Virtual Impax

Effective Strategic Digital Marketing

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You’re only paranoid if they’re NOT out to get you

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A.K.A: A healthy level of distrust is essential when living/working on the web

I’ve often joked with clients that what is sometimes perceived as my “highly paranoid” level of distrust is merely the result of over a decade of living and working on the web. (I follow that comment with, “You’re only paranoid if they’re NOT really out to get you!”)

Unfortunately, graphic designer David Airey, who maintains a popular blog on graphic design learned the hard way that on the web, there are a LOT of reasons to be paranoid, especially when promoting your business via the web.

Reading his saga reminded me of my most recent conversation in which a client was “amused” by my perceived paranoia.  Several weeks ago, the son of a blog client of mine contacted me…. asking for the log in information to his mother’s new blog. She had spoken to me of her son who was studying “computers” at the University of Michigan and I knew she had charged him with creating a quiz for her blog. However, when I got an email from someone claiming to be her son, I apologized and said that the request for the information HAD to come from her and that information would ONLY be sent to her. While I was sure that he was who he said he was, I really couldn’t send him her log in information.

He was understanding, as was she… but it was one of those moments when I realized how much “innocence” I have lost over the past decade. As I sub-titled this post… a healthy level of distrust is ESSENTIAL when living and working on the web.

Blogs are INCREDIBLE marketing tools for the web. Because of David’s blog’s success, his web presence became a target of criminals who exploited the trust of David’s web hosting provider. I doubt the criminal responsible would have bothered to transfer his domain name (and pay for privacy) if his blog were operating in relative obscurity.

Plan for the worst and expect the best.   David learned and shared with us the trials and tribulations of not only using free email as his administrative contact, but also the trials of hosting your site with an inexperienced (a.k.a. trusting) host.   See, David registered his domain name as part of his hosting package, which is where his problems began.

I could go on with more client horror stories surrounding domain names registered “for free” as a part of the hosting package, but that’s another post! Thanks David for sharing your saga with your blog.  Education is the key to making the web a less friendly place for criminals.

Trust is not transitive

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Andy Beard is asking his RSS subscribers… “Do you trust my advice?”   Andy asks because he’s been checking the “follow through” on his promotion of other people’s products and has been disappointed in the final figures.

The very first comment to the post went along the lines of “Yes, I trust you… but just because I trust you doesn’t mean I trust this other guy.”

BINGO!

keys to successAndy uses RSS to communicate with his blog readers.  The other resource uses email.

I know that I am MUCH more likely to subscribe to a site’s RSS feed than I am to sign up for an email list.  Why?  Because I know I have CONTROL over the RSS…  I simply remove it from my iGoogle and it’s gone.

Email, on the other hand, is forever.  Once I’ve subscribed to your list… how do I know you’ll honor my unsubscribe request?  (This is truly a TRUST issue.)

Case in point, I signed up for an email list and then unsubscribed.  I didn’t receive emails for a few weeks but now, suddenly, they are starting to come in again from this source.  HELLO!?!?!  I unsubscribed!!!  Why am I hearing from you again?

Why did I unsubscribe from the newsletter?  Well, because the information provided didn’t live up to the “hype”.  They broke a fragile new trust by not delivering what they promised.  As a result, I unsubscribed from the newsletter.  Surprise, surprise…. they’ve broken their promise yet again.  The best predictor of future behavior once again is past behavior.

Trust is a slippery critter.  It’s tough to earn and easy to lose. 

Just this morning, I had a “difficult” conversation via email with a client.  Had I not established a trusting relationship with her, my “advice” could have been viewed as self serving, even though it was not given with my needs in mind but rather her future.  My client wanted to take a “break” from blogging and was going to take down her web site for 6-8 months, relaunching it next year.

My reply was along the lines of “ACK!  Leave your blog up!  You’ve got a PR of 3, a decent Alexa ranking after less than 6 months of blogging!  Don’t take it down because you can’t continue to post every day!!!”

It would have been easy for her to think I simply didn’t want to lose her hosting business.   That wasn’t the case, but I knew it could appear that way.  I was relieved to read her response.  Instead of seeing it as a “sales” tactic,  this was part of her reply:

I trust what you say. You have been nothing but honest and helpful for me.

WHEW!!!!  

I’m the daughter of a car dealer… and sometimes I come across, well, like I grew up with a car dealer as a father.  I had to “sell” and “close” all the time.  I grew up believing that “No is simply the customer asking for more information.  I was relieved that I had built up enough trust with this client that she could see that leaving her blog up was in HER best interests, not mine.

In other words, I had earned her trust.  It’s something I don’t take lightly.   When you earn someone’s trust, you shouldn’t take it lightly either.

On the web, experience could be your worst enemy.

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J. Paul Getty once said, “In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.”

Climbing Blogging SuccessThe other day, I was on the phone with a client when he told me, “I get complimented all the time on how “ahead of the curve” I am with my blog, but truth be told, I’m just following you. ” Later in the conversation, we began talking about his former web developer, to which he said, “He’s just satisfied making HTML web sites. The thing is, I don’t know of anyone who has made the jump from HTML web sites to blogs like you have.”

In times of rapid change, experience can be your worst enemy.

I wish I could say that I “saw” the explosive growth of blogging coming and jumped onto that bandwagon. I didn’t. I was literally FORCED into blogging by a client of mine.

Last year (December 2006) I published my first book, Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results. Unfortunately, I began writing the book in March 2005. By March 2006, I began to recognize that the book was NEVER going to happen if I didn’t clear some “emotional clutter” that kept getting in my way. I hired one of my clients at the time to help guide me.

Ernie Moore was a long time client and I knew he was the one to get me moving forward on my book project. Ernie suggested that I launch a blog to help build “buzz” for the book.

My response: “UGH! Blogs are for people who DO NOT KNOW how to code in HTML!”

Blogging opportunityHowever, Ernie was relentless (That’s what a coach is supposed to do!) and wouldn’t let me off the hook. Despite the fact that I had a perfectly good HTML web site waiting to promote my book (Find My Niche.com) I purchased a domain name and launched Beyond Niche Marketing to promote my book.

It took my blog 9 months to emerge from the Google Sandbox, which fortunately just happened to be just a month after my book was published. Last June I ran the log files for both sites and was STUNNED at what I saw. The blog gets 10X+ the number of unique visitors the HTML site gets. VISITORS!!! Not hits… VISITORS! Those visitors also tend to return time and time again.
The reasons the blog site is SO much more popular than the HTML site include:

  • It’s so easy to add a post (a.k.a. FRESH CONTENT) that I do it more often there than I do the HTML site.
  • More content = more opportunities to appear in searches
  • Blogs make it easy to trade links with other blog site owners (increasing PR and authority of the site).
  • The Semilogic theme and plug ins make the site very attractive to the search engines.

The thing is, looking back the development/promotion of HTML site, I worked HARD to get the PR up to 3. HARD! Meanwhile, the rise of the blog site to a PR 4 was positively EFFORTLESS in comparison.

Thus my “conversion” from an HTML web developer to a blog FANATIC.

“In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.”

Don’t let experience be your worst enemy!

So you claim you’re an expert….

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If you’re an independent service professional, you had BETTTER be an expert, especially if you want to charge $100 an hour or more for your services.  Whether it’s the web, the law or real estate, if you’re a solo entrepreneur chances are you’re selling your expertise in a subject matter as the basis of your business.

So you’re an expert.  Congratulations.  Now what?

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Well, the next step is that you need to communicate this expertise.   After all, that will be the foundation of your marketing message. 

There are a lot of ways you can communicate your expertise.  You can:

  1. Declare your expertise on your logo/business cards/business letter head, etc
  2. Write a book on the subject area of your expertise
  3. Launch a blog on the subject area of your expertise.  Post frequently on the topics in the subject area of your expertise.
  4. Deliver speeches and talks on topics within your area of expertise.

If you’re smart, you’ll focus upon steps 2-4 and possibly skip step 1.

Step 1, declaring your expertise,  is probably the least effective way of communicating your expertise.  From your prospective client’s point of view, it’s "easy" for you to declare you’re an expert.  The next thought in your prospective client’s mind when they see or hear you declare that you’re an expert is usually, "Prove it!"  That’s what steps 2-4 are all about.

Steps 2-4 are all ways in which you’ll prove your expertise.  For example, when you write a book, you are instantly awarded a certain level of "expertise"…. a well written book that is well promoted and sells a lot of copies affords you even more "authority".  However, merely getting your book published no matter what the quality of the content is usually enough to get you points in the "expert" category.  Being able to say to a potential client, "Here, read my book" is a great tool to demonstrate your level of expertise.

Launching a blog where you post frequently on your subject matter area is another GREAT way to DEMONSTRATE your expertise.  Many authors actually pull their book content from their blog posts and vice versa.  Blogs are an expert’s best marketing tool.

Finally, speaking frequently on your topic is another way to demonstrate your expertise.  Do you speak better than you write?  Then video tape yourself and post those short videos to your blog! 

In any case, communication is key in demonstrating your expertise.  Potential clients must be ASSURED of your expertise before they’ll pick up the phone and call you.  That’s why blogs are GREAT marketing tools for indepdendent service professionals.  Your blog allows your potential clients to "test the waters" without taking a HUGE leap of faith and contacting you, whether by phone, mail or email.

That’s why I HIGHLY recommend blogs for clients who want to demonstrate their expertise.