July 2011 - Page 2 of 3 by Mark Murnahan

Applebee’s Review Explains Why Companies Should Care About Online Reviews

Do people complain differently online than they do to your face? In most cases, you bet they do! Let’s have a look at why that matters, and how you can turn bad online reviews from a frightening fact of life into a benefit. First, here’s a short and relevant story from real life. It is my online review of Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar in Topeka, Kansas.

My wife and I worked very hard through the week. I am a web guy, and she is Owner / Chef of Mad Eliza’s Cakes and Confections … working hard is what we do.

After a long work week, we decided that our kitchen at home was closed for the day. Without deciding on a destination, we packed the kids in the car and headed out for dinner. As we drove down what I would describe as “restaurant row” in our town of Topeka, Kansas, we decided to go to Applebee’s. We figured it would be a quick place to eat, with something to suit everybody from ages two to 39. We had not been to an Applebee’s restaurant in a long time, but it didn’t take long to realize why.

Perhaps I would be a lot harsher if I had not waited ten days to write this, but I’ll be generous to say that they did a fine job with the ice water. As for the steak, it was absolutely without a shadow of a doubt the worst piece of meat I ever saw on a plate. It was as if Applebee’s purchasing department found the toughest cow in the pasture, put it on a treadmill for a few months to get rid of any tenderness or flavor, and waited for it to die of old age. Then they took the sick joke even further and sent it to my local Applebee’s, cooked it to a charcoal briquette and put it on my plate!

Note to Applebee’s: When a guy orders a steak “rare enough that a good veterinarian could bring it back to life”, and specifically asks for it cold, that means you don’t cook the damn thing into jerky!

That’s enough about the poor old cow … but how about that “baked” potato? It was cold … the way I asked for the steak. I could barely even cut it with the knife they gave me, and I am not exaggerating.

I hesitate to give an accurate Gordon Ramsay style critique, but mostly because I don’t want to curse that much on my blog … on a Monday. So, I made a video montage of Chef Ramsay to do the cursing at Applebee’s for me.

My wife suggested that I tell them about it, but I said … “I’m not going to be one of those people.” Of course, I followed it up by whipping out my phone, taking a photo, and saying “Nope … I’ll blog about it.” I am always looking for real-life experiences to blog about, so this opened the door to a topic of online reviews, and what could be better than a restaurant to demonstrate?

I don’t enjoy the personal confrontation, and I am not alone in this. Besides, if Applebee’s is running the kitchen that poorly, I can only imagine what kind of people are back there … and what they would do to my food if I told them they had done a bad job. Have you ever seen the movie “Waiting”? Here … watch this video “Why We Use Online Restaurant Review Sites“ to see what I mean.

Online Reviews Demonstrate How Customers Complain After They Leave

It may be easy to imagine that customers will exaggerate a complaint in an online review more than in person. There are surely instances of this, but the frightening reality is that people are often just being more forthright with their feelings of frustration.

It is easier to complain without company representation there trying to defend something that, as a customer in the heat of the moment, may seem indefensible. This holds true for both online and offline communications, but many people have come to expect less defensiveness from companies in online communications. One reason is because the company knows other people are watching, and another far worse reason is because the company is not watching.

Have you ever tried to complain to somebody who just didn’t seem to listen, or who did not give you the response you hoped for when you did complain? If you have ever encountered it, you surely know how aggravating that can feel. It is like an act of passive aggression, and it adds fuel to the fire. That is exactly how online complaints tend go, when companies are not listening. Here is the Wikipedia definition for passive–aggressive behavior:

Passive–aggressive behavior, a personality trait, is passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following through with expectations in interpersonal or occupational situations. It is a personality trait marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive, usually disavowed resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations.

It can manifest itself as learned helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible.

Online Reviews Are Not Just for Consumers to Read

I find many instances of companies afraid to acknowledge their online reviews. I have heard people say things as absurd as “we cannot do anything about a negative review anyway” or “what if we respond to a review and people don’t like it?”

Being both a consumer, and a marketing strategist, I hope you can imagine how this makes my hair gray. What about the concern that these are customers who want to be heard, and deserve to be heard? What about the outcome if companies don’t respond … can they really somehow believe that people will like that any better?

Reviews are great for consumers. They may present their review as a compliment, as constructive criticism, or express their anger to a company where others can see it. In each case, they present opportunities for a company to come out better than before.

In some instances, a customer may just feel that their complaint is too petty to deliver in person, or they don’t feel like the outcome will be worth even the least confrontation. Of course, there is also the matter of hunting down and waiting for the right person to best direct the complaint. Have you ever waited for a manager in a store or restaurant, or waited on hold to tell your story? People really hate that, but online, there is no waiting to say your piece, and there are often other consumers there to cheer you on with a rant. This is especially the case if the company is not responding, or responds poorly.

An Upside to Bad Reviews

Even in the event of a dispute or a harsh criticism, there is a great opportunity to improve people’s opinion. Dispute resolution provides many chances to let people see your company in a completely new light. If you handle online reviews well, the opportunity for gain is even greater than offline communication. Then again, so is the loss … so it is important to get this right! Give it some thought before you react. Consider how others may feel. Whatever you do, don’t bury your head in the sand and act like you never saw it. That is pathetic, and that’s will just add fuel to an already destructive fire.

Try to look at it this way: Complaints are a customer’s way of giving you a chance to regain their faith and make them happy. Ignoring them is not the right answer.

I have just one more thing to add, before I leave you to write your comments and share this with others. Here is a closer look at that disgusting steak and potato that Applebee’s served. It does not quite look like the one in their menu.

Steak from Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar, Topeka, Kansas

Addendum:

At the “brilliant” urging of a commenter, Lori Smart, I decided to add a copy of my receipt from this visit to Applebee’s. After all, as she said, “there is no record at the location’s management that you were even a customer there”. Here is that record, complete with the server’s name.

Here is a photo of my three kids across the table from my horrid Applebee’s steak. After seeing that nasty piece of meat, my dear little Madeline had to force a smile through the fear. 😀

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Social Media Goals and Complications of Winning

I just read an article from a great business coach and friend, John Falchetto. It related business to sports, and the importance of keeping your eye on the prize, rather than just the challenges that come between you and your goals.

His article got me to thinking about how people’s perceptions of winning are drastically different. John’s article, “How to Get Past Challenges”, included a video of Lance Armstrong racing in Tour de France 2003. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you have probably heard of Lance Armstrong. He won Tour de France seven consecutive times, even after surviving testicular cancer. That is a huge accomplishment, and he obviously knows how to win.

In the video, a competitor, Joseba Beloki, crashed right in front of Lance. Without hesitation, Lance found a way around the complication to achieve the win. Winning is what he does. He sees beyond obstacles of nearly any magnitude, and does not let them get in his way. Here is the video, so you can see it for yourself.

Armstrong swerved around the downed rider to continue in the race. He was focused on winning, and he surely had a picture in his mind of crossing the finish line with another victory.

Here’s the deal: In order to win in a competitive environment, it takes focus, and drive. You have to see it, feel it, and really want it to make it happen. In fact, you have to see it, feel it, and want it enough to overcome obstacles.

Sometimes the toughest obstacles come in the form of people who will hate you for winning. Whether it is a competitor, or just another cynic, some people really will hate you for winning … if you do it enough. Lance Armstrong has certainly taken a whole lot of criticism for winning, including relentless accusations of using performance-enhancing drugs.

The Psychology of Winning

The psychology of winning has been the topic of about a squillion books, and other studies. It should be little surprise that only a small number of them were actually created or inspired by “losers”. Oh, they have surely lost many times, but their perseverance continues to drive them to win. Some people hate them for that … I mean really despise them. Success polarizes an audience, and as much as it may be wrong, it brings people together, and it separates people. You just can’t make everybody happy … so stop trying! The ones who do appreciate your goals and your efforts will appreciate you even more.

When it comes to social media, that cynicism has very fertile soil. In fact, I wrote about the power of cynicism in a still-relevant 2009 piece titled “Self-Promotion: The Ugliest Term Ever!” This article was taken from one of my books, and it addressed the hypersensitivity of people when it comes to a marketing message. Some people will really hate it, and some people will understand that marketing is what helps companies progress toward better things. After all, without marketing, how many of the great products in your home or business would you own today? For that matter, without marketing, nobody would ever go on a date, get married, or carry on the species. We must market our goods and services in order to succeed, or even survive. That means showing what we have to offer, and delivering it to the right people, just to get anything in life, from a job to a mate.

Winning is a very tricky thing, and our individual psychology surrounding success is one of the biggest obstacles. I could write a whole book on the psychology of winning. Come to think of it … I already did! It was titled “Living in the Storm“, and I put a whole lot of experience into that book. I have won … a lot, both as a highly trained race car driver, and as a 15 year old school dropout who retired at 25, screwed that up, and came back to create a very successful corporation. It took a lot of losing, and a lot of scrutiny from people who hated me for those things.

Look at that … I just promoted two of my books in under a minute. Doesn’t that just piss you off?

Overcome The Cynics … They Aren’t Buying Your Lunch!

In a real-life instance of trying to please everybody, versus doing what is good for my readership and for myself, I’ll give you just a brief and recent example of cynicism. Remember, the cynics are not the ones we care about in marketing … the ones buying lunch, or the ones who know the ones who are buying lunch are what we care about here! The others will run you down, and they are obstacles. They often hold you back from doing the things which are best for your business, and they are clearly not there to feed your kids.

Perhaps you saw my snazzy new popup on the way here. In case you missed it, the popup looks like the image below. If you have a weak stomach, you may want to cover your eyes and scroll past this. It is pretty offensive!

A screenshot of this recent addition to my blog showed up in a Google+ post by my friend, Jeff Gibbard. His initial comment was “Nice new pop-up. Been thinking about doing something similar to increase subscriber count. Is that a WordPress plugin?” He was curious about using it on his blog, Social Media Philanthropy.

The next comment on the post was from Paul Mosenson, and it said “That is cool. I;d like to learn how he did that as well”. Paul’s comment inspired me to write a tutorial on it … one of these days (if you like it, be sure to subscribe, and I’ll show you how to do it). It is not a plugin, and since I am a programmer, I found it pretty easy. Surely I can help to make it easy for others, too.

Another comment was overwhelmingly negative, as if I had claimed to be a fan of Adolph Hitler, son of Sadam Hussein, and dear friend to Osama bin Laden … and then told him he had ugly kids and a slutty wife. I expected that mentality from some people. After all, it may actually serve my interests, and that would be … well, it would be … HORRIBLE! Yeah, getting something for my work … like somebody new to connect and network with, or a prospective client, or somebody who liked my work enough to pass it along to somebody who needs marketing help … that would probably kill teddy bears and make unicorns cry.

The point is that the people who made it beyond the horrendous insult of the popup are the people I care about. It takes under a tenth of a second to click any blank part of the page to make the popup go away (for a week), and it has boosted my subscriber rate at a significant level. Has it made people click away? It doesn’t look that way so far. Will it drive away the people I care about, or the ones who are actually buying my lunch? Heck no, they want to be here, and they appreciate the reminder to keep coming back, because I have something useful and interesting to say. They have interests in our mutual success, and they care that I keep doing what I do to help them, just as I care to keep helping.

In the end, there is a big difference between good business-building and the ugly mistakes that I wrote about a couple days ago in “5 Spam Tactics Good People Use to Kill Business Efforts“.

The difference is quality, but if you let people hate and intimidate you away from doing what your business needs in order to grow, they will be eating a lot better than you.

Do what you need to do, and do it with quality. Leave the “pleasing everybody” to the competitors who are willing to destroy their return on investment by pandering to people who really don’t give a damn about them anyway. You want the ones buying your lunch, and I do to.

If you see your life’s work the way the cynical people do, you are wise to sleep in a coat of armor and wake up ready for a fight. On the other hand, if you embrace the joy of a happy waiter, and do your very best job to serve the people who matter, your success will be measurably greater than the hateful others hoping to dictate your future.

If you didn’t hate this, and if you have an eensy bit of respect for the thoughts I shared here, tweet, Facebook, email, and Google+ this to those people for me, will you please?

If you did hate it, please add your comments to express your dislike.

Photo Credit:
Lance Armstrong by Angus Kingston via Flickr

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5 Spam Tactics Good People Use to Kill Business Efforts

I am being pretty generous by using “spam” and “good people” in the same line, but I am trying to be forgiving. As surprising as it may seem, there are instances where otherwise good people will do spammy things which tarnish their business hopes. I don’t mean the canned meat, SPAM®, either. I mean the spam that happens when people try anything to get your attention.

I view spam as a desperate attempt to be productive while using counterproductive means.

When I say that it is an otherwise good person, it is often simply because they don’t know any better. They get confused by so much hype about the Internet, and end up doing spammy things that tarnish their business hopes, and hurt their chances for successful business communication.

Spam Tactic Number One: Company Names

It may seem innocuous to use a company name instead of a human name, but there is a time and a place for each. You may think this is subjective, but the numbers have come in, and if you are making this mistake, you are very likely hurting your odds.

Regardless what some flunky want-to-be “expert” may have told you, if you are not communicating explicitly on behalf of a company entity, it is best to use your human name. Even in those cases when it is “all business”, if you will be accepting any feedback, you should include your name. You know … the one your parents gave you.

An instance of this spam offense which has come back to hurt thousands of unwitting businesses is creating a Facebook Profile under the company name, but then having it deleted for a Facebook terms of service violation. Why would Facebook delete a profile with a business name? The answer is easy … because they should have been using a Facebook Page. If you don’t know the difference, or just how much it matters, you would be wise to read “Facebook Profiles Are Not For Business … Facebook Pages Are!”

You may argue the perceived benefit of using a company name in place of a personal name all you like, but before you get too set on your opinions, you may want to read an article titled “Social Media Profiles: Keywords, Company Names, and Humans“. It will explain how some of the best researched companies in the world are handling the matter. If you think that using your company name as a replacement for your given name is a good idea, think again!

There are many instances when the brand of a person is far more important than the brand of a company. Sometimes the company name adds authority to the person, but it is even more common that a person adds authority to the company. Heck, in my instance, only a small percentage of people I communicate with are aware that I am CEO of a successful decade-old wholesale Internet services corporation. The ones who need to know (customers and potential customers) are very aware. It shows up on their bill.

A real person with a human name will win the hearts and minds of people over companies every time. Many successful corporations know this, and prove it to be true.

Spam Tactic Number Two: Being False

Claiming to be something or somebody else is just asking for trouble, but it happens all the time. It is more common in personal communications than in business, but it happens in business more than you may like to imagine. This is done in many forms, but I will classify it as “Hot Chick Spam”.

I recall a specific instance of a beautiful lady (or “hot chick” if you prefer) whom I quickly realized was not what she claimed. It was a man who used a name and photograph of a beautiful woman instead of his own, because he was sure that more people would listen to and buy from a good looking woman.

There are certain word patterns, even in short Twitter messages which can give away even the best lies, as well as other obvious discovery tools. In the instance of my “hot chick” example, it only took a moment to figure out that it was a man, so I looked up the website owner with a WHOIS lookup and made a phone call. As I expected, when I asked to speak with the woman from Twitter, the truth came out really quick!

He got over this absurd plan for success once I pointed out how easily he could be exposed. His company also ended up hiring me to handle the search engine optimization for a highly competitive million+ page website. No, will not tell you who he/she was … under any circumstances! What I can tell you is that their business communications are far more legitimate and far more effective now that the company is represented by real people.

Spam Tactic Three: Spammy Blog Comments

If you have a blog, you surely get spam comments, but did you know that some people actually think it is a good strategy? This spam offense aligns with the previous two, but it goes further, and it can become a very destructive tactic for the spammer and the blog owner alike.

This is What Blog Comment Spam Looks Like to a Blog Owner

This spam tactic is generally executed by using industry keywords (or a company name) in place of a proper name when posting comments to a blog. Since those keywords will then be the link text pointing to the spammer’s website, it is assumed that it will be great for search engine ranking. It makes sense, right? If it could only be so easy, don’t you think everybody would do it? Then it would just be a battle to see who could produce the largest amount of spam. Actually, that does pretty well sum up this kind of spammer’s mentality, but they are so wrong, and they kill their chances of success like you may never believe! Search engines are simply not this stupid.

Ironically, this particular tactic was also previously implemented by the company I mentioned in “Spam Tactic Two.” In their case, they had paid some guys in India to write thousands of pithy blog comments including their website links. They got some extra website visitors out of it, but not the paying kind. When their website was brutally punished by Google and other search engines, they were ready to jump out of a third story window. You know … not really committed to death, but definitely upset enough for a jump.

If you think that something may be spammy, it probably is. I recently replied to this kind of spammer, and he actually answered back saying that he was not a spammer. My answer to that was as follows:

I am glad you responded. I just figured it was pretty unlikely that Mother Business Card and Father Brochure actually came together and decided to name their little beloved one “Logo Designer”.
REF: SPAM or Not SPAM? The First Test is Your Name!

Many people agree with my view of blog spammers, but apparently some people still don’t grasp the downsides.

Spam Tactic Four: Follow Me!

There are many obvious examples of this spam tactic found every minute of the day on Facebook and Twitter. It is commonly expected that having a lot of people “follow” what you have to say will matter. But guess what?! Those people who are quick to follow you without a good reason are also likely following about a squillion others just like you. They aren’t paying close attention and just waiting for the right time to send you a wallet full of money. They are usually just following you so that you will follow them back. You know, because that way you will both gain some amazing authority.

The truth that is hard to drive home is that more is not always better. I have given examples of this more times than I can count, but people usually have to make their own mistakes before they learn.

It stunned me how many people thought it was a useful action-list when I wrote a completely smart assed article titled “How To Become Popular on Twitter Without Actually Being Useful“. Apparently a whole lot of people missed my disclaimer that stated as follows:

“If you follow this list without deviation, you are sure to become massively popular. Just remember that if anybody says “I hate you and hope you die a miserable death” or “You deserve a really bad case of herpes” … those people are just jealous because they will probably never be as popular as you.”

It does not always have to be an extreme overstatement or effort to be spam-like. If you want people to follow you just to feel better, try buying a feather … they tickle, too!

This obese woman selling weight loss has offered to help me build a huge following on Twitter. — Obese Woman Selling Weight Loss

When the “Twitter Follower Frenzy” or “Facebook Please Like Me” epidemic gets to be so desperate as this obese woman selling weight loss and trying to tell me how to grow a huge Twitter following, it is a clear failure (click the image to enlarge). Note: She has six people following her. Perhaps she meant something else when she said “huge”.

If tweeting and facebooking to a large number of people who do not care about what you have to say is really so useful, how are you measuring that success? Is it in the bank?

People who fall into this addictive need to spam more disinterested people will be better off measuring the cost of their missed opportunities from all that wasted time and energy. If you have fallen prey to the disease, it is time to regroup and get some help to develop a better strategy.

Spam Tactic Five: Shooting at Innocent Bystanders

Trying to reach everybody, instead of a targeted audience is really the widest use of spam. Do you remember how I defined spam as a desperate attempt to be productive while using counterproductive means? Trying to reach everybody is about the worst conceivable spam of all. It not only wastes the time and resources of the spammer, but can create a lot of other possible business communication side-effects.

A Lot of Ammunition is Good, But Sharper Aim is Better!

Before trying to market something, it is important to remember that “everybody” does not want what you offer for sale. “Everybody” is not a target. Lack of focus is the most costly mistake any company can make in marketing, and is often the biggest missing piece in a failed campaign.

The task of targeted marketing using customer modeling based on demographics, psychographics, and propensity analysis really does make the difference. You can count on it!

If you target the right people, and stop shooting blindly, you will no longer need to reach all of the people. The right ones will do the “heavy lifting” for you. When others are promoting your virtues on your behalf, it is no longer spam … it is marketing.

Spam Tactics and the Ignorant

Sure, anybody can be guilty from time to time, and sometimes a small degree of spamminess is just an accident. Ignorance does not mean a person is stupid, but simply that they don’t know any better.

I know that some people will try until their last breath to defend these atrocities. That would be easier than admitting to making huge errors. Maybe they believed a bad pitch from an ignorant marketing agency, or they believed the fairy dust that so many people are promoting each day about Internet marketing.

Sometimes it is the company itself that is the perpetrator of the spamminess, but even more often it is because they trusted the wrong people to handle it for them. I have encountered many companies that believed a crooked marketing consultant, without ever caring to understand whether their tactics were sustainable, and an overall strategy was never even a consideration.

Once the pain sets in, it is too late, and they end up paying somebody like me a whole lot more money to fix their mistakes. That is, to fix the mistake of their prior ignorance.

An even more tragic result is that many companies will keep trying to do the things which do not work, just because they refuse to listen to good advice. When their marketing isn’t working for them, they assume the whole thing just doesn’t work.

These are the people I call the willingly confused. I generally try to be forgiving and patient with them, but those are not my strongest traits. The reason my patience often fails is not because of ignorance, alone, but rather the apathy which so often comes along with it. When you throw a dose of apathy on top of ignorance, the ignorance is sustained because they don’t care enough to overcome it.

Without apathy, ignorance is much easier to fix. When people care to do better, and to know more, ignorance fades with each thing they learn. If you know somebody going down this path, you will be kind to warn them.

Photo Credits:
No Pooping by johannal via Flickr
World Cup Babes Australia by gnews pics via Flickr

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Internet is a Body and Your Website is an Organ Transplant

I have an uncommon analogy for you to consider today. I sometimes feel a bit like a mad scientist slinking into my secret laboratory, just a little bit like Dr. Frankenstein. It seems especially real on days when I sit at this computer for sixteen hours, nap for three hours, and then return with my crazy mad scientist hairdo and coffee breath. Creepy? Perhaps, but it is always fun to exclaim “It’s Alive!” after it all comes together just right.

I realize that some people are squeamish about biology, but don’t worry, we are just imagining this for a few minutes. Think of it like a science fiction movie scene.

Try to picture the Internet as a sci-fi creature with living tissue, nerves, and blood vessels growing every day. It is alive and growing, and it has defense mechanisms just like most organic life forms. If you introduce a foreign object, it will either accept it, or it will reject it.

Now try to picture a surgical introduction of an organ transplant of a man-made synthetic tissue. Your website, along with the rest of your online branding assets, make up that donor organ. In the beginning, it is laid on the surface of the huge Internet organism, and surgically connected by way of new social networking efforts and a micro-web of hyperlinks to and from other websites. This is the toughest time for the transplant, and requires a lot of nurturing.

The donor organ is nourished with the textual content of the website, but it cannot live on its own for very long. It will need to connect with and become a part of the larger organism. The surgical team (web developers, SEO, owners, management, and etcetera) will need to work diligently if the donor organ is to be accepted to live and grow as a healthy addition to that larger organism.

Like any organ transplant, if the organ is not well-matched, it will not grow, and it will be rejected. To improve its odds of acceptance, the website medical staff needs to introduce antibodies to the larger Internet organism, and connect the nerves (the people) carefully. Think of the antibodies as the useful things the website has to offer, and the nerves as the people. The delivery method is social media and appropriate business networking with existing parts of the larger organism. You know, instead of hypodermic needles and pills.

The useful “antibodies” help to keep the nerves (the people), and other defenses of the large creature soothed, and even bring it to embrace the new donor organ (website). It is critically important that the surgical team connects the right nerves in the right places in order to make it a healthy transplant.

Why the Organ Transplant Analogy?

This concept came to mind as a prospective client asked me to help her launch a new surgical center website and social media campaign. She did not seem to grasp all that really goes into developing a successful online presence, just as I don’t fully understand how to perform surgery. She mostly just wanted to believe that a good website with a little search engine optimization fairy dust and social media chattiness was all it took. That is kind of like if I assumed surgery just takes some sharp knives and clean towels.

Things such as targeted marketing using customer modeling based on demographics, psychographics, and propensity analysis held no importance to her. She didn’t understand or want to accept those concepts in the beginning, just as I don’t understand why they can’t easily replace my blackened smoky lungs with a new pair.

While visiting with her, I decided that I needed an analogy, so I used the example of the online marketing work I do for myself. That is easy, because I never have to worry about treading on a client’s non-disclosure agreement (and most of my clients require them). It also shows that I have faith in what I was telling her … after all, I performed the same surgery on myself.

So, I explained that there are over 157,000 links pointing to my blog articles, according to Google Webmaster Tools, and that indicates a healthy transplant.

They each add up to connect my blog to the rest of the Internet organism. They are like the nerves and the blood vessels that have adopted my blog as a part of the larger organ which is the Internet. Now my blog helps to nourish the larger organ, and the Internet nourishes my blog as an accepted donor organ.

Then she was concerned about how much it would cost to do it the right way, but without any apparent concern about the cost of doing it the wrong way. Of course, everybody wants to know the cost, but as I’ve explained before, simply asking “How Much Does SEO Cost?” is the wrong question … for many reasons.

The cost of good marketing is kind of like paying taxes. If somebody asks me about taxes, I will tell them I’d prefer to pay a billion per year in taxes, because that means I earned a lot more than that! Similarly, if you spend a lot of money on marketing … the right marketing … it pays you many times whatever you pay for it.

She eventually steered away from her cost concerns, and she began to recognize that she was doing this to increase profit … and not to waste profit. Then she was concerned about how long it would take. Of course, we all want things fast … especially when it comes to money. The more important and seemingly obvious consideration is not only in how long it takes, but whether you implement the skill, the time, and the effort to make it possible at all. If you are doing it well, the time frame is shortened accordingly.

The conversation was very familiar. She was terrified of making good business decisions. I don’t blame her for that. It is a challenging process, and the world of online marketing has tried to overlook good business principles of “pay now, play later“.

Do Surgeons Have All the Answers?

I told her that I could create the tissue in my lab, surgically implant the tissue into the Internet body, help her with the antibodies, and nourish its growth. Then, in her wisdom, she decided that she just wanted me to create the tissue, but that she would handle the surgery and the after-surgery care.

This was because she thought it would save her some money. Yes, the surgeon decided to be a marketer … or to assign it to somebody she could pay the least possible amount of money to. The truth that she does not want to face is that she would be wiser to create a novice website but hire a great surgeon. The even more astonishing truth is that she would be a lot better to count on professionals to carry out the surgery from beginning to end, just the way her patients do.

Can you believe that even somebody so intelligent as a skilled surgeon does not understand the much higher value in allowing the professionals to do the work they are trained to do? Seriously, when people are so absurd to believe that they should add another profession to their resume to save a few bucks, just imagine the dollars they leave behind with their even more expensive and time consuming trial and error learning.

I have written my ideas on this topic, but it still leaves me to wonder why everybody wants to become an SEO and social media expert.

In summary: The next time you, or a loved one goes into surgery, be sure to ask the doctor if she does her own marketing. If so, she is probably not the smartest surgeon.

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The Biggest Blog Failure Ever

You may be thinking I am going to write about some huge blog scandal that embarrassed a CEO, relieved somebody of their U.S. Senate seat, or made somebody in Hollywood look like a complete loser in some way. Those stories are abundant, and even quite popular, but they bore me. I’ll save that for the day when I crash my head into a speeding train and decide that there is value in luring brainless zombies to read my blog.

For the time being, I still plan to write for you business brainiacs who care more about building a business than the latest juicy gossip or fad-of-the-day.

Today, I want to discuss an even far more punishing type of blog failure that comes with either having a blog without a strategy, or not having a blog at all. First, for anybody muttering some nonsense like “Pffftt … Blogs, schmogs … who needs ’em?” you may be wise to read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog“. In any case, just hold your seat and pay attention for some eye-opening considerations.

Maybe you think a blog is just for making an online diary or to directly promote something, but take a breath and give me your attention. I want to start by pointing out some different types of blogs and their respective social media strategy.

Types of Blogs and Blog Strategies

There are obviously many different types of blogs, and each has its own strategy. I cannot list them all here, but I want to give you examples. Some of them are just for the purpose of bringing squillions of people to click on something brain-numbingly stupid to waste their time. Other blogs are designed to help brain-numbed people to believe that the Internet will give them “easy money”. We all love these blogs. I say “we all”, but the ridiculous numbers don’t lie. In fact, check this out … I brought some numbers!

Brain-Numbing (but Hilarious) Blogs

These are some very successful blogs, but many people do not even comprehend where the success is. They are ad-supported, and some sell shirts, hats, and other stuff, which is fine, but it takes a lot of visitors to make money this way. I mean a lot! If I had to guess their revenues, I would bet most of these earn their company a lot more money than your company blog. They are spending a lot more on personnel, too, because that is often what it takes when a strategy requires huge traffic numbers.

icanhascheezburger.com: As the home of “lolcats”, the “I Can Has Cheezburger” blog appeals to people’s love of cats, and it brings people back frequently to look for the latest funny stuff cats are doing. It is working like a charm, too. The website is ranked in the top 1,000 websites visited by Internet users in USA and in the top 3,000 in the world, according to alexa.com. The Internet collectively says “we love this stuff!”

failblog.org: “Fail Blog” fascinates readers around the world with the astonishing stupidity of people. General “run-of-the-mill” stupid people doing stupid things is a sure bet to help otherwise productive people to melt brain cells and burn hours. Fail Blog is ranked very similar to icanhascheezburger.com, and is a part of the same extensive network that reports more than 20 million website visitors per month. Cheezburger Network takes about 65 people and a lot of money to manage it well. If you don’t have that kind of manpower, creativity, and dollars, this strategy probably won’t work for you.

peopleofwalmart.com: How could this one possibly fail? “People of Wal Mart” lures people in by the nose and helps them stick it high in the air. Even a brief look at the People of Wal Mart website will show you how much better you are than those horrid looking creatures cruising the aisles of Wal Mart stores. This website is roughly in the top 2,000 most visited websites in USA and in the top 10,000 in the world. Yes, we really love to make fun of people … especially when we can see how clearly “better” we are than them.

It May Be Funny to You ... But Just Keep Laughing, Sucker. I Can Has Money!

Socially Numbing Blogs

People love to read about social media. Although there is no obvious correlation between wasting time reading everything you can about the latest iPhone apps or social media corporate buyouts, these blogs are taking it all the way to the bank! Don’t take this all wrong, they have some reasonably good information sometimes, but between the overt brand bias and repetitive drivel, I feel compelled to announce these with a bit of a snide slant. In any case, they are about as popular as bacon.

mashable.com: This social media giant is astonishing! Mashable is a time-sucking cult favorite of glassy-eyed people hoping to be on top of a social media wave. It commonly ranks in the top 200 most popular websites in the world. Why? Perhaps it is because the whole world wants to become a social media expert by reciting what they read at Mashable. As long as this is the case, it will be wildly popular. If you want to know which technology company is doing what, or which iPhone app is better, it is fine. Click on an advertisement while you are there … they love that!

techcrunch.com: Tech Crunch is kind of like Mashable with a bad toupee. They have a couple reasonably decent writers with good intentions of reporting on technology issues, but let’s be serious … will that make you an expert? I guess it is great if you want to know which online game company was just purchased for a billion dollars, or the new fads in cell phones. Will you really do more business if you read everything Tech Crunch reports? The answer is “probably not”, but if you want to sound impressive to a non-paying audience, you may want to retweet everything you see there, and expand upon it in your own blog. Just don’t plan on getting rich that way.

Socially Engaging Blogs

It is a very popular myth that “engagement” in a community is a key to online success. It has its high points, but it also has some pretty big downsides. Note that I did call it a myth.

Being engaging and engaged can provide amazing benefits, but without an appropriate strategy, engagement still fails miserably from a business standpoint. If you are just engaging an audience because you think it will bring success, think again. You can have a squillion buddies, but if it has no relevance to your business strategy, you can spend a lot of time being unproductive with those buddies. You may not like it, but that is the harsh truth. I can be your friend, and I may even help you to spread the word about those awesome knitting needles you are trying so hard to sell, but I only have so many friends interested in knitting.

I wrote about some engaging bloggers recently, and they provide great examples of reader engagement. These bloggers are hard-workers with a lot of talent, and they can show you some fine points. Here is the list of “9 Bloggers Who Teach the Value of a Strong Blog Community“. These blogs generally don’t need huge numbers of readers, and are often very targeted toward specific topics that attract specific readers. This is commonly a much more readily achievable type of blog strategy for individual bloggers or small companies.

Building relationships and engaging with others is very important in building an online success, but it is still not a magic success potion. Sorry pals … but somebody had to say it.

Commonalities of Failed Blogs

Back to the story line, I want to submit that there is not just one single thing that will make a blog successful. The biggest missing piece I see among unsuccessful blogs is a strategy. Popularity is great, but it takes a lot of work, and usually a lot of money to make a blog popular enough to succeed on traffic volume alone. Carefully curated content geared toward a popular topic is a way to become popular, but that can still fail if there is not a targeted and well-defined expected outcome.

I see it all the time that the first reaction of companies who don’t see great results from their blog is to give up. Instead of making the needed strategic adjustments, they assume it was a bad idea that just doesn’t work.

A truth that most people are slow to accept is that if the blog isn’t paying the bills, it is not the Internet public’s fault … it is their own. In the case of most blogs, and statistically, probably even yours, the results are a bit less than hoped for. So, do you give up, or do you shift gears?

It is easy to see common factors of successful blogs. Some of the blogs I mentioned have a sizable staff that work hard every day, others have a small staff of one. They are diverse, but each of them have some things in common. They each have a strategy, and they each understand that nothing comes from nothing. Doing “nothing” is popular, too, but that is probably not a good strategy for you.

A Competitive Strategy

A strategy that is extremely popular and competitive is to rub a genie’s lamp, keep your fingers crossed, knock on wood, pray like a nun in a whorehouse, and hope that your blog will somehow become a huge success without hard work. That is just dandy, but it is a pretty weak attempt that usually yields even weaker results.

So, in case you may wonder, what is my strategy? After all, it would be silly to write about it if I didn’t have one. I cannot tell you the whole thing, but I can at least give you enough to help get some thoughts flowing. Maybe you can pick up some ideas about your own strategy if I share some key points of my own.

Blogging is Competitive and Requires Strategy

Is it the ads? No, they barely pay for my coffee and cigarette bill. Is it the cozy notion of having a squillion friends who will send flowers when I die of starvation from blogging instead of working for a living? Well, not exactly, but you are certainly welcome to send donations to The Murnahan Memorial Fund, c/o Widow Murnahan, PO Box 4426, Topeka, KS, 66604. Widow Peggy thanks you in advance.

I take a mix of each of the above approaches, plus some other special considerations. I discovered, long ago, that when I write things that people find useful mixed with amusing (or at least not dreadfully boring), and I make good connections with people, they share it with others in their social circles. That helps me to achieve my objectives of tens of thousands of incoming website links to my work, high website traffic, and ability to rank extremely well in search engines for darn near anything I choose to target. This also helps me to establish credibility as an authority in my industry and provide irrefutable proof that I am very good at my job. This is a pretty sound strategy, overall, and it can apply to many other types of industries.

Each of these things help more people know to my work. Some of them will realize that this Murnahan character has uncommon talent and is quite good at creative marketing. A tiny few of my readers will realize they could do even better with additional professional help, and they contact me to develop their marketing strategy, and to execute the plan. That is how I get paid. That is my success. You didn’t actually think I do all of this because I’m bored, did you? Most bloggers don’t work so hard just because they have nothing to do.

The Worst Blog Failure in Summary

In concert with a previous article about reasons to blog, I also explained reasons blogs fail. I may be the only person that this amuses, but if you search Google for either of the terms I just linked to (reasons to blog and reasons blogs fail), you will find my work quite readily. That would never have happened if I didn’t write something about it, implement my strategy, and execute it better than others.

Doing nothing, or doing something without conviction is an easy path to giving up. The same holds true for anything from talking your first love out of their pants to talking your next customer out of their money.

How is your strategy coming along?

Photo Credits:
Cat in a big box by CelloPics via Flickr
Shaved Cat by Jamie (ajmexico) via Flickr
Cat on bird house by Josh (joshme17) via Flickr
Roslyn_cat by Joshin Yamada (ocean yamaha) via Flickr
Fail Cat by Tara Hunt (miss_rogue) via Flickr
Doomed by Robin Corps (robad0b) via Flickr

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