Sunday, April 25, 2010

Stay Focused for Succes

Some time ago, Chris Anderson of Wired magazine wrote the now infamous article about "the long tail".  He argued that the music industry needed to have broad based "hits" and serve narrow "niches".  How does this apply to staying focused for success or Internet marketing for an attorney in Fresno, California or an Aston-Martin dealer in Scottsdale (or Scotsdale as I have been known to spell it) Arizona?

The long tail theory applies to smaller businesses and Internet marketing in a very direct way.  Successful Internet marketing only happens when you know exactly how people are looking for you.  The search engines are smart, but if they were perfect, they would match the right website to the right person every time and Internet advertising would die along with their key source of revenue (and mine).

Until that day comes business owners need to clearly understand their customer.  The Aston-Martin dealer is a pretty clear case.  They pretty much sell and service one British marque, the Aston-Martin.  If you have a Ferrari, you go next door, a Porsche around the block.  The Lawyer presents the more common challenge.

Should Your Business Have a Blog?

My friend and super communications consultant Mary Mayotte has said she doesn't like blogs because it is all "Blah, blah, blah, blahging".  She is right about that.  Think of internet search engines as small children.  In order for them to understand something you need to tell them over and over.  Blogging is one way to do that. 

You can write the same idea with five different angles. Each of those angles might appeal to a different group of readers.  Even though your are "Blah, blah, blahging" as Mary says, you are also writing to several different groups of readers.  For some this is fun, others theraputic and some people juse despise it and should pay to have it done for them. 

The other nice thing about a blog is your readers don't have to read your whole blog, just the part they were looking for.  Some blogs like the blog the movie Julie and Julia was based on might be read in their entirety, I doubt it though.  The internet isn't for readers, it is for skimmers, surfers and people with a specific topic they want to "browse".  That is why you are reading this in a "browser".

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Why Tweet?

Twitter for SEO is important because "Tweets" are indexed. Let's say for example you own a sandwich shop. A sandwich shop like a dozen others in your area. You tweet a few friends about a coupon you put on your website. They re-tweet to their friends. Your website just got a big vote count increase from the search engines for all the tweets.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Welcome

Welcome to the Rustic Creek Blog. Here You will find tips and tricks for improving your internet presence.

This week,

Take a look at Yelp.com. Are you there? Is your listing correct?