remarkable communication

The One Thing You Can't Afford to Blow Off

Sonia Simone

I have lots of friends who are entrepreneurs. Some of us have day jobs as well, others are making a full-time living in their businesses. Some think they "aren't really entrepreneurs" because they run schools or nonprofits.

Some are successful and some are struggling, but we've all got one thing in common. We've maxed out our personal resources. Not our checkbooks or credit cards (although sometimes those too), but our creativity, our time, and our productive energy. (keep reading »)

Photo from icanhascheezeburger.com

The Toddler's Guide to Salesmanship

By Sonia Simone

They wreck our stuff, kill our sleep and chase away our non-parenting friends. But we still love 'em and want to take care of them. I've learned a lot about effective persuasive communication from my three-year-old.

And it only makes sense. Toddlers are too small to do much, and lack their own credit cards, but they need the same food, shelter, love and amusements that anyone else does. All they have are their powers of persuasion.

These suggestions aren't (just) tongue-in-cheek. Try them out in your own communication to make some stronger connections. (keep reading »)

Flickr Creative Commons image by Kah_Zanon

Unlock the Secret Art of SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) has a reputation as some kind of mystical black art, with all kinds of arcane divinations needed to placate the great and mysterious Google.

Some folks believe that you need to pay giant dollars to a specialized wizard consultant to burn the right kind of incense and play the right kind of games that will put you on page one of Google. Conveniently for these wizards consultants, Google changes its rules constantly, so a good wizard consultant spends a lot of his time casting runes and squinting into Magic 8 Balls to see what the rules look like today.

Other folks will tell you that SEO is all snake oil. There's no such thing as effective SEO, you just live with a pure heart and noble intentions, and Google will find you. In this worldview, Google is so smart that they will always learn to pick out the spam from the real stuff. If you have real stuff, you will be bathed in eternal Google love and go on to live happily ever after.

Both of these camps are dangerously wrong.

Content comes first

We all know it, but it bears repeating (and repeating). If you want to do well in the search engines, it is a very smart idea to pull together some really good content.

Your content has to be useful. It has to be relevant to what people are looking for. And you probably have to have a bunch of it. (It also helps if you update it frequently.)

Google likes Baby Bear, in other words. But Baby Bear alone doesn't necessarily rise to the top without a little technique.

SEO is just a set of techniques

Not magic beans. Not games. Not super secret tricks you have to spend thousands of dollars to learn. Just some straightforward techniques that put you in the best light and that let the search engines know what you're doing.

Playing games with Google is like playing games with the IRS.* If that's your idea of a good time, ok, but I'm a little more risk-averse than that.

But the right kind of SEO is just like maximizing legitimate tax deductions. Play by the rules, play within the system, but don't be a damned chump about it. Fortunately, there's a lot of simple white-hat SEO (that's SEO that doesn't depend on spammer tactics) that is about 10,000 times easier than finding out how much childcare you actually get to deduct this year.

(8/9/08 edit: SEO School is no longer available, but I'll keep the post up in case it gets reinstated one of these days.)

My friend Naomi Dunford over at Ittybiz figured out that there was a lack of simple, straightforward SEO advice out there, so she put together an eBook. It's written for normal people--you don't have to be a techie or a marketing geek. And it's full of advice you can act on right away.

You can find out more about it on Ittybiz, or you can go right to the order page. It's pretty cheap, and it looks like if you enter the coupon code "MovingDay" before July 1st, you get it even cheaper.

No Magic 8 Ball required.

* For my readers who don't live in the U.S., the IRS is our beloved national tax agency.

The Three Bears of Social Media Marketing: Part 3 (Baby Bear)

By Sonia Simone

OK, if Mama Bear is about conversation and connection, and Papa Bear is about listening more than you talk (sometimes known as lurking), what's Baby Bear?

Baby Bear makes friends easily, and he always has a lot to say. He can be awfully cute—even adorable, if you do it right. So I hope you'll forgive him for not really being a bear at all. (keep reading »)

 

The Three Bears of Social Media Marketing: Part 2 (Papa Bear)

By Sonia Simone

OK, the Mama Bear of social media marketing is the customer conversation model. It's about connection, warm fuzzies, community, all that good stuff.

The Papa Bear model isn't quite so fuzzy. I call it Papa Bear because it's the model that makes the most sense for gigantic organizations, but it can also be an important social media strategy for individuals or smaller companies. It has a common sense side and a potentially creepy side. So let's get into it. (keep reading »)

Flickr Creative Commons image by thelearnr

The Three Bears of Social Media Marketing: Part 1 (Mama Bear)

By Sonia Simone

The Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman, who can always be counted on to spice things up, wrote a thought-provoking post for Copyblogger last week about the lack of real interactivity for the huge majority of Web users.

Bob has long held that the idealistic social media model of a rich, layered conversation replacing traditional advertising doesn't scale, and makes no sense for products like frozen chicken, floor wax, etc. Actually, I believe the expression "complete bullshit" may have come into play. (keep reading »)

Why Being A Dork is a Wonderful Thing

I had a ton of fun with the Copyblogger post last week. And just for the remarkable communication readers, here's the line I cut out because it seemed unseemly for Brian's blog:

Fake enthusiasm is as easy to spot as a pair of fake DDs, and even less appealing.

Unleash Your Inner Dork to Become a Better Copywriter