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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Matt Mullenweg: Entrepreneur with a Vision

WordPress was awarded the 2009 Open Source CMS Award last month. Not only is this a great honor for the software, it validates a decision I made to specialize with this CMS years ago and all of the recommendations that I’ve made to website clients for the past several years. WordPress is a powerful CMS and, with the improvements introduced during the past year and this award, it is crystal clear that the software has stepped up to the plate for consideration as the basis for any website project.

Many of you who know me understand my deep appreciation for WordPress. I began using the software as a blogger in late 2004 when I set up my first self-hosted blog. Since that time, my interest in blogging has become a way of life for me.  My WordPress development skills have been a good source of income for me and I love being a self-employed entrepreneur.

In fact, entrepreneurship is a frequent topic on my blog. An important attribute of being an entrepreneur is having a willingness to take measured risks but crucial to entrepreneurial survival, regardless of one’s niche, is resilience. Ideas bloom, excitement builds, partnerships are formed, and there are many ups and downs along the way.

This amazing interview with Matt Mullenweg, the father of WordPress, really gives a lot of great insights into a smart way to start and grow a company. Other participants in this show are Jason Calacanis and Joel Spolsky. All are visionaries and well respected in the internet arena. The interview is nearly 2 hours long but it is well worth your time to listen, at the very least. I must caution you that Jason uses some colorful language while telling some of his stories.

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Is Television Really Bad for the Mind?

At a recent networking meeting, the presenter included bullet items of methods they used to enhance their business lead generation on their slide presentation. One of the items on the list was to watch TV. This is a tactic they use to become part of the social conversation.

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, watching television during prime time hours is not strictly a waste of productive time. Your prospects and customers watch TV. While they are going about their daily lives, they chat with others about what they’ve seen. Some even look up information on the internet during or following a program. Why not leverage these facts to build your business?

Established companies in all vertical markets are able to invest in television advertising and those ads can give budding entrepreneurs great information about consumer interests, and possibly new ideas for how they might create a product for their own business. Most of us are aware that prime time advertising comes at a premium price. If you have already identified your niche market, tune in when those programs are airing to find out what is being advertised and how those campaigns are structured. If you haven’t identified your niche, sample prime time programs on various stations to gain an understanding about what is being marketed to various segments.

Let’s take some obvious examples. Identity theft is perceived as a huge problem with the expansion of the internet for shopping and record keeping. Banks and credit unions advertise their security while also promoting their ease of use. Credit repair affects younger people. The clever ads with the minstrels at the Renaissance Fair, on a roller coaster, or leaving the car lot in a clunker make this crystal clear. With the growing population of Baby Boomers in their 50s, who are trying to avoid aging or pain, advertisements for potions and pills which answer these concerns are prevalent during dramas and documentaries.

To become part of “the conversation” for your market niche, your content could leverage titles for popular television shows, either in your product name or articles you are publishing. About a year ago, this theory was validated by writing an article about Big Foot when the creature was a hot topic in the news. It works.

Maybe you really hate the thought of watching television. If so, you can visit your local magazine rack and buy periodicals targeting various niches to see what is advertised within. From inserts to smaller text ads, clues about the interests of that niche will come clearer. You can also take a stab at finding websites which target market segments but the relevance of Google Ads is based upon on page content and not actually a good predictor of visitor interests, especially if the content is free.

The upshot of this post is no revelation to some but it may be the missing puzzle piece the causes things to come together for another. As always, I conclude with a friendly remainder to perform due diligence on any business decision you make and, if this bears out, have some sort of market plan to guide your movement forward into the fast lane.

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Flash Forward with Business

Flash forwards are used in movies to interrupt the continuity of the story line through the narration or portrayal of some future episode.  If we liken our mental gymnastics to a movie or play, our daydreams are nothing other than flash forwards.

Similar to the great new TV series on ABC, some of our imagined scripts are pleasant and some are less so.  Either way, the film director in our minds has set the stage and played out events that are expected, projected or imagined to occur in the future.  The polar opposite of a flash forward is a flashback, which are the stories that have occurred in our pasts that we use to guide our judgments.

Finding success takes much more than positive thinking and watching training videos.  All that we take in is supposed to be applied.  Measuring our success against another person’s can cause us to stall in our forward progress.  For example, if one of our colleagues has tried out a program and made good income in a minimal amount of time and our attempts do not produce a similar or greater amount as quickly using their same methods, we can easily talk ourselves out of proceeding with our plans.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t work.  It means that those methods used by your colleague do not work for you.

In the movie Hitch, perseverance is defined as continuing with a course of action without regard to discouragement, opposition, or previous disappointment.  Man!  Does that ever describe the mindset needed to effect change in your business or in your life but let’s stick to business.  Like kissing frogs to find a prince, programs that we try can manifest what we are looking for … or not.  Using the proverbial “cup is half full” viewpoint, we must be adaptable and take things in stride, fully aware that each one has taught us something that we can leverage down the road.  Eventually one will be “the answer” or spark a brand new idea that cannot be quashed by anyone or anything.

So what if your idea isn’t unique?  If the information or product isn’t readily available for free, you have found something you can monetize.  Pining over worries that your new idea will not be as popular as a similar one you have heard of or tried is a flash forward can keep you from innovating something even better.  Clairfy your thoughts, jot down your idea, conduct your market research and, if the results of your findings reveal a niche market that you can go after and hope to dominate, continue by defining your market strategy and business plan.  Once you know where you’re going and how you will get there, it is full steam ahead!

Frequently, our ideas are born from personal needs.  As the old adage goes, necessity is the mother of invention.  It is the truth that there were no wheels, once upon a time.  There are literally millions of examples just like that in your everyday life, once you stop to think about them.  Each of those inventors and entrepreneurs may have sounded like lunatics when their ideas were new but they didn’t let that stop them, thank goodness.

Brilliance is everyone’s birthright, isn’t it?  Whether or not we made the Dean’s List at school, we all come up with amazing ideas which seem mundane to us and others view as being strokes of genius.  You will know when you have latched onto one of these.  When your light bulb moment consumes your waking thoughts and is exciting enough to keep you from hitting the snooze button in the morning, promote it to a passion.  You know it is right, you know people need it, and you must do what is necessary to bring it to them.

Your Flash Forward doesn’t have to be a flash in the pan.  You know what you must do.  Quit thinking and talking about it and get to work!

The Most Successful Entrepreneur

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my new life in the place that I’ve always wanted to live … San Diego, California.  This transition would not have been possible if I had not decided to become an internet entrepreneur and learned what it takes to get income online.

The year has been personally exciting.  It was delightful to experience a winter without sub-zero temperatures, far too much snow, and long, dark, gray days.  Enjoying bright and sunny 80 degree days for the Holidays, without the temperature being an anomaly, put a smile on my face too.  I haven’t tired of driving through the marvelous mountains while traveling around the area on business and roaming along the shores of the Pacific Ocean whenever I choose to is nothing other than magical.

From a business perspective, San Diego has opened new doors of opportunity.  For example, I was privileged to attend a local chapter meeting of Glazer-Kennedy’s Insider Circle this evening.  After some power networking and a few business card trades, I gazed around the room to see what sorts of people were also interested in moving their business beyond mediocrity.  Attendees came from all walks of life.  There were lawyers, doctors, building contractors, mechanics, holistic practitioners, artists, and, of course, non-pretentious internet millionaires in baseball caps.  What was most important was one common thread.  Each person in that room was there because they knew that there is always something more to learn.

Equally interesting to me was one of the motivational posters taped to the wall which read:

The most successful entrepreneur is the loneliest person in the world

I’ve experienced some entrepreneurial success and I totally  understand that statement from personal experience…

It isn’t that entrepreneurs are aloof or choose to walk alone but the road we are on is certainly a road less traveled.  When the scent which will lead to success is found, it requires fastidious and incisive intellect to hone in upon the source and follow the trail.

Sometimes discovery leads to changing strategies or tactics but the rewards are great when things begin to come together.  The path might not be straight forward and seeing around the bend requires occasional leaps of faith, at times.  One of the most important skills you must have is to stay the course and believe in your vision.

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What’s in a Name?

Frequently we forget the importance of Brand Equity. As internet marketers, that brand is not a business opportunity or a company we may have chosen to represent. While those things may assist us to get income, they are tools we use. By carefully managing the online image that is our name, we build potential for a future we cannot envision today. Nothing is more important than protecting our online brand image.

It may seem a little obsessive, but I set up Google Alerts for my name years ago after learning that my Real Estate clients were Googling me. That also heightened my awareness of what they might learn about me. In that instance, they were interested to learn of my artistic pursuits but, frankly, it didn’t impress me that this was the most prominent data they could locate. Energy was diverted to changing that.

The same tactics that I used to erase my Real Estate career from page one of Google will work for you if you are just starting out online. Immediate results were achieved by interacting on forums and commenting on blogs. Ensure that your posts are relevant to the topic and add value and always include your name in a signature block.

As an Online Branding Consultant and WordPress Website Designer, I’m fully aware of branding strategies for companies. Using education, experience and business acumen, I’ve helped many people identify and implement their online branding strategies.

To assist those of you who have not studied business, it might be important to explain the four different types of branding strategies that are used.

Single brand identity is as it says a separate brand for each product. By way of example, if you have a company with several products, you would develop each product identity as a stand alone brand name. Hershey does this by having product groups, but each product name is name is much better known. Most of us know that M&Ms are a Hershey product but do we automatically relate the Hershey name to Twizzlers or Heath Bars? The resources required to manage multiple unique product brands must be considered if this is the strategy you are choosing for your business.

When a company uses its name for all their products, they have implemented an umbrella branding strategy. This is the approach that is employed in my business model for it allows flexibility and ease of brand management. More famous examples exist, however. Sony, HP, Linksys, and GE, are household names for their product lines while the model numbers are obscure things we only look at when filling out a warranty card or contacting technical support.

Multi-brand categories are different brands for different product categories. In this scenario, the same company has different company names for their product groups. As a former Minnesotan, Pillsbury comes to mind. Through acquisition, they grew from milling flour to a large conglomerate owning several restaurants and store food brands. Mergers have returned the company to their core competency of baking products and they have since divested all their restaurant holdings.

Lastly, a company might choose to have a common name stem. This is useful for leveraging brand loyalty. Nestle has done this with Nescafe, Nesquick and Nestea.

What is a brand and why should you protect yours?  The marketing mix should focus on consistency and quality. Even if your business is primarily affiliate marketing, Top Gun affiliate marketers like Ewen Chia and Michael Cheney have instant access to their loyal lists to get income whenever they want it due to the careful management of their names and the products they have chosen to endorse.

Your brand is your reputation and, if you manage it well, it will serve you for years to come.

How to Analyze Competition for Entrepreneurial Success

As a seasoned entrepreneur, it is clear that having knowledge of business basics provides a competitive edge.  Regardless of the scope of your vision, if your intention is to use it to obtain financial freedom, having a solid plan is critical to your success.  As a former colleague of mine once opined, a plan is something that you can use to measure your progress. Also, if you are seeking to secure investor funding, you must have a formal business plan to present for their consideration and it must include detailed market research.

Assuming that you believe that the money or time you are investing or plan to invest in your business is valuable, you will find it easy to appreciate the need to analyze your competition but you might be asking yourself how to go about it.  Essentially, competitor analysis involves two basic activities:

1. Obtaining information about important competitors
2. Using that information to predict potential competitor responses

Casual knowledge about your potential competitiors is normally not enough.  Using a systematic approach to gather a wide array of information permits you to make informed decisions about how to best position your new product or service or how well the business you are planning to join is positioned.  The objectives and assumptions of competition are indicators about what they are doing and what they are capable of doing, which defines their strengths and weaknesses.  As you uncover market risks from studying competitiors, remember that one person’s risk can become another person’s advantage.

There are many sources of public information for you to use while gathering your intelligence.  If competition is organized and traded publicly, you can review documentation required for them to sell stocks.  This includes shareholder reports, 10K reports, analyst interviews, management statements and press releases.  Most of this information is available on sites like E*Trade.  Another good resource is to scan press releases from PRweb, a site you might even use in the future.

If you understand the business objectives of your competition, you can more accurately predict their response to various competitive moves.  As an example, a business focused on short-term financial goals will not be willing to invest financial resources in response to an apparent competitive attack.

You can determine what is important to your competition by learning more about their structure.  An organizational overview will reveal a lot.  The functions that report directly to the chief executives are those that will, most likely, be given priority.  If your idea targets functions with lower priorities to your perceived competition, it is your advantage.

If you clearly understand the assumptions of your competition, you can predict their reaction to your interference.  Imagine that the company has previously suffered a product failure which has caused their executives to determine there is no market for that product or service.  This knowledge presents an opportunity to be explored.  Little known companies like Honda have leveraged advantages just like this!

Evaluating your competition’s resources and capabilities provides insights into what competitors are capable of doing in response to a threat.  You can delve further to determine how quickly they will be able to react too.

After gathering information about your competition’s objectives, assumptions, strategies, and capabilities, compile it into a response profile of possible moves they might make against your idea.  Like pieces on a chess board, you can use these profiles to anticipate the possible moves on the board well in advance of the plays and have a plan of action that keeps you in the game.

We all are aware that that there is competition in any market.  Whether your business idea is online or offline, it is critical to evaluate competition, as well as buyer behavior.  In fact, some schools of thought suggest that one ought to evaluate consumer behavior prior to analyzing anything else, which makes sense.

Michael Porter, the man who imagined strategic analysis, was a business thought leader in the early 1980s but … well … his stuff was written in the early 1980s.  As we all are aware, business has changed significantly since then, partially due to major advances in technology.  A couple of theorists named Brandenburger and Nalebuff extended Porter’s work to include evaluation of consumer activity using something called the Six Forces Model in the mid 1990s, and their work involves game theory.

If your product is internet based, there are many tools that measure what people are searching for and some even offer statistics about consumer behavior but, without knowing what data was used to calculate it, the onus falls on you verify assumptions you have made about the market niche you want to reach.  The next post will provide more details about this topic, so stay tuned!

If you are enjoying my articles or find them valuable, please leave a comment and let me know.  You also might want to share them with your friends on your favorite bookmarking site or social network.

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Strategic Analysis – An Entrepreneur’s Best Friend

When you are disappointed by anything, what are your tactics for overcoming that feeling? Not so long ago, my grandson answered that random question in this way:

“Oh … I just look out the window and take some action.”

My curiosity was satisfied through further inquiry. The action that this astute 6-year old boy takes is to imagine that he has gotten what he wanted to have. Without thinking too hard, he knows how to do something that many people have paid money and invested many hours to learn. My grandson mentally rewrites the story so it ends in a way that he can feel happy. He shifts his mindset!

Whether this is intuition or instinct remains a curiosity but there is no doubt that my grandson’s method works. Envisioning a desired outcome enables you to see, hear, and feel it in such a way that it can become real. It is the basis of the popular Law of Attraction philosophy.

Envisioning what you want to go after is only the beginning, however. After you’ve imagined it, you need to perform some soul-searching that measures your personal readiness to operate in that niche, as well as performing due diligence about the future you have envisioned.

Two models are used for strategic analysis in business; PEST and SWOT.

A PEST analysis should always occur first. It measures a market, including competitors, against four external factors; Political, Economic, Social, and Technological. When conducting this phase of due diligence, it is critical to be crystal clear about the market aspect you are addressing so you can observe the external factors from any of the following standpoints:

• a company looking at its market
• a product looking at its market
• a brand in relation to its market
• a local business unit
• a strategic option, such as entering a new market
• a potential acquisition
• a potential partnership
• an investment opportunity

Within each of the aspects of a PEST analysis, there are several details that need to be evaluated. This analysis may seem more useful and relevant for larger propositions, but very small businesses can use it to locate significant issues that might otherwise be overlooked.

A SWOT Analysis evaluates the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This tool measures a proposition or idea, including competitors, and assists with understanding and decision-making for many business situations. Here are some examples of what a SWOT analysis can help you assess:

• a company (its market position, commercial viability, etc.)
• a sales distribution method
• a product or brand
• a business idea
• a strategic option, such as entering a new market or launching a new product
• an acquisition
• a potential partnership
• supplier changes
• outsourcing services, activities or resources
• an investment opportunity

Strategic Planning may not seem essential but, even if you are the only one at the party, careful evaluation of any business action prior to making an investment is prudent. In a small way and somewhat unconsciously, we perform these analyses every time we go to the grocery store so it makes perfect sense to do so when considering a business, doesn’t it?

At internet speed, the pressure to act quickly is always a factor when deciding whether or not to pursue something. Whether the decision involves $5 or $5,000, the result is the same if that business doesn’t pan out and there is no one to blame but yourself if you have taken no time to investigate it.

Using PEST and SWOT templates to evaluate your plans will force you to think through all the aspects of whatever you are investigating.  The internet is a remarkable asset in this research but it should not be your only resource. And, if your research reveals that your idea is not all that you had originally envisioned, young children also teach us something else. When they are interested in what they’re doing, a fall rarely causes them to stop playing the game.

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