Posts from — February 2009

Cranking out the old iTunes Library I came across this oldie but goodie. I used to listen to this song in my neighbors attic on a little tape player alarm clock thing.

Fee by Phish

Thats what they need. Love is all they need.

Show small businesses some love, show them your marketing will work for them and then show them some more love. There are so many hawkish businesses out there out to grab a dime (not steal, just take) without being grateful. We operate with the idea that our customers make our business run and that we should be thankful and grateful.

Times like these, everyone can use a hug. OK, maybe you don’t have to actually hug them, but let your clients know you are their for them.

An old one, but many might not know it:

“Delicious” by ZOX

Don’t tell me you don’t love electric violin…

I was in the gym today and Fox News was on. I’m a hating fan of Bill O’Reilly (the guys an idiot but hes so awesome). But Hannity came on next and I just cant stand him. He is so negative. He opened the nights news with an announcement that appeared like it was daily. “Today was day 35 of False Hope and No Change” REALLY? Can you not support the President of our country now!? After spending 8 years bashing anyone who critized Bush for “being unpatriotic.” I digress…

People are too Negative these days. It affects the way we work, the way we think and the way we interact with each other. Our moods are down, and they rub off on other people.  This article on LifeOptimizer.org (what a sick name) goes into the details of why you shouldn’t watch the news too often. This isn’t news to me, and it came out a few days ago, but it brought some thought to me today. I had a great day, I cleaned my inbox out, got my list done entirely before noon - it was great. I didn’t check the news or twitter all afternoon becuase I was so busy. And I’m psyched I didn’t.

The market tanked again today. Theres nothing I can do about it, so there is no reason to worry about it. Of course there are lots of reasons why I should, but they are all worrisome, depressing thoughts. Lets just call this a recession, realize it sucks and stop sh*tting on ourselves everytime bad news breaks.

Or maybe we could just ignore the news for a few days and relax. Gain some inner wa.

I find google maps local business search to be utterly useless. Time and again, I enter a local business term and I find nothing that is usefull to me. For example, this afternoon I wanted to cruise into Greenwich, CT and do some work in a nice locally owned coffee shop (ie NOT starbucks). A quick Google resulted in this:  http://bit.ly/19UmsA, the first 10 listings in google were totally useless to me, none of them even deserved a click. So I went with the Local Maps. Also useless; I had heard of a place I was trying to find and it wasn’t there.

Alas, I was forced to use Yelp. I like Yelp, its a great service but I never use it.  Here is the search results I got in yelp: http://bit.ly/Cyd5D. Great results, I found the business I was looking for and there were about a dozen additional businesses that were in Yelp’s data compared to Google’s. Here is another good example of why Marty Himmelstein doesn’t know what he is talking about when he says SEO doesn’t matter.  As good a job as Yelp has done with SEO, they should be showing up in this search term. Apparently Google didn’t think they content on Yelp directly related to my search was important enough. Great SEO would have placed the most relevant results in front of me on the top of the first page. Great SEO wouldn’t need me to type in a website directly becuase it would deliver them to me when I ask.

For all you local search businesses out there, keep going. Google isn’t doing local well and unless they decide to focus on it (please dont, please, please!) they aren’t going to. Matt Cutts, if you read this don’t get any ideas

The lesson from this is: SEO is absolutely priceless. And if you aren’t doing it, or you are harping against its value you will be riding a sinking ship into the horizon.

What are your experiences with Google Maps Local (as a consumer)?

There has been a lot of chatter about local business data recently in the local blogosphere. (Here and here ) I’m in the business of local business data and I agree it sucks. I spent this week at Search Marketing Expo attending sessions from some of the best in the business and the search engines themselves. And what I realized is that everyone is just trying to create a technology that will eliminate personal interaction and direct updates.

There is no one size fits all anwer to the local data question. How do local businesses represent themselves online. Well first you need to educate them on why they should be online. (here’s a good resource for education) If they know they need to be online chances are, they don’t know where to start. They don’t know where to start. Some have ideas, some have misgivings and some are misguided. One of the biggest problems I find is that there were people that came to them in 2003 and told them they were the next big thing. Small businesses paid up and never heard from these guys again. They are weary and rightfully so. Today there are about a hundred local search options out there, thousands if you incorporate all the offline media they could be buying.

The real query that hasn’t been indexed is how do you gain trust, build a really SOLID local business database and make money while doing this all. Not an easy question. Automation is nice, but you aren’t going to get a bar owner to self-service, not in 2009, maybe not in 2012 - maybe not for along time. The issue is time and ROI and trust. Small businesses don’t want to waste their money on advertising, but they know they need to advertise so they are willing to do that. What they really don’t want to waste is their time.

So if you are venturing into the local search space, you need to recognize one thing. These guys are busy and they are afraid to try new things. If there is one thing thats on our side though, its the fact that they can’t keep justifying increasing print rates with declining circulation and escalating printing costs. So they are going to have to try new things. Alot of companies charge for customer support, so why can’t you? Because you don’t have it.

No algorithm will ever replace handshakes and personal contacts. Walk your prospective clients through your product, educate them on why its valuable and you’ve got a client. Give them a self service portal that injects their business into a Live Nation infested noise fest, they’ll never take action.

Moral being, talk to your customers.  Be there for them. The web is strange enough for these old tymers don’t be a full voicemail box and an anonymous email. Be a person, don’t forget - they’re people too.

I am spending my first trip to San Francisco working and taking in the culture. I’ve been attending SMX West, getting some great knowledge, meeting some really interesting people and really exploring the power of Twitter. I installed tweetdeck so I could monitor the conversations happening in other sessions. I made some new friends through the online conversation, then I met them offline after the sessions. The world of SEO is a funny one and there are some pretty clear thought leaders in the field. Its exciting to be meeting and learning from them out here.

The real takeaway I’m getting from this was accentuated by a second post from Fred Wilson I just read with my morning coffee. Its about Status (facebook/twitter status) and how it is quickly becoming integrated into our social fabric. In a way it is sort of becoming our social fabric. I explained to my girlfriend why Twitter is interesti by relating it to Facebook Status, or Gmail/AIM away messages. In college I would put real thought into my away message when I went to class/lunch/out. Some people would be “boring” and put “class” up, and others would say things like “enduring another endless rant form my crazed finance professor” - Thats interesting, and its not a need to know, but it can make me laugh and it can make me want to meet someone I might only know through class or passing in the hall.

As more and more people are using Twitter and more and more functionality becomes available through their API, its only going to get cooler. And the potential to integrate a single update to your Twitter account and your Faceboook is really exciting! We are working on a solution to this right now, and its going to be live in a few weeks (focused on getting small businesses involved). Twitter is just so freakin cool, there’s no reason anyone should be afraid to jump in.

Fred’s posts are typically very inteligent and this Status post (read along with Truth) is certainly no exception. But today I feel extra energized to be involved, even in just a tiny way as a user, in this media revolution thats occuring. Its happening right now and i fantastic! Maybe its the atmosphere out here, maybe its just this week immersed in my geek side of life, but I think its all of those things and just a general feeling that better things are coming.

For now, I’m going to keep living my life 140 charachters at a time and I’m going to get as many people I can to start doing that too. Because the more people who are contributing the better the interaction will be, the better the content will be and the better off we all will be. If I can get my girlfriend to twitter, I can get you too…