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Don’t get me wrong. I love Seth.
But I think he would be the first to tell you that he makes up his own rules. Seth is the sort of person that takes absolutely nothing for granted. He challenges everything and not because he wants to appear controversial.
Sure, there is marketing brilliance in Seth’s controversial stands on topics like book publishing, Twitter and quitting stuff. They get him attention. But these are not just marketing tricks. Seth always presents a logical argument for challenging the status quo.
Here are some logical arguments from yours truly about some of Seth’s online marketing decisions:
Seth’s Main Domain Name
Seth Godin has numerous web properties but I think most would agree that his blog is the most highly trafficked.
His main domain name is http://sethgodin.typepad.com — notice the typepad in the domain name. This means Seth doesn’t own it. TypePad owns it.
It’s called a subdomain and it happens a lot. You’ve seen it before… http://example.wordpress.com -or- http://www.example.blogspot.com. In these examples, these domains actually belong to WordPress and Google (Google owns Blogger) respectively.
Don’t follow Seth here. Here are five reasons:
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Location, location, location.
Every new website is born in the dark back alleys of the Internet. No exposure and no foot traffic.
The site is a puppy. It’s a spring chicken with no authority or trust. No traffic. No buzz.
The sad thing is that your site can remain online for years without ever moving out of that dark back alley.
Meanwhile, the sites that are “doing it right” are on the main drag. They have put the processes in place to go from darkness to to the bright lights.
Step 1 – Get Your House In Order
Firstly, let’s understand the two qualities of these “main drag” websites.
All of these “main drag” websites contain:
- entertaining, informative, educational or inspirational content.
- the ability for target communities (not target markets) to interact with and share this content.
To get your house in order, create a content strategy and stick to it for a couple of months. Build up a significant resource on your site before moving on to step 2.
Notice that you don’t need to have the community in place, but you do need to have the ability for a community to exist.
Ask yourself these questions about your “back alley” website:
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Randy Jackson says "Drink Coke Dog!"
The secret that television networks, magazine publishers and newspapers have understood for decades is…
if you want to make money, you need to build great content. When you build great content, you can sell ads, products and services around the outside of the content.
So, they put awesome content out there like The Honeymooners, Dear Abby and The Forbes 500. And around the outside of this content they sell soap, cars and diapers.
It worked then, and it still works today. Great content draws attention and products/services are sold around that content.
Your Strategy
A good Internet marketing strategy includes the creation of content with stand-alone value that is housed on the businesses website and distributed through social media channels and email.
Although you may never be as funny as Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton, you can still provide value around which you can sell products and services. In fact, the best value to provide as a business is often not humor but:
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Get more hits on the website!
Get more foot traffic by the storefront!
Put more eyeballs on our ads!
Widening the funnel at the top to bring in more prospects and leads is certainly one way to grow a business. But often, not the easiest way.
Chances are, you already have some website traffic, foot traffic by the storefront or eyeballs on your ads.
Are you squeezing the most value out of the attention you are already getting? Is there a plan for those that are already in the funnel?
Ask For Permission
One of the secrets that Internet marketers have understood for over a decade now is that success is correlated to the size and quality of the permission based “lists” that you grow.
A list could be in any number of channels:
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For the busy tiny business owner the following can be dreaded words:
“I’d like to get together with you to pick your brain.”
The first thought that may fly through your mind is
“So…. you would like to get together with me for free to find out some information. I don’t think so!”
Firstly, Be Flattered
They like you, they really like you. You shouldn’t be angry, you should be flattered that people are requesting an audience with you. They want your advice and they are reaching out to you.
You have proven yourself to be approachable and worthy of attention. And, in business, attention is the sincerest form of flattery.
Stop Playing the Blame Game
Here are some of the reasons that people are asking to pick your brain (for free):
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Partnerships are good. Abbot & Costello, Fred & Barney, Batman & Robin, Ike & Tina Turner (ok maybe that one didn’t end well but you get my drift)
As tiny business owners, we know that forming partnerships is critical to growing our organization.
Here are just a few of the ways that we can benefit from partnerships:
- As a referral source — forming a network of partners that refers business to each other is a very effective way to get sales.
- To expand your offerings — Finding partners that will “white label” their product/service offerings will allow you to offer a wider range of options for customers.
- To create joint ventures — Joining with a partner to create a new product/service/business is often a good way to increase your capacity and compensate for weaknesses that you have in your business skills.
But we don’t partner with anyone unless that someone can bring some value to the table.
That value comes in one of three forms:
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Referrals are funny animals.
An easy source of referrals is from people that you have done work with in the past. Do good work, ask for referrals and…. poof…. you get referrals.
But relying upon referrals from only those you have worked with is very limiting. There is a huge pool of contacts in your network that you have never worked with — and likely, will never work with.
The Psychology of a Referral
Before you will get a referral, the referral source needs to be able to answer three questions about you:
- What do you do and what benefit do you provide?
- Are you reliable and professional?
- Do you do quality work?
A referral is a reflection on two people — the person doing the referring and the person receiving the referral. If a referral source cannot answer the above three questions, the risk of referring is too high and the referral won’t happen.
Certainly you can provide the answers to these questions for referrals sources by working with them. But there are other activities you can engage in that will communicate this information to referral sources just as well. And these activities will give you access to referral sources that you have never worked with.
Activate this pool of contacts by engaging in these three activities:
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Generating leads, sales and referrals from your website is first and foremost about generating traffic to that website.
Just as a brick and mortar business must have people (prospects and customers) coming in and out of the store in order to have a chance at making a sale, your website needs “eyeball traffic” to have a chance to make sales.
A website cannot simply have a pretty design, it must generate traffic to generate ROI.
There are three basic sources of traffic:
- Direct Traffic
- Referral Traffic
- Search Engine Traffic
The Importance of Analytics
I am not a particularly analytical person, but Google Analytics provides an intuitive and powerful set of website statistics. It should be installed on your site, if it has not already.
The image above is just one of the many graphs and reports you can view in Google Analytics.
Let’s break down each of the three high-level traffic sources, shall we?
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If you want more traffic to your blog from Google, you need to learn some basic SEO. You can create a search engine optimized blog post by following the five easy steps listed below and outlined in this video.
Here is the Blog post SEO checklist:
- Title Tag
- Meta Description Tag
- URL
- Body
- Alt Image Attribute
This video will show you step by step how to create a search engine optimized blog post in WordPress:
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