Step Away from the Computers!

We are all aware of the value that our digital tools bring us.  Our technology expedites information delivery, allows us to follow our social networks, makes calling from anywhere possible, and provides on-demand entertainment.

Based on this quote from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, we are actually depriving ourselves of much-needed mental downtime that ultimately may be affecting our learning capabilities.

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

Perpetually Plugged in People

There are armies of mobile application developers who are hard at work creating new productivity tools and producing games to entertain us in between tasks.  I am not a Luddite.  I use mobile technology for both business and pleasure but it does seem possible that society is becoming enslaved to its mobile devices.

Entrepreneurs benefit greatly from the advanced technologies availed by multimedia mobile devices but these same advantages have potential to introduce stress, which can have a negative impact on our overall business productivity.  While we want to give our customers the impression nothing matters more to us than our business, we are of no use to customers if we are burned out.

Reboot Yourself!

All of our technology needs to be rebooted periodically to clear memory and cache.  The same is true of us humans.  While it is easy to assume that browsing the internet, checking email, or playing a brief game is a break, these activities don’t remove our technology chains nor provide our brains the breaks they require to renew our creative juices.  Regardless of our professions, most of us are tethered computers throughout our work days so taking a break on another computer isn’t really a break, is it?

During a keynote speech, Harvey MacKay suggested that the most productive time that he spent was time spent looking out his window.  He went on to explain that he was both resting his eyes and refreshing his imagination.  This “stuck” with me.  In situations where there was no window, I hung a photograph of a beautiful place upon which to fix my gaze.

When I am confounded by a bit of code for a wordpress website development task or unable to come up with fresh ideas for a new branding strategy, leaving my office for a stroll along the ocean shore totally renews my perspective.  While I am away, I am not thinking about the work task.  I am enjoying the salt air and interacting with people around me.  I also leave my mobile device in the car while I am at the beach.  There is nothing so earth shattering that it cannot wait for a few hours.  Relaxing in a chair with a good book (with REAL pages!) or doing a crossword puzzle is another method that I use to get away from bright LCD screens and computers.

So, whether your thing is shopping, cerebral pursuits, or nature, do your favorite things and leave the mobile devices at home so you can clear your mental cache and attract new ideas.  You will return to your tasks and I guarantee you will feel better and be more productive.

Cyber Vandalism, Skype Hackers and Social Networks

Skype is an invaluable business building tool.  Not only does it allow you to conduct business internationally without incurring international long distance charges, it make is very easy to share large files and engage your customers in video chats when the need arises.

There is a dark side to Skype.  Hackers prey on naive online users.  Last year’s hacker game was to usurp an account and initiate contact with all confirmed contacts, inviting those people to accept files.  Even though I do not consider myself to be naive, I was duped into accepting and opening a file, in March 2009,  when a seemingly active client offered it to me.  When I lost access to my Skype account, I realized I had been hacked.  It took a few days to put everything back together and it was a real headache.

I haven’t accepted any spontaneously offered files or clicked on any uninvited links since that time, even if the offer is extended by a long-term contact on my list.

This year’s hacker game is to hijack an account and offer a link that  looks like a Skype link to all confirmed contacts in that account.  With a slight amount of scrutiny, it is obviously not a link you should follow.  The link will probably ask you to login to your Skype account, at which point the hacker has your credentials.  If you have a Skype subscription attached to your PayPal account, the hackers can run up huge expenses for you.  Skype takes no responsibility for this.  Neither does PayPal.

When my Skype account was hijacked in March 2009, I had no Skype subscriptions but friends of mine who were hacked by the hackers who hacked me were harmed financially.  A hacker’s sole intention is to steal something from you.  They are clever people and it is truly a shame that they have chosen to use their creative talent for malicious intent.

Safe computing and surfing is an old topic but its relevance is not stale.  It is comprised of more than running Spyware blockers and Antivirus software, especially if you are a member of any internet messaging application.

How to Avoid Skype Hackers!

Here are some steps you can take to be safe on Skype:

1. Whenever a friend offers you a picture or file, ask them what it is.  Try to engage them in a longer conversation so you can determine if the language they are using is native to them.  If you feel uneasy about it, ask if you can connect through voice to have them explain why you should accept the file.  A hacker will not be able to talk to you.
2. When you are asked to confirm a contact, ask the requestor how they found your ID.  If they can’t provide information that links to any sites or chats you have a membership in, decline the opportunity promptly.
3. When you are invited to click on a link unexpectedly, look at the link carefully first.  Here is the dialogue from a recent attempt to hijack my account today.  You will notice in the first line that English is not their native language.  By the way, THE LINK HAS BEEN DISABLED IN THIS POST!

[11:20:10 AM] MyFriend says: hi how are you,i send to you link please sign in ok and thanks  http://smii.host.sk/www.skype.com/?id=79826&lc=us
[11:23:04 AM] Marj Wyatt says: oh dear, hackers at work
[11:24:01 AM] Marj Wyatt says: more importantly, what sorts of idiots spend their days trying to wreak havoc on nice people?

I received no response to my inquiry, but I wasn’t really expecting one.  I admit to my brutality in my biting response but, frankly, it was a way to shut them down immediately.  I posted this thread here so you could see an example of a hacker’s link.  There will always be something after the domain name.

The first time I encountered this in Skype, I asked what the link was for.  The user at the other end kept repeating that it was “a surprise.”  I was polite with them and informed them that, if I wanted to access my Skype account, I would login through a browser and not through their link.  The abandoned their efforts.

Managing Your Online Life

Tools, like social networks and Skype, have made it easier to build business and promote products and services at a minimal cost.  They have also opened up a new channel for hackers.  Both Twitter and Facebook have been hacked repeatedly during the past year.  To the best of my understanding, it always starts with a malicious link.

Very early in my practice of conducting business online, I learned to set every profile that I have on social networks to approve comments manually so I could avoid the use of my pages as advertising space for others.  People who have a penchant for doing this have had the nerve to complain when I do not approve their posts with links to their list building tools or business opportunities.  Oh well…

New contacts on Skype are always advised that my accepting them is conditional and presumes that they will not promote every business opportunity they come across on the web via Skype broadcast tools.  When a confirmed Skype contact sends me a link to something that they are promoting, I always ask questions and remind them that I’m not looking for get rich quick schemes.  Not so long ago, one of my contacts decided to launch a group chat with the founders of one business, after I declined to enroll myself.  It was quite embarrassing for me.  I didn’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings but I also did not like the feeling of being cajoled into joining yet another “worthless webinar”  so they could get a bonus.

The LinkedIn network uses a process for profile publications that begins with a request, from you, for the feedback.  It is very straight forward.  Additionally, LinkedIn uses associations like school or work to help people find friends.  It may take a little longer to build your social network there but at least you know who you are connecting with, which provides you with a reasonable expectation about how they will behave online.

I have also monitored my Twitter feeds carefully.  When a Twitter contact presents themselves as being uncouth or a Twitter Spammer, I will “unfriend” them so my Twitter feed isn’t cluttered with junk.  It is my feed, after all.  :)

With the caveat that I find the Facebook user interface unwieldy and may not have taken the time to figure it out, there doe not appear to be a setting for manually approving comments on my Facebook wall.  This is a bother because it enforces a need to go into your account and delete content that you do not want displayed.

Building Business Online

Skype, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are powerful business building tools when they are used appropriately.  Social manners should not be tossed out the window just because you are in an online relationship with your prospects and customers.  When you are respectful of your online contacts, you will attract more business contacts who are also respectful of you.

Have fun online, be careful, and be prosperous!

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Are You Email Marketing or Spamming?

Email marketing is a proven method of developing a relationship with your customers and, if that relationship is properly developed and nurtured, a way to generate affiliate cash flow when you need it.  All that is well and good, but when your opt-out doesn’t result in being opted out, email marketing campaigns can result in driving business away.

One of the inboxes that I own began receiving email from Elizabeth Jackson.  Since I used to know an Elizabeth Jackson, I was enthused to see her name.  It was disappointing to find an advertisement for Work At Home jobs when I opened the email.

I used the option to unsubscribe, more than a dozen times during the past 3 months, and I continued to get email from Elizabeth Jackson from different email addresses.  Each time, I opted out again.  Further research today helped me deduce that Elizabeth Jackson is a fictitious name used to “protect the affiliates” who are promoting a certain CPA campaign offered by Clickbooth, to get income.  Clickbooth advertises themselves as the “exclusive CPA Network” who is ranked #1 by Website Magazine.

Ok, that is all legal but my question today is, who is protecting me, or others who didn’t invite these CPA email offers?

SPAM and the Consumer

Prior to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, I was forced to close a business email account that was being overwhelmed by no less than 50+ messages an hour in a language I couldn’t even read!  Things have gotten better, for sure, but it is possible to be in compliance of that act and still be doing nothing other than irritating customers or prospects.  Case in Point:  Elizabeth Jackson.

Here are some CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 cliff notes:

1. It is an opt-out law and, for most purposes, permission of the e-mail recipient is not required.  If a recipient wants to unsubscribe or opt-out, however, you’d better stop sending e-mails you are at risk of being subject to severe civil and criminal penalties.
2. Fraudulent or deceptive subjects, headers, return addresses, etc., are prohibited.
3. Sending sexually explicit email without clear markings is a criminal act.
4. Email marketers must have a functional opt-out system that is easy for consumers to use and is operational for at least 30-days following each mailing.
5. Email messages should include a physical address of the company in the email.
6. Spammers AND those who procure their services are culpable and both can be prosecuted.
7. Personal emails, and perhaps non-profit emails, are not addressed by the act.  It applies to all US businesses who are sending commercial email of a transactional nature.

SPAM and the Business Owner

Looking over the guidelines again, a smile came to my face.  I do feel that some of the earnings claims in subject lines from a few of the internet marketing lists that I’ve joined are nothing other than deceptive, in spite of their disclaimers.  This is especially true when the click through leads to a product or service that was not developed by the sender.  But I am a perpetual student of marketing methods and completely understand that this is how affiliate programs work. 

Email marketing is a good business strategy, especially for affiliate marketers.  At Flippa, sites with lists are worth more than other sites at the time of sale.  Thus, whether your motivation in launching a site is to build a Niche Empire or develop a site to later sell for profit, building an email marketing list is very important!

CAN-SPAM Loopholes

An apparent loophole in the CAN-SPAM Act, which is always exploited by senders of unsolicited email, allows email marketers have up to 10-days to complete an unsubscribe request.  Although those business owners are adhering to the letter of the law, I find it absurd.  All the autoresponders that I have ever used or recommended facilitate immediate removal from a list.

Pick Up The Phone!

In my desperation to stop getting three more months of unsolicited email from Elizabeth Jackson, whom I now know is a fake person, I was prepared to send a snail mail letter but I dug deep enough to find a phone number to call.  I did allude to the CAN-SPAM act during my call, which may have inspired them to be more attentive, but that remains to be seen.  Regardless, it was comforting to actually speak with someone who listened to my concerns and gathered up the email addresses that I wanted to eradicate from their lists.

The phone seems to have gone out of fashion but the truth remains that consumers sometimes need a phone number to call.  Business owners might conclude that including a phone number on your primary sales page footers or within the terms and conditions page at your site is a good idea for owners of affiliate programs.  After all, the program owner is equally exposed to the fines and penalties outlined in the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, and they are legally obligated to manage the affiliates who are issuing email marketing messages on their behalf.

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Panning for Gold

While having fun with the grandkids the other day, we visited a place nearby that specializes in educating people about the California Gold Rush by providing an experiential tour of a mine on their property.  What does this have to do with Web Marketing and Branding, you might ask?  Read on….

The California Gold Rush created a lot of wealth.  So has the internet.  Not unlike internet properties, 49ers staked claims on mines, hoping the vein was rich.  The conditions were difficult, picking their way back into the mines and chiseling through rock by hand.  There were certain things that they looked for that provided direction about pursuit of a path.  The same is true of internet businesses.  It all relies on choosing the right “real estate” to begin with and doing the work necessary to extract the value of that space.

As the kids panned for gold in the trough that the owners of the ranch had set up, they each had different reactions.  One child in the group complained immediately, saying it was too hard, and sulked for a while.  Another “struck gold” right away, shouted out about their good fortune and continued to shriek every time they thought they had found another nugget.  The remainder of the group quietly found nuggets, washed them off and set them aside, and proceeded to look for more.

Where is the Online Mother Lode?

If you are not new to online business, you know exactly what a niche is and how important it is too.  If you are new, this is a term you need to understand.  I can’t tell you what is a profitable niche in a blog post but I can tell you there is a lot of material out there regarding choosing a niche.

In summary, a niche is an area of interest for consumers.  I will always recommend that people begin a business that is in line with their personal passions or hobbies.  While your passions may align with a profitable niche, it is equally possible that your highest area of interest is NOT what other people are looking for.  This should not dissuade you entirely but it will make penetration of that niche more work.  Equally possible is that a niche that you know people are looking for is also a niche that is saturated.  Specializing that niche may allow you to find a “vein” to follow to create online income.

There are free tools to use to explore possibilities but, as expected, digging for gold by hand requires a little more effort and time.  The external Google keyword research tool is a great place to start.  It may seem like a good idea to choose the niches with the most search volume.  Within reason, it is.  You need to be aware that searches with a lot of volume also have a lot of competition.  A good rule of thumb is to choose phrases that have monthly global search volumes between 1,000 and 15,000.

Once you think you’ve found a niche to exploit, continue your due diligence.  Use Google again to find out how many pages are there for you to compete with.  Take the term that appeals to you, place it in a Google search box in quotes, and submit your search.  This will return the number of pages with each word in your phrase in any order.  If you submit the search without the term in quotes, it will turn up the count for all the pages that have all of the words in your phrase anywhere on that page, whether together in a string or not.

From a reasonableness perspective, it is best to choose niches that have less than 100,000 competing pages online, so long as the supporting search volume is there.  This is a guideline only.  Persistence will get your pages elevated in search engine listings for more saturated niches.

For the expense, a great niche research tool is cleverly named Micro Niche Finder.  This tool allows you to analyze the strength of competition and computes the number of back links, which is a measure of how many links you will need to build to your site to allow it to rise above other listings for that term.

If you don’t want to learn at this level or purchase tools that would make it easier for you to conduct your own research, you can opt to work with someone who has knowledge of how to research a niche and choose good keyword phrases.  Use the convenient contact form to initiate a conversation with me.

What Tools Can You Use to Launch your Campaign?

It is hard to be in an online business without a website.  If the great keyword phrase you’ve found is an available domain name, grab it quick because you will need a website somewhere online to promote your niche.  With all of its built-in features and since my specialty is WordPress Website Design, it is the best software that I can recommend for your business website.

While you can start a free site using wordpress software at Wordress.com, my position has always been that it is far better to retain ownership of your content.  Besides, theme choices and add on open source software is limited at WordPress.com.  These limitations can impede your progress.

I’ve worked with people who operate on an assumption that a site hosted at WordPress.com will get more traffic.  WordPress.com is a high-traffic site but you must build interest in your page in order to have traffic.  Why do all of that SEO work on a site if you don’t own it?  Seems silly to me…

There are many free themes out there for you to use and, if you find a theme that is close to what you want, you don’t need any special technical skills to put up your own website.  Personally, I recommend taking a look at Studio Press themes.

Remember that owning a website does require you to know something about HTML.  Last year, Holly Powell and I conducted a couple of online webinars to teach people the nuances of choosing domain names, registering them, activating them on your chosen host, installing wordpress, and other things you might want to know to use the software.  I will be updating the training for the latest version of WordPress soon but you can follow this link for access to the 2009 Live Blog Training at no cost.  If you sign up for the newsletter there, you will find out more about new training modules as they become available. 

What Kind of Miner are You?

Let’s get back to the kids who were panning for gold.  Maybe you’ve already found your Mother Lode niche and are living your dream life.  But, if you haven’t, what kind of miner will you be when you locate your niche and the first online payment arrives?  Will you shout out your success for all to hear or will you use the knowledge you gained to find that niche to locate and develop another?

Happy mining!

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Good Website Design and SEO are not Mutually Exclusive

Website design is a process of function and aesthetics.  I’ve just completed a project where the desires of the graphic designer took precedence over search engine optimization and website performance.  I had only heard about these sorts of debates before and had never been involved in one.

The designer admitted they cared more about look and feel of the site than they did about its features and functions.  Ultimately being forced to defer to the graphic designer’s logic by putting a scroll box into a post, for the sake of aesthetics, enforced website design tactics that have not been popular since the late 1990’s.  Neither the project initiator nor the graphic designer seemed to care at all about search engine visibility, website performance, or the impact their design-based decisions were having upon the website design functionality or the user experience.  Regardless of my feelings about it, I did as I was instructed and delivered a site that has absolutely no SEO value, much to my chagrin.  I contributed my ideas and they were ignored.  What else was there for me to do? 

But, my position stands firm that graphic designer opinions should NEVER take precedence over website design performance, function, and search engine optimization.  I will augment this by saying that website design aesthetics and website functionality are not mutually exclusive goals.  With a little bit of understanding, beautiful graphic designs can be rendered to highly functional code that performs well and is also optimized for search engine visibility.

In my experience, graphics designers rarely have website design development or SEO skills.  I have the distinction of possessing wordpress website design, development and SEO skills, among other things, so this is not true of me.  My composite skill set is extremely rare, so I have been told.  Because it is important to my clients, I keep abreast of current online marketing tactics and website design and development trends so I can educate my customers and offer choices, should the need arise.  Of primary concern to me is overall website SEO and performance.  A properly designed website can garner organic traffic, especially if it uses the built-in features of a content management system like WordPress, and performance does not have to suffer if the developer knows what they are doing.

With the caveat that there are many people out there who know as much or more about this topic than me, I will share a little of what I know about these things in this post.   It is not all inclusive, for it would be impossible to encapsulate years of experience on such large subjects into a single post.

Why Should You Care about SEO?

A pretty website design pleases the eye, and aesthetics do matter, but your website SEO strategy can make the difference between a profitable website and a wasted expense.  If you are not doing your own development work, you have paid a professional website design developer real money in exchange for their time.  Viewing your website as a marketing asset should not be taken lightly.  With good planning, design, and a solid SEO strategy in mind from the onset, your website can become an extremely valuable tool that facilitates your business success.

Search Engine Optimization is not a huge mystery.  There are several sites with valuable and free content out there for people to study, if they are willing to invest the time and energy.  While each SEO “expert” seems to subscribe to their own philosophy, seach engine algorithms are based on math some factors are constants.

Generally speaking, there is on-page SEO and off-page SEO.  On-Page SEO is what you do with your website design and post content.  Off-Page SEO can be loosely defined as the linking strategies you employ to elevate your site’s authority on the internet.  Both are important, but the latter has very little to do with website design.

On Page SEO

Each page of your website is viewed individually by search engines.  Thus, it is possible for some of your pages to have a more elevated listing status in the search engines than others.  Content management systems, like WordPress, offer really cool SEO features like internal linking and frequent updates through RSS feeds and commenting features.  As a website design consultant, one of my functions is to help my clients choose rich keyword terms for categories.  While some Graphic Designers hold steadfastly to their belief that there still is a place for straight HTML websites, open source applications like WordPress, which is continually improving, make that belief all but obsolete.

Within a page, search engines are alerted by text styling tactics of using headings (H1 is best) or bold text to call attention to important content that contains the keywords you are pursuing.  Enabling WordPress plugins that permit you to specify relevant meta titles, descriptions, and post-specific keywords will assist with acquiring organic traffic and gaining better page listings and rankings.  Since I put up my first WordPress Website Design years ago, I’ve been using the All in One SEO plugin, although there are others out there.

Having a keyword rich domain name and page title goes miles toward a quick ranking.  Post titles and overall URL length matter.  The last time that I checked, search engines only read the first 256 characters of a URL.  This could have changed, so don’t quote me.  So, if you have a long domain name and a long page/post title, your effort in researching and placing keywords could be pointless.  WordPress setup defaults are not the best for creating links.  There are multiple opinions about what is the best way to customize the permalink structure.  In any case, finding ways to eliminate unimportant words and numbers from the link is the only way to go.

Off Page SEO

This is, in a nutshell, your linking strategy.  Over the years that I’ve been involved with website delivery, I’ve seen hundreds of offers for SEO automation tools that claim they can drive floods of traffic to your site by exploiting loopholes in search engine algorithms.  I’ve never taken that bait.  As for other tools that offer SEO link building assistance that is white hat, I’m skeptical that these products have delivered the results promised but I do confess to not having tried more than a handful of them.  In my humble opinion, high quality external links are earned through the time-consuming work of posting articles, providing high-quality responses in active forums, and building an online reputation for your site’s authority by offering sincere and relevant blog comments or appearing as a guest blogger on a high ranking site.

Freelancers offer SEO services of link building through article creation, blog commenting and forum posts.  I cannot compete with offshore service provider pricing so this is not a service that I offer.  I educate my customers on link building tactics and sometimes refer work out to colleagues.  There are article spinning tools that allow you to write one good article and spin it multiple ways so you can have unique content up on multiple sites.  As for automating blog comments, I don’t approve spam comments on my sites so why should I expect anyone else to do so?    Forums may seem like old news but there are some very busy forums with high authority on which I’ve been actively pursuing links back to a few of my sites.  Just ensure that you become active in a forum that is related to the main topic of your site if you choose this tactic for link building.

Website Design Performance Notes

If you are using images on your site, upload and reference them with keyword rich names.  Embedding keywords as alt text for your images is a important too because search engines can read it.  More and more frequently, websites are being found through image searches.  Although it makes a site or post more interesting, excessive use of images is discouraged because each call for that image results in another http request which can inhibit performance.

Pages that are designed entirely in flash are … well, flashy.  I truly admire the skills that flash programmers have honed but I have never recommended flash introductions when text and images will deliver the same message.  Opinions may vary but mine is that flash intros and pages are not good for SEO.  Additionally, flash is a client-side application that relies on the technology configuration of the viewer’s computer.  Most non-technical people are not as fastidious about PC maintenance and technology upgrades as I may be and no website design expert can write code to overcome that.  Hire the flash developer, by all means, but keep in mind that your multi-thousand dollar investment for flash programming may be lost on a portion of your potential audience who is frustrated by the fact that they see nothing on the page or it is taking too long to load.

When moving a site from HTML to a content management system, I frequently hear my clients say that the site seems slower.  That’s true.  It is, by comparison.  This has to do with PHP and database access speeds.  Website design architecture and code that works as optimally as possible is my responsibility, so I’m not abdicating entirely.  Recently, when this protest kept coming up, I set up the same site on two other hosting services so they could compare site performance.  It was a proverbial “no brainer” decision.  Their hosting service was the stumbling block.  Both A2 Hosting and JustHost eclipsed Network Solutions for page loads and video performance.

The use of CSS sprites improve website design performance because only one image is referenced.  I do not advocate for the use of image-based menus, however, because their use removes text from the pages and eliminates dynamic addition of navigation links.  This is best explained by example.  One of the features of WordPress is that it automatically adds new category links to menus without having to alter site code.  This translates to ease of use for my customers, once they’ve gotten a handle on the difference between pages, posts and categories.  With the exception of the site that I was recently asked to develop, all of my site navigation code has been pure CSS, clean and simple.  After working with a beautiful theme that used one image for all of its iconography and backgrounds, my custom theme designs will be making much more use of CSS sprites.

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Brand Revitalization

The importance of creating a brand that sticks in the minds of your target market is obvious to people in stable businesses.  When the market paradigm shifts or a part of a product line is discontinued, it has potential to kill the brand.  Campaigns to create and obtain market share for a new brand can be very expensive so leveraging the investment you’ve already made in your branding strategy  by implementing a brand revitalization strategy is economical and important, especially these days.

When Volkswagen introduced themselves in the USA in 1949, only 2 vehicles sold.  By the end of 1955, the manufacturer had firmly established their presence in the United States. I’m not sure if it was the marketing experts or the public who created the “slug a bug” attachment to the vehicle but I certainly remember playing the game with my sister in the back seat of our family car.  I also remember my mother complaining about the odd appearance of the VW Beetle.

 

 

Lately, Volkswagen has been weaving this childhood game into their brand revitalization campaign.  The inference of the new spin, however, is that the vehicle is moving so quickly that the onlooker who has been “slugged” didn’t see it.  This is brilliant!

A brand can be established using imagery, colors, sounds or words.  Most times, it is a combination of some or all of these things. If a brand becomes “stale” or the marketing message has gotten muddied by exterior influences, like competition or economic constraints, it may become necessary to pursue brand revitalization to elevate awareness and increase market share.  Clever tactics for brand revitalization  or stabilization are not accidents.

Whether your business is small or large, there are a series of rules that must be followed steps that must be followed to accomplish the task of brand revitalization.

Refocus

This step begins by evaluating the market that you are pursuing and redefining the purpose and goals of the company and the brand.  Every member of the organization must aspire that message in their work and the communication from the company to the market must consistently reiterate the new goals.

Your message should succinctly state that purpose and be easy for consumers to remember.  Consider the branding strategy that AT&T is currently using for their wireless campaigns.  They want consumers to know that, using their technology, anything is possible.  This is a good message.  It conveys freedom and choice, something that is dear to all our hearts.

Relevance

Since the promise of a brand is what leads to consumer interest and loyalty, it must clearly and accurately convey what consumers can expect to experience every time they choose your product or service and how that is different from the competition.

As a business owner or executive, you must decide where you want to be and how you will get there.  You must understand the criteria your market uses to make purchasing choices in your niche.   You must also have an awareness about why people are choosing your competition’s products or services over yours. If you’ve lost market share due to global factors, your task is to repurpose the brand so you can keep your product or service viable.

Reinvent

This is where action comes into play.  The active components of any market are people, product, price, place and promotion.

Revitalizing a brand must begin with the people INSIDE your organization.  Every member of the company must feel committed to the new branding strategy if you hope to influence future success.

Products and services are tangible evidence of the brand promise.  Reinventing a brand image involves innovation of your products and renovation of services that support it.  This requires investment of resources and  and the talent of your organization.

Consider the variances you have witnessed with everyday use products like skin care, laundry detergent, or toothpaste.  With the rise of economical concerns, laundry products began to promote the fact that you could wash more clothes with less detergent.  Personal care products,like toothpaste, introduced and now promote their ability to make your teeth whiter.  Neutrogena has recently introduced a brand revitalization campaign that reminds women that they trusted the product as teenagers and should continue to use it to keep their skin looking young.  This is very clever…

Pricing is part of this phase of brand revitalization.  If there is a way to re-package your product or service offerings in a way to grab more market share, you will have expanded your revenue stream without having to develop new products.  McDonald’s implemented this strategy with their Dollar Menu items.

Inclusive in this phase of brand revitalization is the promotion aspect.  Your brand’s “face” is its place.  Whether the product resides on a store shelf or online, each time it is found, it must be easily recognized.  Packaging, colors, images, and sounds are all part of what makes your brand image memorable.  Promoting and maintaining the non-verbal aspects of your brand image are important, especially in a global environment where language differs.

Results

It isn’t an obsession, exactly, but measuring results is a topic that you’ll find me referencing consistently.  The entire point of change is to realize progress and, if you are not measuring the results of your brand revitalization campaign, you have no way to see if your efforts are enhancing your bottom line.

If your organization has staff, ensure that they are engaged in the results orientation efforts.  Stress the importance of bringing the brand to life for your market, especially if your employees are “on the front lines” and dealing with your customers individually.

Rebuild Trust

Expanded access to information has heightened consumer awareness, and there are many reasons for them to feel distrustful.  Your brand must acknowledge the social imperatives that drive consumers during their purchase decisions.  Speak to their concerns about ecological matters, privacy concerns, or false claims.  Re-establish their confidence by engaging in local activities and events that are not profit oriented and by being open and honest about all of your business affairs.

Realize Globally

Distill your brand revitalization strategy to a single document that is capable of expanding globally.  Make this resource readily available to your staff and your customers, along with the desired goals of your brand revitalization strategies.  If you have a brick and mortars presence, clientele will see that you are walking your talk by the experience they have as they are interacting with you professionally.

Leadership Required

Creativity is essential, but  the new brand vision and positive momentum is a result of committed leaders who are capable of providing clear direction and maintaining priorities.  The brand message must be consistent, whether you are interacting with the board room,  investors, employees, or consumers.  Trust your instincts, by all means, but remember that you ARE the personification of the brand you seek to revitalize.

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Website Conversion Tactics

Designing a website for conversion is something that every business owner cares about, if they are savvy and have a solid business goal for their sites.  Top gun internet marketers sell memberships and consulting services to people who want to get income online.  It is a good idea to have a mentor when you are starting out, for sure, but I wonder if there really is a one-size-fits-all approach to building an online business.  My instincts say no.

As an Online Branding Consultant and website developer, I’ve been monitoring website tools and trends for years.  When my daily research introduced the idea that the color orange converted better than any other color, it seemed like a reasonable thing to try.  Within a few months, just about every site that I saw had an orange buy now or add to cart button.  Recently, this button has gotten much larger.   Does the image below look familar to you and did you feel compelled to press the button?  It took me 2 seconds to find one. 

One trend that I have no argument with at all is to use WordPress website technology as the basis for a business and sales funnel.  The software is remarkable, easy to manage, and delivers great SEO benefits too.  Many top guns have migrated their sites to wordpress with good reason and anyone paying attention knows that WordPress is much more than a blogging tool.

Video capture pages are a very good idea and they have been for a long time.  However, there has been a disturbing trend with them recently.  The latest video marketing tactic is to enforce an opt in before one is granted access to the video.  This is a ploy to build a list, which I understand, but if you do this please manage your lists so you aren’t broadcasting the same message multiple times.  That is kind of irritating.

Another rising video marketing trend is to put up content with no controls or information about duration.  I find to be both inconvenient and rude, and I know I’m not alone.  If it is off-putting, why does it convert?  Perhaps someone who is doing this and tracking results can enlighten us all.

The OTO (one-time-offer) tactic has taken on new proportions of irritation.  When I opt in to something for free, I expect an obligatory up sell but is it really necessary to introduce two, three or more?  Newbie or not, I’m betting that I’m not the only person who loses patience and gives up.  It would be great to see the split testing results that support the claims of people who say this builds loyalty and increases sales. 

Please save us all from the disingenuous “fear of loss” call to action tactic.  If you aren’t sure what this means, it is the one that compels you to decide right now and threatens that, if you don’t, the offer will be lost forever.  If it really is a limited time offer then using this tactic doesn’t constitute coercion.  A high percentage of the time, however, the claim is not true.  How many times have you bought something because you were led to believe you needed to decide right away and found that same site months after the fact?

When internet marketers began to sell products that teach how to target local business owners, it intrigued me.  I wondered if they really knew what they were talking about.  As it turns out, few internet marketers have ever dealt with offline business owners so please don’t expect them to teach you everything you need to know in order to succeed in this niche.  I’m not saying it isn’t a good idea but, trust me, it isn’t an automatic gateway to wealth.

If you want to have credibility with a local business owner, you need more than a spiel and a ghost written book to hand to them at your first meeting.  You must understand THEIR business and be prepared to explain how you can help them improve their bottom line.

Think about the different businesses that you see in your neighborhood for a moment, excluding chains and franchises.  I doubt that the target market for an attorney, accountant, florist, or day spa lends itself to hype, being forced into opting in to view a video that has no controls on it, or the huge orange “add to cart” button.  Please let me know if you think I am wrong.

Small busines owners understand their niche and they’re good at sensing deception or they don’t stay in business long..  You won’t know how to help them if you haven’t done your homework.  Customer acquisition costs are a factor to small business owners, as well as return on investment.  If you want to play in that field, make sure you understand business basics first.

The bottom line is this:

No internet marketing formula is one-size-fits-all.

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SEO and Watching Paint Dry

We joke about watching paint dry when time seems to move too slowly but, believe it or not, this is an actual role for which people are paid.  Duties include touching the painted item to ensure that it is dry.  What does this have to do with businss and online income?  Read on…

Many people put up pretty websites and expect immediate results.  Very few people get what they desire, unless they have found a particular niche that is in demand and has not already been exploited or they have a well established and responsive list.

As a website consultant, I’ve always recommended beginning with the end in mind.  During initial meetings with any new client, I always inquire about their keywords and SEO strategy.  Of all the hundreds of sites that I’ve built, only one customer actually had a plan in place.  Statistically, those who did not embrace the idea that they needed to identify niche keywords and strategically pursue them experienced less than optimal results.

Once you’ve determined your SEO and linking strategy, you must set about the task of doing the work necessary to accomplish it.  This entails tactics that will build relevance based on keywords through on-site and off-site content.

Perhaps the best known method for getting links to your website is writing articles, adding a link to your signature in a forum, or commenting on blogs.  But, how do you know which sites have importance from Google’s point of view?  Michelle MacPherson recently released a free tool for monitoring top internet properties for your content and links.  I don’t know if it is still available but I’ve used it and it is very helpful.  The caveat is that each site has different rules so make sure you read the fine print when you register and begin to use them.

Lately, there has been a resurgence in using videos to promote your business or opportunity.  This isn’t big news.  Video marketing has been a great way to give voice to your brand for years and new video distribution channels are popping up every day.  Your videos need to go viral, for them to really provide benefit, and if you don’t use good keywords when posting the video, it is just “out there” waiting to be found.  Alternatively, and as I mentioned earlier, you can deploy it to your dedicated and responsive list.

Differentiating yourself online may be the biggest challenge you face.  Most of what I observe is a lot of emulation.  That isn’t a bad idea.  Heck!  It worked for me when I wanted to learn to sing like Joni Mitchell.    Still, emulating what everyone else is doing only makes you like everyone else.  Your market will choose to buy the offer, if it is something they want or need, and they will buy it from a link that appears in early in their search results.  Thus, if you have no SEO strategy, whether or not you’ve done your niche research homework, there will be a lot of people ahead of you in the pile.

Assuming that you’ve are now convinced that learning SEO and keyword research is important to your business success … online or offline … what can you do?  Well, you can begin by learning more about SEO and keyword research from an expert.  Dan Thies has availed a great ebook entitled Fast Start SEO which you can download at this link.  Dan Thies also offers a free membership where people aspiring to learn more, or those who are active in the arena already, can interact and swap ideas.  You can choose to outsource the task to someone who knows what they are doing, if you feel you have more important things to do,  but I imagine it will be hard to sift the wheat from the chaff  when interviewing potential outsourcing partners without any knowledge so learning something about how SEO is done is still advisable.

Building an online brand requires patience, dedication and belief.  Once you have your keywords and SEO strategy in place, all that remains to be done is to implement it.  However, waiting for the benefits you seek can be difficult if you are impatient.  Not much different than watching paint dry, I suppose.  But, if you’ve done your homework and selected a good niche and linking strategy, your results will come.

Tools help.  I use a product called Micro Niche Finder that is easy to understand and provides a lot of data very quickly.  If you don’t want to buy a product, you can also use Google’s free keyword research tool.

If you’d like to know how I can help you, please don’t hesitate to ask.  You can complete the contact form at www.VirtuallyMarj.com and I will certainly respond.  I’d love to learn more about your business and, if it feels right to us both, help you build your online brand!

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Creativity in Business

Normally, we associate creativity with artists who apply their craft in written communications, visual arts, or music.  But, if we strictly define creativity as artistic talent, we fail to appreciate how it is involved in the apparently mundane aspects of our lives.  That is really a shame, for nothing of life is truly mundane.

An acceptable definition for creativity is having the ability to find solutions where none are apparent.  This is often seen with children who are learning something new.  Less obvious are the toiling movers who manage to fit your heirloom dining room table through a narrow hallway without destroying the furniture or the walls, which is certainly admirable. 

In business, creativity is characterized as thinking outside the box, creative problem solving, and maybe even critical thinking.  Has your business creativity ever been stifled by colleagues or clients?  Have you ever inadvertently stifled them?  There are so many ways this can happen, and this article exposes a few of them.

You Want it When?

During my corporate days, I had an image of a person beneath a thumbscrew with a caption that read:

Turn it again you SOB!  I work well under pressure!

The poster was irreverent and got many laughs but there really was no truth in it.  The fact of the matter is, people don’t perform as creatively when severe deadlines are imposed.  While the tasks may be completed on time and satisfactorily, there is kind of a hangover after the fact for those involved that can literally immobilize them for days after the effort is over.

Time pressure disrupts one’s ability to fully engage themselves in the solution.  True creativity requires an incubation period.  In my business, premium rates are applied to “rush” projects for good reason.  When we come to terms on delivery dates and pricing, another dark side can be introduced by anxious people.  Folks who are in a panic with a high need to feel in control can upset the creative flow with interruptions.  To avoid this possible problem, I’ve learned to suggest a date in advance for status updates.

Please Put Your Weapons Away

With morbid fascination, I’ve observed threats that some people have  imposed in an effort to inspire.  This was more or less a daily fact of life on the job in the information technology industry.  As a Realtor®, a client’s posturing that they would withdraw their listings didn’t motivate me to change anything about the marketing plan we had agreed to at the time we wrote our contract and the listing still sold within the pricing and terms we had set forth at that time.

These days, as an internet entrepreneur, oppressive behavior serves as a signal that it might be time to fire the client. Proceeding with people whose projects are fraught with self-serving drama is rarely worth the effort involved in their high maintenance, although some empathy and discussion can sometimes alleviate the  problem.  Yet, if someone wants to be a unhappy, they want to be unhappy and it is never worth entering into a battle of wills.  Let them be right and move on.

If we enjoy what we’re doing, getting out of bed in the morning is never a chore.  Happy liaisons are not only much more fun.  Working with joyful people induces higher creativity for everyone involved.

Roles and Responsibilities

Casting a stereotype, based a limited perception about the skills involved in that role, can be limiting for the individual contributor and dangerous for the type-caster.  Consider your bookkeeper, for example.  The joke associated with creative financing is well known to us all but, when your accountant suggests a financing solution that you’ve never heard of before and it helps you to forward a business goal, their creativity is a huge asset to your business.

Financial Incentives May Not Be The Answer

A study on business creativity suggested that tying compensation to overall team results isn’t necessarily the ticket for inducing higher creativity OR better solutions.  In fact, the study’s results demonstrated that people who were focused on bonuses were less productive than those who worked for the love of the effort.

Although there is a somewhat common belief that people will work harder if they are rewarded through performance incentives, concerns about negative compensation effects lead people to risk aversion, which ultimately affects creativity.  Ranging outside the norms of what is imagined is an outcome of being truly interested in the effort at hand, knowing that it’s OK to try anything that has potential to work, and believing that one’s suggestions are taken seriously and that their contributions are valued.

How this Relates to VirtuallyMarj.com

As a WordPress website designer,  the truth in the tagline at Codex is not lost on me.  Even though most people will never truly appreciate the elegance of some of the code they use, which the tagline describes as poetry, one’s ability to envision and develop it certainly requires a special sort of creativity.

Personally, I get much more satisfaction out of consulting with clients, who have come to me for help with their marketing and branding strategies, and seeing the light bulb illuminate.  This happens when our discussions unearth something about their pursuits that is not obvious to them because they are too close to the proverbial forest to see the trees.  That is fun!

Right Brained or Left Brained … Does It Matter to Creativity?

Our right brains influence our creativity, so science says.  Here’s a place for you to take a test, if knowing your brain’s preference is important to you.

I’ve known remarkably creative people whose claim to fame was clearly left brained.  The most renowned example is a former real estate client and friend of mine, Leo Hurwicz, who achieved Nobel Laureate status for his Economics Theory at the age of 90.  It was a privilege to know him and and memories of our talks are truly treasures for me.

His special skill was mathematics, which is clearly left-brained and analytical.  Yet, his creativity allowed him to see beyond the equations and develop a theory that explained financial markets and ultimately garnered world-wide recognition.

So, the moral of the story is to not hold yourself back if you are left-brained by nature.  Creativity is the product of what you believe is possible for you to do and it is nurtured by an environment where your ideas can expand to reality … regardless of your brain’s bias or your assigned role.

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Should You Fire Your Client?

When you decide to work with a client, your business relationship has potential to develop into a friendship.  This can be very rewarding, as long as the boundaries between friendship and business are established and maintained.

Very few people understand how awkward it can be when questions they are asking begin to encroach on the time you had set aside to relax.  Under most circumstances, gentle reminders that you are “off the clock” will be enough.  Conscientious people will never ask you to work for free and there is no reason to feel guilty about accepting compensation in exchange for your expertise.

Here are a few gray areas that you may have encountered:

1. Someone expects you to do something for them which is a service for which clients normally pay.
2. You’ve earned an affiliate commission because someone clicked on your link and that person treats it as if they are owed services in exchange.
3. Sudden demands for a “finder’s fee” months after an introduction.
4. Promising future work for reduced fees.

Expecting Free Help

We’ve all hit financial speed bumps.  My first response to someone who asks me to work for free so they can preserve their cash is to suggest that they need to adjust their mindset.  This sounds brutal but it isn’t.  We are what we believe and, if we believe we are broke, we are broke!

Many philosophies, including the Law of Attraction, conceptualize thought as energy that attracts like-kind energy.  If your thoughts are trained on what you lack, you will attract more of that.  In other words, your lack will increase.  This is so stupidly simple, yet so difficult to master!

Placating your associate’s fears by working for free is a choice that you make based on whether or not the time commitment will put your real business obligations at risk.  We all like to help people out but, if you do, recognize that it can be a slippery slope.  Like silencing your barking dog with a treat reinforces bad behavior, your associate may expect that you will continue to work for them for free.

Leveraging Affiliate Commissions

You’ve taken the time to set up accounts and establish affiliate relationships for products or services that you want to recommend.  Affiliate earnings are intended to be passive.  Thus, any expectation that you will provide services in exchange for an affiliate commission you’ve earned is flawed logic.  All that person did was click a link to buy something of value that they wanted.

In the rare instance that someone insists they could have purchased the same product on their own, it may be their way of inducing guilt.  Don’t fall for it.  If you are like me, you have not overpriced your services to begin with and you’re worth every penny.

Does this mean you should not offer affiliate links to clients and friends?  If you do, ensure that you disclose the fact that you will earn an affiliate commission and that it is their choice to purchase elsewhere.

What Finders Fees?

True Story:  A year or so back, a “friend” asserted that he was owed 25% of everything that I had earned since we met.  This came out of nowhere so I was stunned when I realized he was serious.

I explained that I would never have agreed to referral fees of that magnitude without having a formal contract in place.  This fell on dead ears.  His rage and desperation, coupled with some other observations about his online behavior, created an awkwardness that ultimately ended our friendship.

Expecting Immediate and Repeated Help

Most people admire my intuitive grasp of technology.  I will always answer quick questions but, if I know that a request will take more time than I have available, it must be postponed.  When I find a solution, I take the time to carefully explain exactly what solved the problem, in layman’s terms, so people can more become self-sufficient.

Some folks repeatedly return for help with the same things.  I don’t mind re-explaining but, if I can’t drop everything at the moment of their request, enduring unfounded accusations or complaints is unacceptable.  My rule is no tolerance for such bad behavior.

Beware of Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

One client relationship relationship evolved into spending a lot of time exchanging ideas about WordPress website design, CSS and Photoshop techniques.  Those sessions always began when they would ask a “quick question.”  Since my associate already had some skills, it didn’t occur to me that I was providing information they planned to use to start a new and competing business.  When they announced their plans, they invited me to become a resource, with the provision that I could not use my own business name or offer a link to my website.  I declined and wished them luck.

The tactic of promising “future work” for a discounted rate is the proverbial Pandora’s Box.  In my experience, such requests better serve the requester.  In one extreme case, my willingness to work in this way resulted in many delinquent invoice payments and their expectation that the delayed payments would not compromise the development schedule for the project.   This particular client also neglected to mention very time-consuming development requirements at the time we settled on price and refused to discuss additional compensation.  When their behavior turned into abuse, they were summarily fired with no regrets … at least on my part. 

Choose to NOT Diminish the Value of Your Expertise

We all have unique skills to offer in professional liaisons.  The confidence you gain through exceeding customer expectations can lead to business expansion.  When your clients trust you, they will naturally recommend you who their friends and colleagues.  Referrals from such sources are the best kind of business.

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