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Mark Ramsey’s got a great interview on his blog, with audio, featuring Richard Laermer, author of “Punk Marketing: Get Off Your Ass and Join the Revolution”

From the interview:

Richard, what led you to “Punk Marketing”?

We asked why it is that everybody we know in marketing is unhappy. Well, maybe it’s because they’re just doing what they’re told to do rather than what works. So we put together this book which is a manifesto on everything you should be doing to realize that the customers are in control, that basically “anything goes” in marketing if it knocks customers off balance and engages them.

As a marketer, you must break through the clutter, and if you do it well and bring creativity into it and you don’t just scream out at who you’re selling to, then you can actually win.

Definitely listen to the audio – he’s does a wonderful job explaining how the customer has come to own the brand. 

1. Think big – just because you know there’s only two of you in your company doesn’t mean the world needs to know.
2. Don’t put off good ideas – it’s too easy to say “I’m too busy, I’ll get to it tomorrow.”  If it’s a good idea and it’s going to have a positive business impact, find the time.  (Read Mary Schmidt’s post on this here…)
3. Keep your focus, Pt. 1 – don’t get distracted by mixing personal stuff with business, especially in marketing.  Yes, your niece is cute, but we don’t need to hear her butcher the English language in your radio ad.  Spend a few $$$ on a real spokesperson.
4. Keep your focus, Pt. 2 – what’s the message you are trying to get across to the customer?  On some level, a marketing message should boil down to one core idea, and you ought to be able to roll it off your lips almost without thought.  Stay on the message, and eventually they will hear you.
5. Let your customers speak – it’s one thing for us to say we’re great, it’s better for a customer to say it.  Try to include more customer testimonials and quotes in your marketing.

Forbes.com has a tremendous article today entitled “Condemned To Google Hell” and it’s a must read for any business owner who’s got a website.  For those of us that rely on the web, it’s the stuff that keeps us awake at night. 

The article relates the story of Skyfacet.com, an online diamond seller who for reason or reasons unknown was relegated to the little known “supplemental index”.  Overnight hits via the search engine dried up and they lost hundreds of thousands in revenue.

Google Hell is the worst fear of the untold numbers of companies that depend on search results to keep their business visible online. Getting stuck there means most users will never see the site, or at least many of the site’s pages, when they enter certain keywords. And getting out can be next to impossible–because site operators often don’t know what they did to get placed there.

Google’s programmers appear to have created the supplemental index with the best intentions. It’s designed to lighten the workload of Google’s “spider,” the algorithm that constantly combs and categorizes the Web’s pages. Google uses the index as a holding pen for pages it deems to be of low quality or designed to appear artificially high in search results.

I have for some time noticed that Google doesn’t often reindex sites that aren’t frequently updated often.  Active sites (like this blog) are reindexed daily.  So I put forward the proposition that regular updates to your site, in addition to adhering to best practices for SEO help to keep you in good stead with the search giant, and out of “Google Hell.”

Okay, I’m not a huge fan of M&M’s but I have got to hand it to them for launching their own custom imprint stuff and doing it over the web.  I’ll be keeping them in mind for any trade show stuff or hand out swag in the future.

http://www.mymms.com/business/

We’ve just finished with a couple major engagements, and are waiting for a couple others to crank up.  Rather than spend time whipping the roses into shape, we’re going to offer a special on starter websites.  If you need a simple site (or for that matter, a complex one) email us and we’ll send you the details on the special.

• Custom Design
• Basic Search Engine Optimization
• Contact Form
• Analytics package

Now’s a great time to see the difference a great web presence can make for your business!

My nephew visited yesterday and mentioned he’s begun his job search, after his Army sting post WPI.  He’s looking for a position in Civil Engineering. After a tour in the Land o’Sand, I’d say he’s pretty much ready for anything.

This got me thinking.  We hear so much about “I support our troops” but I haven’t heard that translated to “hire a vet.”  Are we forgetting those who’ve sacrificed for our country?  I hope not.

In the case of my nephew, why wouldn’t you want a guy who’s worked in an environment where mistakes landed you on the front page of the NY Times?  A tour of duty has made him a proven leader of men, given him responsibility well beyond his years, and shown that he has what it takes to get the job done.

If you’ve got a slot open for a Civil Engineer or Project Manager, email me, and remember, there are lots of other deserving vets out there who could use an opportunity. 

I was going through the traffic stats for the blog yesterday, which is always an enlightening experience.  The #4 content page was   /blog/index.php?tag=small+farm+animals – which is the link for all content tagged with “Small Farm Animals.”  I can only hope that’s because it’s spring and all the parents out there are looking for petting zoos.  Either that or the readership around here is even wierder than I suspected.

If this blog was owned by Clear Channel, we’d now be contemplating an “all small farm animals, all the time” format.  Heck, I’m honestly considering it anyways…except for the fact that I’d run out of things to post about quickly.

On the content side of the analytics, I’m surprised to find that my snarky “Nothing Like a Microsoft OS Upgrade” post is the top performing post; which is somewhat startling since it went up in late February.  That’s points to the fact that while getting traffic to your site is good, not all traffic has value for your site. 

Comparing our stats from the month of April last year, when we had 47 unique users (no blog back then…) we’ve increased to 947 unique users.  That’s a 445% increase in 12 months.  Who says blogging is a good business strategy?

I was reading Alan Mutter’s post about Mike Royko the other day and was struck by the import of it’s message to bloggers.

Unlike most of today’s columnists, who can’t get beyond scribbling self-absorbed drivel about the ho-hum things that happened to them in their cubicles, at the breakfast table or while getting their hair cut, Mike wrote about real things happening to real people in a very real way.

In the days before “crowd” and “source” became a single word, Mike effectively deputized the entire population of Chicago as his legmen, relying on readers to feed him the outraged and outrageous tips that enabled him in his prime to generate five gem-like columns a week.

Bloggers are columnists – not reporters, and the successful bloggers have tight niches, and those niches tend to be ones which might never be filled in print media.  The problem is that as bloggers, we don’t have a copy editor telling us we’ve got to get the opposing viewpoint, or suggesting that we ought to give the subject of our scathing rebuke the chance to respond, in print, in our own column.  We more likely don’t have anyone even checking our spelling or grammar.

Even worse, most of us never leave our cubible, like the columnists Alan refers to.  Rather than emulating Royko, we emulate Andy Rooney, and are more likely to write about the “what’s up with paperclips?”

Here are a couple of stupid blog tricks that will have an affect on your traffic:

1. Pull a “Dvorak”  – write a post that says “Mac’s Stink” or “Microsoft Sucks” or even “Apple Should Pull the Plug on the IPhone” Be sure to tag the post with the appropriate tags, then sit back and wait for the flames.

2. Speedlinking – Technorati ranks us based upon the number of inbound links we get.  Try doing a couple posts a week that have themed links in them, such as “web design best practices.”  Link to 6 or so blogs, all of which allow track backs, and you pump up your Technorati rating, while getting valueable relevant links that help with your Google PageRank.  At the same time, you get a flow of traffic from those other sites.

3. Play on the puerile – put misleading titles on your posts, which is the internet version of the old “Sex, now that I have your attention…”  Watch the traffic come in, then watch it leave, decreasing your depth of visit dramatically.

4. Adopt an all Anna Nicole Smith, all the time format.  Watch the traffic come in, then realize they don’t know how to read, then move to an all pictures format…

Col. Bruce Hampton and the boys performing “Ike Stubblefield” in a music video directed by Nestor Rivera Jr.  I was really hoping to post “Lima” – one of my all time favorite dance tunes, but alas, the only video was a black screen with virtually unlistenable audio.

[youtube]LpvNOOl4Ftc[/youtube]

Yech…I’m looking into the design of a directory style site, and I really want to improve the user experience using Ajax.  I hate the idea of asking users to drill down through a sea of links to get their reward.  Instinct tells me that we’ve got to change the user experience to make the site the success that it ought to be.

Sounds great?  Sure, how can you go wrong by improving user experience?

Therein lies the trap.  There’s a road littered with pitfalls ahead – and they potentially get right to the core of the customer’s business model.  Without giving anything specific, let’s look at what we’d reasonably expect that strategy to include.  First, since it’s a directory, we’re going to expect that much of their traffic will be coming in from search engines, like our good friend Mr. Google.  Secondly, we’d assume they’ll be monetizing this traffic with something like Adsense, and probably traditional banners. It’s a decent strategy that could potentially develop long legs given time.

But the problem is that to make the site work better for living and breathing humans by using Ajax I will be drammatically cutting their pageviews, and potentially throwing up a roadblock for search engine spiders, which can’t read javascript, hence cannot read Ajax. 

(more…)

Mary Schmidt has an excellent post that really gets to the heart of the small business website posts that had posted back and forth between Maureen Rogers and myself two weeks ago.

So, instead of going to yet another “networking” flat rubber chicken dinner – where you see the same people over and over (none of whom have ever given you any business or referrals) – think about budgeting – say – five hours a week to learning, building and implementing your Web strategy. And, remember, a web site is never really “done.”

Absolutely spot on advice!  I met a fellow last week who was telling me that he needed a website for his painting business (a three man crew) but that he’d be waiting until July, when he was busier and had more money coming in the door.  My point is that if work’s slow now, that is *exactly* the time to get things going (and you don’t have to break the bank to create a decent web presence).  Throw the doors open to new customers and make yourself more available.