I am so inspired by this video from Shoemoney… this is link bait at it’s best. By the way, his site is incredible if you’re interested in making money online with affiliate marketing… you should check it out!
I am totally into pranks. We have done things around our office like turning all of someone’s office furniture on it’s side and covering the entire floor, walls, ceiling and furniture of someone’s office with post its.
I even walked in my office one time and found 80 lbs of concrete in my file drawer (it’s still there).
Google has been know for their pranks
So, what do you think Google will do for April fools day this year?
I was just a bit confused today when I popped Google up for the first time. See, I have slightly bad luck with computer viruses (they love me) so any weird little thing my laptop does sends me into a 5 second internal panic.
Needless to say, going to Google.com and seeing a black background for the first time…well, ever, that I recall…messed with my head a bit, made me think someone may have done the impossible and hacked the crap out of Google.
Than I saw Google’s little message: “We’ve turned the lights out. Now it’s your turn – Earth Hour.”
Seeing as how I’ve been interested in the whole ‘going green’ phenomena for a while now and was even contemplating a “Going Green In The Office” post, I had to see what EarthHour.org was all about.
So I click, waiting with baited breath…only to be met with:
Lovely. Nothing like getting all hype about something online, only to be thwarted by that damn yellow, exclamation point-filled triangle.
I mean honestly, how many times has it been said – one of the fundamental rules of link baiting is making sure your server can handle the traffic!
And let’s face it – getting Google to sponsor your nonprofit organization/event is some darn good link AND traffic bait. I realize that it’s not Google’s fault that a third party website couldn’t handle their traffic – but still, they could have warned them. Google being the Internet behemoth that it is, I just expect more for them.
That being said, I was still able to see what Earth Hour was all about on a secondary site they had set up. How’d I find it? I googled that bitch of course! (Please excuse the language, it’s my day off).
So anyway, I guess I’ll turn my lights out tonight as well (8:00P sharp). I hope they don’t expect me to be turning the TV off. There’s a funny dude on Comedy Central tonight I want to check out.
Here’s a few tips and interesting facts I’ve read about ‘going green’:
Oh, and perhaps I should have introduced myself in the beginning here – I’m Ashley, the resident content developer, copywriter, SEO, PPC manager, keyword researcher…well, let’s just say I’m capable of doing a little bit of everything!
Well, our company is growing. Our client base is getting larger and larger and we need to add some team members to our staff, so do me a favor and spread the word to any one you know that may be interested.
Specifically, we’re looking to bring on 4 different types of people. I have run through them below, but you can get more information and upload your resume on our internet marketing jobs in PA page.
Our company is located in Lancaster, PA, which is about 1 hour from Philly, 3.5 hours from New York City, and about 1.5 hours from Baltimore. If you want to apply, simply upload your resume and we’ll call you.
These individuals will be responsible for mapping out large scale internet marketing campaigns and helping to orchestrate them from a high level. Some of the projects are our own internal companies and others are our clients, which currently range from fortune 500 companies to “large” small businesses, if that makes any sense.
SEO Engineers need to be creative as they are responsible to develop high level link baiting ideas.
Love to write? If you’re an experienced journalistic writer, you’d have fun working with us. Press releases, articles, web site content, blog posts and more are included in the requirements for the web content writing position.
Google, Yahoo and MSN’s PPC programs are very popular for our customers. If you have a TRUE UNDERSTANDING of how these programs work and have a track record and experience, let’s chat.
It’s all about link building. Link building includes important things like negotiating with site owners, creating relationships with web masters, identifying linking oportunities and more. This position is for those who want to get going in SEO and have outgoing personalities and an in depth knowledge of the internet and basic html skills.
It’s amazing what viral marketing can do. Think about the dinner table conversations that went on this night.
I’m a big fan of just browsing sites and examining their logos. I guess it’s a bit geeky but I think it’s a pretty normal thing to do if you’re really into something. So this weekend I was clicking through some design sites and some non-design sites and saw some pretty good logos and some really bad logos! Unfortunately a good cross-section of the bad logos have been designed over the last 5-10 years while logo standards have somewhat dropped off.
The standards I speak of are pretty simple. Readability, clean, appropriate fonts and colors and the ability to be recreated for black and white usage.
Right off the bat, the first (and often biggest) offender has been the recreation in black and white factor. I attribute this primarily to the internet age. More and more often you see marketing being geared strictly to the world wide web, and since you don’t see many black and white computer screens, there isn’t much need for a black and white logo. Well, that is just craziness, you still need your logo, your brand, to be usable in color AND in black and white… even if you go green and don’t use paper, chances are that prospective clients still do, which means you must still design for print as well as web. It’s a simple concept but very true.
I think the rest is pretty self explanatory. Obviously you want your logo to be readable, else why would you have a name? If your logo looks sloppy, guess what that says about you? And if you use odd font combinations and strange colors… again… what does that say about you, about your business… and if you happen to be dealing with visual advertising and marketing, what kind of vision are you portraying with such nonsense?
So I say to everyone who would happen to come across this post, in your opinion, what are some examples of good logos and examples of bad logos? Of course this is all your opinion, but please give some backing to your candidates and why you feel they are good or bad.
Sales departments wish that marketing would stop thinking they are the rulers of the earth, marketing departments wish sales departments would take their cocky arrogant attitudes to another planet for… well… ever, and the tech crew wishes that sales and marketings’ peanut-sized brains would grow at least to a size where they could identify what caused a problem rather than stating what the problem is.
Today (and this was confirmed through some meetings we’ve had in recent weeks), companies large and small have these three vital departments wasting TONS of time, energy and resources due to a lack of understanding in modern business principals.
Marketing departments need to understand that the days of throwing a hundred grand at a TV or billboard campaign and watching the sales teams phones light up are a thing of the past. People are able to educate themselves about you now with the click of a mouse. They are doing the research light years ahead of when they used to… and they’re doing it without your help. It’s just them and their Dell laptop. That’s right sales guys… there’s no cheese ball with a big ‘ol smile “helping” them in making their “best choice”. They are all alone and there’s nothing you can do about it.
So, here’s what needs to happen… and quickly… or your fortune 500 company or dream of a Fortune Small Business cover story may just go bust in the next few years.
Tech
Guys and gals… listen up… Your job isn’t to sit in a room and code any more. That’s part of it, but put your marshmallow shooter away because you need to put in a little more time now. Marketing is now in your job description whether you like it or not. It’s your job to create lead generating web sites, content management systems, and automated follow up systems for the marketing department. Don’t like it? OK… go work for Microsoft or Google in a department that has no influence on sales or marketing. When you’re part of a company that has active sales representatives and spends money on marketing… it’s your job now to get involved and think ‘tech’ with sales and marketing in mind.
When it comes to technology, today’s marketing department members tend to be dopes. Don’t be offended marketers… it’s not all of you, just the majority. They were taught the ins and outs of marketing and it had NOTHING TO DO WITH TECHNOLOGY. The “idiocity” that you sense really isn’t “idiocity”… it’s ignorance, and they are uncomfortable stating that they don’t understand something. Work with them, teach them, and show them the creative side that 80% of you possess. Prove that you can make their lives better and easier… it’s finally time for you to shine, my friend… so do it brightly.
Marketing
Listen closely… you DO NOT know everything. I know! That education of yours was “way expensive” and you did learn a lot about psychology and how people react to the color blue… but tech has something to offer you. And guess what… It’s now your job to do the sales reps job! What???!?!?! I know, it hurts to hear that and your ears and cheeks are getting redder and redder. Listen though.
Product and service buyers (whether consumers or businesses) used to have to call a sales rep to get information. Well, now it’s right online. All “Bonnie Buyer” has to do is give Google a shout and Google tells all right then and there. So first off, if Google doesn’t feel you’re the most important when Bonnie types “” into the search engine, give “Timmy Techguy” a call and have them get you to the top of the engines. If they don’t know how, hire someone to.
Once they find you… your job isn’t done. You need to convert them into a lead by getting their information. Here’s where A LOT of SEO’s screw up royally. So many search engine optimizers are so consumed with getting to the coveted number one spot that they don’t even think about what’s going to happen with the traffic once it gets there. Type just about anything into google and click on the number one result. You’ll find that about 90 percent of them don’t even have a call to action on the page. WHAT A WASTE!!!
OK, so you’re getting traffic and getting leads now, right? So now you’re going to give them to sales, right? NO! STOP! DON’T. If you do the water cooler talk in the sales department will sound something like this:
“Man, Harry… how about these horrible leads that marketing’s been sending over… they really suck!”
Now, am I saying that sales is “right”? No, I’m not… but if you want growth in your organization… you need to “cultivate the leads” so that they actually turn into prospects. So, call “Timmy Techguy” again.
Have Timmy build you a customized CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Or, of course, he could use ours if he calls us. 8 )
The CRM will automatically follow up with the leads via email and schedule things like letters, phone calls, thank you cards, gift sending and more to your clients based on the product or service that they’re interested in. Marketing… you’re now the “assistant” to the sales team. Does that tick you off? Well it shouldn’t… just deal with it.
Sales People
I’m going to make this simple. Ditch the BS. Toss out the superficial attitude. It smells like the trash can in my garage (I have 4 kids… two in diapers) and EVERYONE can smell it a mile away. But here’s the thing, you don’t need it anymore. When you get leads from marketing, it’s because they have been followed up on and they’re now ready to buy. Your job becomes explaining to them why they should buy from you and not one of your competitors. Be respectful and understand that any attempts to snowball them can be stopped with the click of the mouse. A huge issue I see every day with sales people is their lack of technical ability… especially those over the age of 35… it like an epidemic. Go take a class for goodness sake.
So look, all of you get in the same room together, and it will be uncomfortable. Tech… you’re the kingpin bringing it all together, so if you don’t like to talk in groups, get some help. The bottom line is: get traffic – get leads – cultivate leads (through automation and personal touch) – close leads.
This is your show. Now have at it.
The general consensus is that “web designers can make a site, but they can’t make it look good. Graphic designers can make it look good, but can’t make it work.”
I say, bollocks to that!
When I was a design student there was a clear-cut difference between Graphic Design and Web Design. You would think that the differences were easy to determine, i.e. graphic design is print and web design is internet. But that was not the case. (more…)
Sometimes you go about things in the wrong way. I may have done just that when I decided to do the first (of many to come) SEO experiment on our blog.
If you haven’t yet read the SEO Flattery Experiment post, it’s available here. To summarize, I wanted to test the idea that you could build links by flattering people who you wanted to get links from. I have an interest in photography, subscribe to about 30 photography blogs, and have a photography blog myself… so I thought… Hey… I’ll create a list of my personal favorite photography blogs and then rate them based on some different things and see what happens.
So, I spent about 6 hours analyzing these blogs to determine which ones were the “best of the best” based on 3 pieces of criteria.
There was very little response at first, until I sent emails out to the blog owners. All but two of them responded almost immediately with a courteous “thank you”. One of them linked… which was great! In a conversation I was having with Aaron Wall about SEO and link building, he mentioned that his opinion is that if you can get 10% – 20% of the people, you should consider yourself successful.
I started to see some decent traffic as a result of the post within a day or so. Then, one of the bloggers posted it to a forum and traffic really took off.
They got pissed.
And then I started getting emails. I mentioned in my post on this site, the name of the designer who created 3 of those blogs that were posted. I did this giving them “props” because I really like their work. Well, someone got into a conversation or sent emails or something telling all of the photography blog owners that the post was part of an SEO experiment.
One emailed me saying that he was going to post about it, but now that he knows I was blowing smoke up his ass that he wasn’t going to now.
Another spoke of me as unethical and how dare I do such a horrible thing.
The other, someone who I have actually hired in the past made a comment that they “don’t know how they feel about it”.
Here’s the deal in the end. That post on the ConklinImages blog gets more traffic than any other post now. And in addition, the post is coming up when people search for things like “greatest photography blogs” and other’s that you can see on the original post.
I ask you this my pissed off photography bloggers (whom I still admire)…
Is it a bad thing when someone googles “10 greatest photographers” that your photography site comes up as one of them on my site? I don’t think so.
Getting Hacked
I have never worried about security on my photography blog site in the past because it was just a hobby thing and only had like 50 unique visitors a day… it was really just a personal thing.
So, when I set the thing up forever ago, I 777′d my main blog directory so that wordpress could access my htaccess file. I know!!! Half of you are SCREAMING at me right now. For those of you who don’t understand, this leaves your site WIDE OPEN to hacks.
I had posted screen shots of each of the photography blogs that I rated. I looked at my site the other day and all of the screenshots posted that were of blogs designed by infinet design were completely changed to other images.
Now, they have since been changed back and I have locked up my site a bit better. I don’t know who did it, but I have my assumptions and I say “props to you” for having so much time on your hands.
When I was investigating my log files to see when things were changed… sure enough, my htaccess file was changed on a day that I did not touch it.
Now, I believe that the most comical part of the “hacking” part of this story is the post I wrote a few months ago about securing your site.
peace.
Oh… congrats to Aaron Wall… your comment from the original post was correct.
I was very impressed this morning while reading an article by Matt McGee about a company called Pink Cake Box, who sells specialty cakes located in New Jersey.
The internet marketing success story talks about how the company was able to succeed online. Because of their online success, they have received a lot of media attention and sales growth.
But the foundation all begins with a remarkable product. If you don’t have a product that sticks out from the norm, you’re not going to be successful with internet marketing… without a lot of effort. Seth Godin is the “God of Being Remarkable” in my opinion. Almost any industry can do it… it just up to you to figure out how.
They made the statement that “they have not yet explored PPC marketing and don’t plan to”. I LOVE that! My success online with our companies has always strongly focused on PPC, so any time that I hear of a business who doesn’t use it and is successful, it gets my juices flowing.
