Internet Marketing and Business Tips, with concentrations on Search Engine Marketing, Social Networks, and Internet Programming advice from The Search Artist: Joseph Franklyn McElroy
From magazine "Open" issue September 2001 - "The McElroys kick open the doors of old business models and capitalize on what they believe."
There has always been a recurring controversy in the technical world - "are good programmers born or are they made?" Essentially the responses vary between "there are superstars and the rest don't matter" and "let machines do all the coding better than humans". Usually there are underlying motivations to every answer, like a vendor with a code generator to sell, or a programmer with freelance services to sell.
My own response always fell on the side of the superstar programmer, as that was a self-serving answer to support my livelihood. Now it is interesting to see, as an SEO (and still superstar programmer), that the controversy has cropped up in the SEM world.
Essentially, people are saying that good Search Engine marketers are naturally talented and able to manage complex campaigns. And that there is a shortage of these people.
Let me tell you why this is true. No matter what side of the programmer debate you are on, most people agree that there is a shortage of programmers. Well, I believe that the really good SEO/SEM person is also a programmer! They have to be able to analyze complex systems, modify algorithms, debug problems, and report on progress sometimes with only an intuitive grasp of where things stand.
So if there is a shortage of programmers, and with more responsibilities falling on programmers shoulders, there is just less opportunities to find underemployed superstars.
All this is probably why I am enjoying being an SEO and much as I do - because it utilizes the same talents that make me a great programmer, if I do say so myself :)
As well as being a marketer and programmer, I am an artist. So I always keep my eyes open for those special talents who create something that inspires viral linking on the Internet. This video below is especially effective for me
It combines talent with Design and SEO in a enjoyable delivery that is going to get this guy noticed. Bravo for an inspiring effort and demonstrating the power of talent in marketing.
I just recently had a discussion with someone where I stated that creativity is on the dark side of human nature. They were shocked, and I was somewhat surprised myself. But as I thought about it, I realized that this dark side is not equivalent to evil. What I meant is that creativity is about solving problems that don't have a well illuminated path towards a solution.
The process of creativity intrigues me. I have made a study of it. I get very passionate about creative problem solving. And what I find fascinating is that many people, if not most people, are afraid to go into the dimly lit world where creativity awaits. I am not alone in this observation. David White, a creativity consultant, observes in his book "The Heart Aroused" that in the ancient poem Beowulf, a stag about to run into a deep lake, instead prefers to stand and die. The fear of the deep, dark waters was more intimidating than fear of death. He likens the edge of the lake to the edge of our fear.
I want to offer you assistance of myself and the otherCorporate Performance Artiststo face that edge. We have dove deep into the lake of creativity. In Art, Technology, and Business. And unlike Beowulf, who hides his sword, we do not hide the tools that make us successful. We help you learn and understand from what we accomplish.
While the pool of creativity from which we can offer services is large, I will give you some specific areas that we are immediately prepared to help:
Search Engine Optimization - driving more targeted traffic to your web site.
Custom Web Development - building web sites, ecommerce, and applications for the Internet
Rich Internet Applications - creating state-of-the-art media and database applications for the web and desktop
Business Development and Market Research - helping you plan your Internet Business
Online Reputation Management and Fundraising - for non-profits raising their game.
We take on a very few client partners, preferring to give exclusivity with an appropriate reward. We are currently seeking to add another relationship. We are seeking fee based or revenue share relationships. Some equity opportunities might be accepted. We also seek to work with non-profits that want to increase their online fundraising.
Our track record includes: building major systems for Fortune 500 companies, helping launch a CAFM startup that was purchased by a larger company, raising several million for a dot-com that became profitable, creating the technology for a successful online retailer, and launching a print on demand solution. Currently we are helping a music and a media startup. We also have several SEO client partners doing very well.
We need another client partner. Are you wanting to dive deep into the pool? Give me a call at 646-334-1885.
Hey Lottery Winners! A good client of mine, Woodbridge Investments LLC has been offering great deals to help you get cash for your annuities.
Even though I write this blog post as part of an SEO strategy, thus demonstrating some of the techniques of the trade, I also have found that the people over at Woodbridge to be genuinely friendly and concerned about being a good service provider. I would trust them with my financial matters.
In last week’s blog, I talked about the surprising findings of a major study of online consumer behavior, "The Digital Shelf: the Opportunity for Search Marketing in Consumer Packaged Goods." Statistics illustrated that consumers are going online in record numbers to find ordinary consumer products such as baby foods, dish detergents, skin care products.
Search professionals, myself included, aren’t surprised by these findings, but Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies are still shaking their heads with genuine shock. The average CPG spends 1% or less of their total advertising dollars on search. They have a lot of work ahead of them to move their product websites up to first page rankings. Earlier today I arbitrarily searched "gentle dish detergents" on behalf of everyone with detergent-abused hands and wondered if my personal favorite, Dawn, would show up. A few environmentally friendly dish detergents appeared in the top spots. Dawn dish detergent showed up in fifth and sixth positions, but it wasn’t the company site; it was epionions.com and a North Carolina woman who undertook her own study of which dish detergent did the best job of gently cleaning black, sticky oil off of birds. (Dawn won the test.) I stopped looking for the dawn-dish.com site after the fifth results page. Clearly, they have some work to do to improve their rankings for "gentle dish detergents." My wife told me to search "flake-proof mascara," because she was curious to see if her favorite brand, L’Oreal, showed up. Sorry to say, it didn’t, and I stopped looking after the fifth results page. However, websites selling Paula Dorf’s mascara filled the top 10 positions, and Paula’s company site, pauladorf.com, had a respectable second page position. We had never heard of Paula Dorf before today, but now my wife is going to buy and try Paula’s mascara. Did L’Oreal just lose a customer to Paula? Very possibly.
It’s a very good thing that "The Digital Shelf" study hit the newsstands. Now CPG companies can see the tremendous, untapped potential of search for their consumer brands. Search will help them reach a much wider audience of people who aren’t just looking for coupons, but are genuinely looking for product information to make an intelligent buying decision. After all, there’s a lot more room on a website for compelling product information and demonstrations than there is in a 30-second TV commercial or a half-page magazine ad.
CPG companies are waking up to very good news. They are beginning to understand that "search is, indeed, synonymous with reach." Search can reach the millions of potential customers who are hunting on line for their kind of products. Now all they have to do is increase their Internet budgets and watch the magic happen.
On November 1 and 2, 2007, the Federal Trade Commission will host a Town Hall entitled “Ehavioral Advertising: Tracking, Targeting, and Technology.” The event will bring together consumer advocates, industry representatives, technology experts, and academics to address consumer protection issues raised by the practice of tracking consumers’ activities online to target advertising - or “behavioral advertising.” The Town Hall is a follow-on to a dialogue on behavioral advertising that emerged at a November 2006 FTC forum, “Tech-Ade,” which examined the key technological and business developments that will shape consumers’ core experiences in the coming ten years. In addition, several consumer privacy advocates, as well as the State of New York, recently sent letters to the FTC asking it to examine the effects of behavioral advertising on consumer privacy.
Do people care enough about consumer packaged goods (CPG) to go online and search for their websites? A recently released study of online search habits says, without a doubt, they do.
The study is a joint project of ComScore, SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) Proctor and Gamble and Yahoo, and it’s creating quite a buzz online these days.
Look at these numbers: Food products led the pack with nearly 44 million category site visitors from search. Baby products generated 15.7 million visitors; personal care products followed with 9.8 million and household products attracted 1.7 million visitors. Search created a significant percentage of those visits: 60% of visitors to baby product sites; 47% of visitors to food sites; 27% of visitors to personal care sites, and 23% of visitors to household products sites.
They’re not just clipping coupons
More fascinating statistics: The study also revealed that the majority of non-searchers and searchers weren’t just clipping electronic coupons (that activity accounted for 47% of non-searchers and 40% of searchers). The bigger numbers came from people seeking information and help about consumer products - 73% of searchers and 58% of non-searchers.
This is a pivotal report for all of us in the Search Engine Marketing profession. It proves that search is playing an ever-increasing role in how consumers make important buying decisions, whether it’s shopping for a mortgage or finding out how safe their baby foods are.
Not only is search bringing more traffic to CPG sites, that traffic is first-class. Searchers are predominately female, with higher incomes, better educated, and bigger spenders than non-search traffic.
The potential for search is tremendous for CPG companies who are now spending a mere sliver of their advertising budgets on search. It looks like search can reach the mass audiences these major conglomerates have been having such a hard time reaching in traditional, offline media.
"The Digital Shelf" study is huge for SEM professionals like me who have always known that search would become a ever-increasing part of people’s lives. Search helps make sense of our information-overloaded society and all of the choices we face. It helps us make better, faster decisions whether we are house hunting or shoe shopping.
Subject for our next article: "Bridging the CPG Search Gap." Consumers are searching online for CPG products, but even their favorite products are hard to find.
