Posted by Mike July on August 24th, 2010
Have you noticed lately that it is becoming less and less commonplace to hear about some dumb thing a certain celebrity or politician had said or done on the recent past, only is just now being discovered and/or reported? Well, I have. And you know why that is? It isn’t that people are behaving better these days – far from it – it’s that literally everything gets reported in real time anymore.
It doesn’t even have to be something important – even stuff like a candid snapshot of so and so random celebrity knuckle deep in a nostril while sitting in traffic is enough to make the front page of TMZ.com. But, you don’t have to be a celebrity to know your life is under a constant microscope. Between handheld flip cams and security cameras and cell phones with built in video capture capabilities – not to mention everything you put out there voluntarily by way of your blog, Facebook, etc., your entire life is potentially being recorded whether you like (or know) it or not.
What this implies is that not only is everything you do possibly being recorded and archived, the millions of avenues of self publishing and broadcasting means that the ability to bring your shenanigans to the masses at warp speed is readily available.
The whole point of all this is the fact that the world we live in now forces us to come to terms with what some may consider to be a rather sobering reality: Whether you like it or not, you are always on stage.
Posted by Mike July on July 27th, 2010
Anytime you’re looking at a career change, or a new course of study, or just looking to start a new activity that looks like fun such as learning to play the guitar or piano, the hardest part is often getting started. After all, if you’ve never done something, even the fundamentals look complicated as hell. But as I’ve noted before, it feels impossible only until you do it.
The best piece of advice I received when I transitioned from brick and mortar retail management to Internet Marketing and Web Strategy Development was to take inventory of the marketable skills and experiences you already have, and find ways to apply them to a new line of work.
Source: teamdivinesuccess.com
Once I got started – and shortly after I was committed to pursuing my online endeavors I realized that I knew a helluva lot more than I had given myself credit for. Every day I found myself more and more confident talking the talk and walking the walk with people who’ve been in this game for years. Even though I am a pretty quick study and tend to pick things up rather quickly, at first I was apprehensive and slightly intimidated when it came talking about what it is that I do. It wasn’t until I explained my occupation to a relative with almost no knowledge of the Internet or how it functions that I realized that I was much further along.
Posted by Mike July on June 18th, 2010
Note: I actually wrote this about four months ago and never published it for some reason, hence the odd time-frame references you’ll notice.
During the decade I spent working in retail sales/management in the auto repair industry, it was often a duty of the position I held to explain the various car repairs that were necessary to get the clients’ cars back up and running again.
Anyone who’s ever spent any time diagnosing and performing auto repairs knows that it isn’t an exact science, especially when you consider today’s sophisticated technology. Whenever the time would come in the diagnostics process where it was time to try something, I would explain it to the client this way: Whenever it’s not possible to diagnose the problem 100% accurately, you have to try something. When this is the case, you start with the simplest solutions and progress from there.
Sometimes I need to be reminded to follow my own advice.
Posted by Mike July on June 10th, 2010
If you’ve ever lived or owned a business in Small Town USA, you know all too well the element of community that makes small businesses go. The patrons of the locally owned restaurants and grocery stores and auto repair shops are all very well familiar with the owners of these businesses, as they usually live in the area and it’s not uncommon for their businesses to have been around for generations.
Source: eclectecon.typepad.com
The element of community is strengthened by the fact that more often than not, the owner of the business is also the same guy who operates the register. Loyalty to the local economy feels good knowing their hard earned dollars are going into the pockets of another hard working man or woman that they’ve known and trusted for years. Business owners know that these relationships are built one at a time and are the core of their survival.
So it’s only natural instinct to apply this same principle when your business ambitions expand into cyberspace. The first thing you’re naturally inclined to do is fill the homepage of your new website with a bunch of warm and fuzzy text telling the visitor about how your business was founded by your great-grandaddy Jebediah and has been in the Podunk community for 700 years and on and on. The problem is, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Posted by Mike July on May 17th, 2010
Source: Twentysteps.com
It doesn’t matter what type of business you run, if you’ve checked your email in the last five years, you’ve undoubtedly received spam from the so-called SEO experts who promise to get you to the number one spot on Google for your keyword of choice – all for the low low price of just $39.99.
While this practice (ahem scam) has faded away significantly in the past 12 months, it still has left an fallacious perception in its wake that SEO – or Search Engine Optimization is the be-all-end-all of your online marketing efforts. Get to the front page of Google and those 20,000 people a month who search for your particular phrase will come banging down the virtual door to your website automatically. The problem is that not only is this not the case, it never was.
Mike July is a Freelance Web Strategy & Internet Marketing Consultant specializing in Visitor Experience Optimization, currently living and operating in the great city of Grand Rapids, MI.