference In Phoenix

Customers are Ignoring You
Customers are Ignoring You (Photo credit: ronploof)

Last week I attended the AAA Marketing/IT conference. It is an annual conference to cover ideas and trends going on in the world of marketing and information technology. This year, the conference was held outside of Phoenix near Chandler. The Wild Horse Resort held host.

The last conference was held 18 months ago in Boca Raton, Florida. The main message then was social, social, social. Twitter and Facebook  were becoming good and powerful tools by which to push marketing messages. They are new ways to reach current customers and a new audience. For technologists, the social sites can be a headache with their increase in network traffic. Nearly every workshop was related to using social, leveraging social, accessing social and using social.

Time frames on the Internet move quickly. The short 18 months between conferences have lead to the latest trend: mobile. The discussion of mobile in all its facets was the main idea of the conference, repeated over and over. Experts from Google spoke on using mobile to reach the younger customers and the importance of knowing what kind of device is being used to access your website and what time of day it is. Adaptive design is a must on your website. If customers have a bad mobile experience on your site, it is very difficult to get them back.

The use of a mobile application is another way to access the customer. It must allow the user to be flexible and use it in ways intuitive to them. Make the customer work too much on using your mobile application and they will remove it. It too needs to take location and time of day into account. It must adapt. It must keep their attention.

The age of mobile is here. Smartphone sales have outpaced desktop computers for the last few years. This year, the number of smartphones on the Internet will be greater than number of desktop computers. More and more of your customers will access your web site from mobile devices of various types: phones, tablets and phonelets. They come in different sizes and every user on them expects to use your site within the proper context of their device.

Get mobilized or get left behind.

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Commentary

It is time for 2013…More sharing…More Awakening…

Happy New Year 2013
Happy New Year 2013 (Photo credit: Mark Kens)

The year that was, 2012, has left me changed in more ways than I ever would have believed. I have shared of myself on this blog and on my YouTube channel in ways that I never imaged and the response has been incredible. From the questions and comments that people have been sending me, it looks like 2013 will deliver new avenues to explore and share.

I am looking forward to writing and creating videos sharing more of myself and my world. I do have requests to explore more of my INTJ-ness and what it was like growing up with that personality. Some of you want to know what it is like have Fi as a tertiary function and I look forward to sharing it with you.

Writing of the YouTube channel, I have found several videos that I shot near the end of 2011 that I neglected to publish. Many of them are about marketing: what it is, how to do it and why. These are quite informative and need to be shared. These videos were created in response to questions and answers are overdue.

Yes, 2013 does hold some scariness. The United States Congress seems hell bent on never producing no budget and Obama continues to show he has no leadership skills. Too many Americans are voting for free stuff, with no regard from where the money will come to give out so much crap. America is heading to the same place as Greece, if they do not wake up.

David Icke continues to make more sense with his presentations and connecting events. The overlords of the masses are very scared of him. More and more people are waking up, though far too many are asleep. The year 2013 is shaping to be a pivotal year. So much momentum was cared into 2012 it looked to be a breakout year. Alas, the Republican leadership scammed Romney upon the people and the overlords were able to get their fraud in-line for Obama’s re-election. None of the fraud will be investigated and no one will do jail time for breaking various election laws. Their fraud actions show how scared they are of the people. After all, the people cannot be trusted to elect the correct leaders.

So, here we come, 2013. Are you ready for us? This year, more people will wake up. More people will take control of their destiny and refuse to rely on the Government for their livelihood. More people will start a business and more people will find Freedom. And above all, more people learn the meaning of Liberty and how it was stolen from them. They will demand it back.

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Random Musings

Good Content Makes For Good Conversation

Girl with smirk
Girl with smirk (Photo credit: BrainMuffin)

My marketing mentor Gregg Davison is found of many phrases. Many would be quick to recite his “It is always sunny when you are making money” quip. He is also keen on another important phrase when it comes to successful marketing “Content is King”.

There are many blogs out there on the Internet. Many of the are popular and do bring in some money for their creators. Many of them bring in no one and don’t make a penny. Why? Simple: bad content.

Creating good content is more than bringing up the Google adword tool and finding good keywords to use. Sure, if you want trying to sell a business opportunity about making money on the Internet, the usual advice is to look for those keywords and get them into your content. Gurus will tell you that your content should have somewhere between 3-5% of your “making money” keywords so that Google will like your content and rank it high. When it comes to a phrase like “Making money on the Internet,” how many websites could Google possibly place on the first page? Exactly.

Having a good blog that attracts readers is more than just good use of keywords in your content. The content itself needs to be good. You want to attract readers. You want them to return. You need to find you niche.

Finding your niche is about your story. Who are you? What are your interests? Forget about the awesome Internet money making opportunity you have and tell the readers more of you. They want to believe they know you, so tell them. Don’t let every article be on some new marketing technique you learned on the previous night’s call with Jay Kubassek.

Here’s a great for instance. A classmate of mine from college has her own blog. Always wanting to keep a few extra pounds off, she embraced her struggles and shares her story. The result? She attracts like minded individuals who are looking to achieve results. Her readers like that she is not trying to use the blog to hawk particular products, so they see her openness and candor as refreshing. They also celebrate each others victories. That is what blogging is about! Take hold and triumph!

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Commentary

Welcome to everyone

What a week this has been! More people registered with the blog this past week than ever

Pedaling Through the Past
Pedaling Through the Past (Photo credit: brizzle born and bred)

before. It would seem people are finding their way here and it is so much fun! Welcome to all the new people!

When I started this blog, the whole intent was to publish who I am so people could know and understand my story. This was going to be a means to making money. Marketing after all, is all about making relationships. How little did I know.

The journey over the last year plus has been an incredible one. I’ve started and closed an LLC. I’ve joined other programs. I’ve made many videos. I’ve learned much.

I’ve learned SEO is more an art than science. I’ve learned Premier Mentoring is a total scam. I’ve learned Marketing and getting results is hard. I’ve learned I love it all.

Normally, the postings on this blog have no I statements. Today this is being broken to show that behind this blog is a real person. A person with dreams and ideas and goals and wants and needs. A person with flesh and blood and a heartbeat. That is what makes this blog personal. That is the power.

Upcoming will be discussions on mobile marketing and getting your website ready for the mobile wave. Expecting users to pinch and expand to view your website is the past. More forward or get left behind.

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Commentary

Keywords, they suck

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Keywords. Keywords. Keywords. That’s all I hear from various network marketers. They say to go to Google and use the adword tool. Find keywords. Use them. Work them into your content. Why?

Keywords are like bait. No, not the negative bait and switch. Rather a positive lure to pull an audience to your content. Keywords are how people are searching on content related to yours. Keywords is how search engines like Google and Bing determine what to do with your content. Keywords are what build the path to you.

Doing search for keywords is a good exercise. It let’s you determine your topic and how you style your content. They are how you organize your articles and blogs. Keywords will either lay a path to your content or leave you out in the woods.

Keywords should be specific, yet general enough to pull in more people. Get too specific, too narrow and no one will find you. Get too general, too wide and the noise will overwhelm you. Channel in between and you will pull the right amount with the right mindset. That’s the key.

Keywords are a tool. They are a tool you can use to bring the right audience to your content, whatever that may be. Know your audience. Understand what they use to search. Pull them in and grow your influence.

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Random Musings

Announcing a new video challenge

Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

It is time for something different. It is time to push the boundaries of our experiences. It is time to get out of our comfort zones. It is time for a video challenge. It is time for the June 2012, Video Challenge!

There have been other challenges on YouTube. Some were to make a video a day. Others to shoot twice a week. Some were on a give topic: photography, marketing, introductions, etc. Others had none. This challenge needs to be something different. Something not yet seen. Something real.

Today I did shoot the video announcing the challenge and it will get created and posted. Here is the announcing blog post. What better place than a blog about the future? What are the rules, you ask? They are quite simple.

Rules for the challenge

  1. Have fun – above anything, before everything, have fun making your videos.
  2. Do anything – make a video about cheese, make one showing the wind, it doesn’t matter. Make what ever you want. Capture motion, computer generated, PowerPoint screen capture, it doesn’t matter.
  3. Get out of your box – do something you’ve never done before, go somewhere you’ve never been. Usually make videos inside? Go out? Like the outdoors, do one in the city. Use new techniques and ideas. Explore. Expand.
  4. Runs to the end of June, 2012

That’s it, other than the YouTube guidelines, of course. Post one a day or six. Post as much and as little as you like. It doesn’t matter. The whole point of the challenge is to get out there and go stuff.

Ready. Set. Go!

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Internet Marketing

Search Engine Optimization – It Moves

The beginning

Search Engine Optimization. What is it? Does it work? How can it be used? Where is it? Why does it keep changing? Is SEO a verb or noun? What about? What about? What about???

In the early days of the web, search engine optimization was nearly unheard of. Websites were grouped by audience or subject. Business sites over here. Research sites over there. Government sites on the shelf below. Yahoo felt more like a library or a book store than a search engine. Ideas for indexing content was in its infancy and WAIS databases were king. The most used protocol was Z39.50, not e-mail, ftp, telnet, gopher or web. Times were about to change.

The Middle

Along came Alta Vista and the proverbial genie was out of the bottle. Now someone did not have to look through a endless sea of categories for a website, but could now enter words and phrases. Ask Jeeves allow the user to take the next step and ask in a question form: “What is the color blue?”, “Why is the sky blue?”, “How is beer made?”. The web and Internet were becoming synonyms, even though the Internet is more than the web. People were getting dial up accounts in large numbers. The web was growing exponentially. Thousands of sites were being added each day. How could a business be heard in all that noise?

By studying the algorithms of the search engines, content started to be created that took advantage of it. Pages did not necessarily have to be human readable. All it had to be was consumed by the spiders and seen as optimized by the search engine. When a page is optimized for say “the best home business” or “make money now stuffing envelopes”, it gets pushed to the top of the page. A business’ voice is heard the best and loudest. They get more traffic, others get less.

As pages become flooded with keywords to create better search engine optimization, the spammers took over. Site after site of pure gibberish was created. The charlatans started to win. The snake oil salesmen gave everyone a bad name. Something had to give. It did.

Panda Me

The largest search engine, Google, changed their algorithm. Panda went live and search engine optimization changed overnight. Content became king again. Real content. Not machine gibberish. Articles started to become relevant again. Blogs mattered. The sun came out.

Google continues to change their algorithm. Search engine optimization has become both an Art and a Science. Good content, good social awareness and backlinking all play their part in making sites rank higher. Sure, the spammers will now hire armies of writers to earn their top spots again, however, their efforts and expenses will greatly increase. In the meantime, actual individuals will be able to have their voices heard.

Learn to move with search engine optimization or get left behind. Know what the changes mean. Create your content to adhere to the new standards. Be heard. Be seen.

Bryon Lape can also be read on HubPages. A longer form article entitled SEO: the moving target can be found there. Read. Comment. Share. Together we grow.