From the Real Simple Success newsletter.

photo credit: daniel9d

In this week’s issue: It’s the technology plus YOU that makes the technology magic. Don’t forget this, if you want to the technology to work for you.

My father came home with his first personal computer in 1983. Time had just named the personal computer its “Man of the Year” a year before. They were brand new as mainstream appliances.

It was magic. It lit up, and the tiny green characters danced across the screen, changing at a whim. No more white out, no more backspacing to underline a word.

My father was a writer, and for years, he planned to write a novel, but never quite got around to it. (In the last years of his life,he did get around to it–and wrote many good novels.)

After a few months with the MBC-1000, my father said, “you know, I guess I have to admit:

“I somehow thought the computer would help me be a better writer. But of course, it won’t make me be a better writer. To be a good writer, you just have to write. The machine’s not going to do it for you!”

It’s the same now, as it was in 1983. The magic of the technology dazzles us, and somehow convinces us that we’ll magically be freed from doing any work!

I think it is easy to–often unconsciously–apply this same thinking to today’s web technologies. While many of these attitudes are below the surface, I think it’s easy to get into mindsets that subtly reflect this same viewpoint. Attitudes like:

The fantasy: “Once I have an amazing, beautiful new website, lots and lots of new clients will find me and give me new business.”
The reality: The website is a tool to facilitate new business; it won’t bring it to you on its own.

The fantasy: “Our new FaceBook page will create lots of new clients.”
The reality: You can create lots of new clients, using FaceBook as a tool, by focusing on producing value for them, over time.

The fantasy: “Once we optimize our page to the right keywords, we’ll start getting a flood of traffic to our site.”

The reality: Depending on your keywords, this could be true, or much more work could be required. Focusing too heavily on keywords can get you distracted from your main mission; unless you have lots of money to spend, you’re better of starting by focusing on

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I don’t mean to sound cynical here. The point I am making is that the combination of these technologies, plus someone who really has
something to say, and really wants to help their customers–now that is very powerful. To ignore any of these ingredients, right now, is very foolish.

In each case, the point is that the collaboration between these wonderful new technologies, and a person who cares about his clients, and is devoted to helping them succeed–that is the powerful combination.

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My father kept that MBC-1000 for, like, 10 years. “It’s a dinosaur,” I would think, but “it gets the job done”–that’s what he thought. And over the years, I am sure that simple computer saved him many hundreds of hours of effort, over using his old Brother electric typewriter. He learned how to get it to do what he needed it to do, and it did it well, for many years.

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What’s your relationship with the technology you use? Do you expect it to “do it for you,” or do you find ways of working with what you
do? Please share, by adding a comment below.

I love this list from AllFacebook.com.

Some of the highlights:

• Go steady. It may take a little more time, but it’s worth it. Don’t expect instant results or blow all your enthusiasm in the first few days, but slowly progress and make progress.
• Contact your fans directly. Treat each one as a new business lead. Greet them personally, and connect with them. This is a nice idea!
• Don’t spam. I’d include in this, things that are too promotional in nature. People don’t want to be hard sold things on FaceBook!
• Use incentives. Of course, give people a reason to connect with you!
• Keep fans entertained. Post occasional entertaining statuses.

The full story: www.allfacebook.com/2009/07/facebook-small-business/

This week: FaceBook pages

I have been having a lot of luck lately with FaceBook pages, and have been creating FaceBook pages for several different clients.

This is a good thing, because as CopyBlogger pointed out recently (www.copyblogger.com/facebook-killing-seo/), FaceBook is really changing the game. With reportedly up to 250 million people on the site now, you really have to have a FaceBook strategy.

And lest you think it’s still just for the kids, the membership in the older demographics has been going up steadily.

FaceBook has been referred to as a “walled garden,” because the vast majority of what goes on in there is not available to Google. Traditional marketing strategies such as SEO, or AdWords, simply don’t work in there.

And it is this walled garden that people are flocking to, taking refuge from spammers, and just a glut of information.

But now, on to the point of this: FaceBook pages offer an incredible opportunity to businesses.

Anyone who has an account on FaceBook can create a FaceBook page, for their business, service, product, or even as a fan page for a concept or cause.

And, here is the ideal situation: Your friends see your posts in their news feed, fall in love with it, and click “Become a Fan”. Then, their friends (who don’t even know you exist!) fall in love with it too, and then they become fans. And, as the old commercial goes, “and so on, and on, and so on,” until the whole world–or everyone who could possibly become a fan–becomes one.

Meanwhile, lots and lots of them end up becoming clients, or buying your products, or supporting your cause, etc.

Does this make sense? FaceBook has made it really easy for people to share things with their friends. All you have to do is click “Become a fan,” and you’ll start getting updates in your news feed. All you have to do is click “Share”, and you can share the post with any friends you think will find it valuable. And that is how it can spread.

Emphasis on the word “can”. Like anything else, thought needs to be put into this, to do it right. To take full advantage of the situation.

I can’t cover everything here, but here are the basics:

1. Use Your Page Title. Your page title needs to be the front-line marketing for your page. Ask yourself this: “If I knew nothing about this company, but I was interested in the topic, what would cause me to become a fan?” A great example of this is theKbuzz (www.facebook.com/thekbuzz). They use the page title to list both their brand, and their function: “theKbuzz | Social Media and Word of Mouth Marketing”.
2. Make a Compelling Image. Pick a compelling, fun, and interesting image. Remember that it needs to work for both the thumbnail image, and for the larger image on the page. Play around.
3. Write for Your Readers. Oh, yes, that. Post something, at least once a week. Remember: do not hype your brand, product, or service. Instead, give people valuable information in an easily readable format. Using the Notes tab in your page is an easy way to post content.

There’s lots and lots more, but that’s a start! Email me with any more questions you may have!

photo credit: Wall Tea

Sonia Simone has an excellent post on CopyBlogger about all of the fear — other people’s — that we are coming up against, when we try to motivate them to use our products or services.

Harkening back to the days of sea monkeys, when as kids, many of us were titillated by the promise of owning a kingdom of miniature sea people, only to find out that sea monkeys were just brine shrimp.

The betrayals went on from there. Simones point, is that when we are approaching someone with an offer, we are going to come up against all of the built-up disappointment, resentment, and cynicism that has built up since we were kids.

The circle of trust, for anyone, is pretty small. We need to build it up in as many ways as possible, and keep earning it.

Link: http://www.copyblogger.com/copy-conversion/

As I am getting more into this area of marketing a site through “organic search,” or “SEO,” I began to start questioning some of the practices I started to do. Do I feel right doing things that go against the intent of the makers of a system, just because I can, and I will get a result from it? When is it right to create a pseudonym?

I am reading from the book The Art of Power, by Thich Nhat Hanh. He always speaks about the importance of looking deeply into the motivations for our actions. If we do this, we can preserve our personal trust in ourselves. Do I want to trick people, just because I can? Some SEO practices veer into this territory, even when most people might call them “white hat,” or “grey hat.”

I have to think about the intentions of others, so that I will be contributing to a civilization where people can trust one another. I made a personal list of things that I considered ethical, versus grey area, or black area, for me. Many practices in SEO involve working with the way Google (and other search engines) intend to find good information, and doing things that way. On the one hand, aligning with that way, can be a good way to get valuable information–your information–found by Google.

On the high end, it could even be a service, because Google does want its search results to be relevant. It does everything it can to make the highest search results reflect relevant information by genuinely interested people, with a good intention to help visitors. So, if I have a good intention to help my visitors, and this intention aligns with a business intention, then I am moving towards having a really ethical business.

On the other end, however, it is easy to try to “trick” Google, to get better results. The difference is between aligning with the way Google finds relevant information, and tricking the intent of that same formula, or algorythm. In the former, you find out how to line all the parts up, to generate a win-win solution for everybody. Everyone wins.

In the latter, you look for holes in the algorythm–exceptions or rules Google hasn’t thought of, to get past Google’s rules.

I began to construct a list of things that I felt were possible to align with, grey areas, and ones that definitely weren’t. Now, none of these things go into the realm of what would normally be called “spam.” It’s just that for me, some of the greyer things still don’t feel right. They don’t feel like a good way to contribute to the kind of world I want to be living in, where we can trust each other, and we are honest even when we don’t have to be, to avoid “getting in trouble.”

Here is a breif summary of the things I came up with:

OK: Pay a writer to write a genuinely informative, or entertaining, article, about your subject, with the keyword you’re optimizing for showing up in the text.

OK: Submit that article using your real name, to any number of article sites, with the bio pointing back to your target page.

Or paying an assistant to submit that same article for you, with that same author information.

Maybe OK: Submitting that article under a pseudonym that represents a deliberate identity, with a full profile, for purposes of creating an on-purpose persona around a particular topic.

Feels weird: Submitting that article under a persona designed to decieve the reader in some way, or hide my identity. For example, because I don’t feel good about the topic, or the submission involves practices I don’t feel really good about.

OK: Genuinely using social bookmarking services to socially bookmark a page I have helped to market, which I feel good about, and using comments I genuinely believe in, and stand by, for the purposes of having other people know about this.

Maybe not OK (feels weird): Automating the submission of these same bookmarks, or paying an assistant to submit them.

Feels weird: Creating multiple accounts on the different social bookmarking sites, designed to create the effect of multiple people showing interest in the page, where it is really only one. Submitting to sites whose content area does not reflect the page’s content, just to get another link. Simulating the feeling or organic interest without any real interest.

Online ethics is weird. Where do you draw the line? But what I can say is: violating the written terms of any social bookmarking site, because you can. It is important to pay attention to the intention of the site, because that’s really one of the main means of assessing what the alignment would be with that site.

The temptation to not tell the truth is great, because the rewards are high. Everybody wants to be first. The motivation is to veer towards believing you have the most relevant content (easier), rather than having the most relevant content. This will cause one to attempt to take short cuts.

I feel if we have the intent to create the most relevant content, then things will go better: “We want to become the very best resource on the internet for lawnmower repair.” Rather than, “we want to get to #1 on Google for ‘lawnmower repair’.” The first is a means of getting better, and placing more and more value in the world, and the second is about trying to trick the system, to get something as quickly as we can, as if there’s nothing left.

Being a facilitator of great content, aligned with Google’s guidelines, feels like a good mission. Helping people trick Google so that they can get more hits is not a mission I want to become involved in.

One vision is one of facilitating great content, and earning attention. The other is a vision of stealing attention.

OK: Posting a relevant comment on a forum or blog, that genuinely adds to the conversation. Then, adding a link back to the relevant target page. Put attention on providing valuable content, contributing to the discussion, and then giving your credit. Maybe 45–65% of the attention on providing the content.

Feels weird: Posting a comment that is really just a filler, in order to create the effect of a genuine comment, with 95% of the attention on getting the link. Paying someone to get a link, when they don’t care about it.

OK: Using your marketing activity to attract the genuine attention of others, to create more traffic. For example: using a StumbleUpon campaign to generate traffic from organic visitors, to an exciting and interesting page.

Feels weird: Creating the illusion that a group of different people are interested in something.

The first method involves creating spikes of interest that can precipitate a flood of interest in something of genuine value. The second involves simulating interest.

OK:

• Automating submission to video sites, podcast, sites, press release sites, etc., of genuinely valuable and relevant content
• Arranging articles to enhance the perception of relevance to Google (based on its genuine relevance)
• Professional association listings
• Relevant Craigslist postings, aligned with their rules
• Creating actual software related to a produce, to submit to software listing sites

Feels weird:

• Creating “software,” that’s not really software, to trick the software sites into giving you a backlink

The overall feel here is that there are different visions of an SEO’s role.

The first, is as a content producer, aligned with the purposes of advancing the value of information on the web, and in my client’s content area. It places most of the emphasis on producing quality, and then utilizing techniques aligned with the intentions of the sites’ visitors and the sites’ intentions, to direct attention to my client’s site.

It encourages me to encourage my client to produce something of real value. To align with the way the web is intended to work. It puts my client in the business of producing real value. And I suspect, like all aspects of life, the net effect over time, will be, that more and more outside people will begin to praise this site, and give it genuine attention, which is what Google wants, and what the world needs more of.

By contrast, the other vision of the SEO is rather like a carnival barker to me, a kind of a huckster. Someone who knows how to work the system. Anway, that’s how it feels to me.

As I explored this, I felt a renewed excitement to play the former role for my clients, and help them produce great quality, understand their market well, and get the full credit due for it!

Selfish Selling includes these attributes: The focus is primarily on making the sale, not serving the customer; the attitude is primarily self-serving; the agenda is some level of deception, and the perspective is that of “win-lose.”

Selfless Selling includes these attributes: The focus is primarily on serving the customer; the attitude is one of generosity; the agenda is to educate and inform, and the perspective is that of “win-win.”

Link: http://actionplan.blogs.com/weblog/2008/11/the-spirit-of-selfless-selling.html

People who teach public speaking tell their students to pick out one person in the audience and speak to them, to increase their focus and the personal feeling of the message.

Cold callers are coached to smile when making a call, because it makes a big difference how you feel when you are making the call, even though the recipient can’t see you.

Designers of web applications come up with a few characters, whom they give names to, so they can personalize the experience they imagine their users will have. “So then Judy comes to the buy page. She looks around… but, I’m not sure if she would be able to notice the button right away; it’s so small.”

In the same way, when you are composing an email to your mailing list, pick out one person in the list, and write to that person. Imagine what their needs are. Where they are sitting. What other tasks they are facing that day. The computer they’re reading it on. Now, imagine what they would want to know about right now, to help them solve a problem.

A compelling quote from the excellent marketing book The Irresistible Offer, by Mark Joyner:

Over time, marketers have discovered that the easiest way to sell something is to appeal to our basest needs and
to exploit the weaknesses inherent in our psychology. For example, rather than walk our prospects through a logical
buying decision and help them to purchase something that will genuinely help them, we con them into thinking that
our Widgets will give them happiness and unlimited access to attractive members of the opposite sex. This is but one
of the many tricks up the marketer’s sleeve employed in conning the average consumer into making illogical buying decisions.

The average American goes deep into debt buying silly (and sometimes downright harmful) things that he simply does not need. This process has not just pushed the average consumer into debt; it has lowered his values as well.