As discussed before, there are networks of companies planting cookies on your machine and tracking behavior across websites. That means you'll see an ad on one site based on what you did on another.
You can opt out for free. Here's the not very well promoted link.
You'll see a list of which members of the NAI are already placing a cookie on your machine and you can get rid or some or all of them.
To be really clear: I don't mind the cookie sniffing. I don't mind getting better ads. I don't mind the sites making money.
I mind the sneaking around part.
April 19, 2009
In the ongoing battle between dismissive irony and well-intentioned trustworthiness, the early rounds always seem to go to those that sell snark.
Snark is clever and funny and easy to spread. Snark protects us from confronting the truth of the situation, and snark is incredibly easy to do. Snark is fun, but it doesn't look good on you.
In the long run, though, it's those with right intention, a long term view and consistent persistence that manage to win.
Good thing, too.
April 18, 2009
Blogs have eliminated the reason for most business books to exist. If you can say it in three blog posts and reach more people, then waiting a year and putting in all that effort seems sort of pointless. The chances that your effort will be rewarded with income in proportion to the time you put in are pretty low.
This has raised the bar for what it takes to write a decent business book. I really enjoyed The Peter Principle years ago, but I think we can all agree that today it would be better as a blog.
The best non-fiction books today either deliver a complex message that takes more space and attention than a short series of blog posts can deliver, or they are convenient packages to spread an idea from person to person in a more powerful way than an emailed link can. Books can take their time and build an argument, while blog posts are constantly fighting the reader's ability and desire to click away.
The irony? The market demands that you summarize your book in a blog post.
We're hesitant to buy a book (which is a far better value than just about any form of media) if we don't think we're going to like it. I guess that's built in from childhood, cause you get in trouble if you don't finish a book, and who wants to finish a book they don't like?
At least once a week, someone emails me a lousy review someone did of a summary of one of my books. Not the book, but what they thought the book was about based on a blog post summary of the book.
Critics and shoppers are doing the same thing about your spa, mp3 player and insurance company. We now review the blog post version of it, not the actual experience. "I heard the service at this restaurant was lousy." How's that for condensing four years of hard work and training into a sentence?
And then we complain when the long version doesn't pack enough
punch, seems too short and isn't transcendent enough for those that
persevere.
This is irony (we say we want long and deep and rich but we also insist that it be condensed to a sentence) so it's not clear what you should do about it as a marketer, other than to accept that it's going on.
April 17, 2009
Chris just published this free manifesto. This PDF is what generous looks like.
April 16, 2009
[update: the link is broken now]
How about this for an update:
Remember that a job interview isn’t a job, and that your goal is to find a path forward, not to get picked.
Careers are part of our practice. An interview is just an event.
In the 1950s, Congressman George A.
Dondero denounced modern art as a communist plot.
Every day, you market ideas that some people are annoyed with or more likely, afraid of. And in the face of fear, we lose eloquence and start calling things names, usually names that don't make a lot of sense.
Nothing is a communist plot any more, but there's never a shortage of bogeymen available to the people in the community that you're frightening.
A presentation is a precious opportunity. It's a powerful arrangement… one speaker, an attentive audience, all in their seats, all paying attention (at least at first). Don't waste it.
The purpose of a presentation is to change minds. That's the only reason I can think of to spend the time and resources. If your goal isn't to change minds, perhaps you should consider a different approach.
- The best presentation is no presentation at all. If you can get by with a memo, send a memo. I can read it faster than you can present it and we'll both enjoy it more.
- The second best presentation is one on one. No slides, no microphone. You look me in the eye and change my mind.
- Third best? Live and fully interactive.
- Powerpoint or Keynote, but with no bullets, just emotional pictures and stories.
- And last best… well, if you really think you can change my mind by using tons of bullets and a droning presentation, I'm skeptical.
A presentation isn't an obligation, it's a privilege.
April 15, 2009
The one thing that will allow your business to get funded, or to get a business to business buyer to buy from you or a college to admit you is the sense that your success is imminent.
If it's a foregone conclusion that you're going to break out, that all systems are go, then only an idiot wouldn't jump on board.
So, the real question is: what signals indicate that your success is imminent?
The brilliant venture capitalists are the guys who invest their money months or years before everyone else realizes how imminent the success is. They have better radar than the rest of us. Your job as a marketer or entrepreneur is to amplify the signals that buyers and investors look for. Spend your money on the right stuff, ignore the rest. If you try to market and spend on every element of your story, you'll be merely average. If, on the other hand, you can focus on which signals represent an imminent success, the leverage kicks in.
Simple old-school example: In 1984, I drove across the country from California to Boston to take a summer job at Spinnaker Software. As I drove through Chicago I passed a billboard for the company. Incredible! This little startup already had billboards across the entire country.
A few months later I found out that they had exactly one billboard, located between the airport and the convention center, put up just in time for the Consumer Electronics Show. For the buyers flying in from Minnesota or Texas, this was was one more clue that the company was about to hit it big.
April 14, 2009
There are two ways to use SEO to help your organization. One is reliable and effective, the other is a glorious crap shoot that usually fails but is wonderful when it works. I'll start with the second.
The most common way to use search engine optimization is to find a keyword (like "plumbing") and do whatever you can to 'own' that word on Google. This is Google as the Yellow Pages (with free ads).
The Yellow Pages are terrific for plumbers, because if you need a plumber, that's where you're going to look. Buy the biggest ad, be the first listing, you get calls. Google is a revelation because it's a super Yellow Pages and it's free! The problem: how to be the first listing, because being the 40th listing is fairly worthless.
The answer: You probably won't be. There are 14 million matches for Plumber, and no, you won't be #1 or #2. You lost. In fact, in just about every keyword worth owning, your chances are winning are small.
(To the .00001% of the people reading this who win–congratulations. You can ignore this post.)
This method is so appealing because it's all about converting the non-converted. For free, you show up in front of people who didn't know about you and you get your shot to convert them. This is the marketer's dream.
Am I saying it's not worth trying to win? Of course not. If you can give it a shot for the right set of keywords and not spend too much or count too much on winning, then go for it. But the other method is a lot more compelling (and, yes, you can do both at the same time).
The other way to use SEO is a bit more organic. (Let's call it the White Pages approach). It involves owning a keyword that you already own. Do a search on ShoeMoney in Google and you'll find 340,000 matches. Wanna guess who's first? ShoeMoney. Why is this surprising? After all, he invented the word and he owns the domain.
Someone hears about Jeremy's site from a friend or from a blog or from some other source. They want to visit his site and they type it into Google. He told me that he gets five times as much traffic from this search term as any other on Google.
The power of this technique is that with determination and patience, you will certainly win. It requires inventing a trademark and then building a business or service or organization around this trademark that people actually talk about. You want to be able to say to someone, "just type ____ into Google."
Obviously, the only people who will do this have heard about you in some other way. So this is an amplification and word of mouth strategy, not a blue sky conversion play.
Here's the math:
If you are lucky enough to 'win' at traditional Yellow Pages SEO, you might convert a few percentage points of the traffic you get into customers. On the other hand, if you win at White Pages SEO, if you win because people talk about your unique take and use your name, you convert just about everyone. Think about that… if someone types Seth into Google, they're probably looking for me, and so when they arrive here, they stay, because they found me. If, on the other hand, they type in Cow, most of the people who end up here aren't looking for my book, so they leave.
David Meerman Scott owns the word 'Meerman'. I have no idea if he uses his middle name in real life, but it sure helps him online. Scott Ginsberg owns the term 'nametag scott'. You get the idea. It's like owning the perfect domain, via Google.
When you start to win at the White Pages strategy, it turns out that this helps you win at both. Your blog or site gets more organic traffic, which will organically raise your Google results for other words and phrases.
Step by step:
1. Make an incredible product, offer a remarkable service.
2. Associate a unique term or trademark with it. (Something that isn't generic, and preferably, not a crowded search term already).
3. Assuming that you do #1 and #2, you'll end up owning that word in the search engines. If you don't, revisit the first two steps.
The hard part, of course, is making something people choose to talk about. The good news is that this is under your control, which is better than the alternative.
April 13, 2009
Here's an ad for the super-exclusive new Visa black card. "It's not just another piece of plastic. Made with carbon, it's the ultimate buying tool."
Amazingly, it's limited to just 3,000,000 people and advertised with full page ads.
When mass marketers try to market exclusivity, the paradox always catches up with them. And we're on to this.
This is a huge opportunity for smaller players and insurgents, because you actually can offer exclusivity, and not just to three million people.
April 12, 2009
