Twice in the past month I’ve had long conversations with clients about their concerns for the activities of certain competitors.  Specifically, they were worried about the fact that some of the sites who are trying to compete in the same online space are engaging in some unscrupulous SEO and other marketing tactics, such as purchasing links and redirecting blind links from PPC campaigns.

These activities cause concern because I always preach the importance of ‘white-hat‘ marketing tactics, with integrity being paramount.  There are shortcuts that can be taken in order to potentially achieve favorable search engine rankings faster, and there is a degree of ‘success’ than can be had going this route.  But the reality is that ‘black-hat‘ SEO activities have a major downside.  If you get caught – and the probability of getting caught is substantial – you run the risk of being blacklisted by Google and other search engines.  Getting de-indexed is about the worst thing that can happen to your site if you are relying on search engine traffic as the main traffic source for your business.

In both instances, my clients are in exponentially better shape in their respective online spaces than the competing sites they’re worried about.  One client in particular has received organic search engine traffic from over 4500 different search phrases on Google since the first of the year, while the competitor in question only ranks organically for a couple dozen keywords according to the tool SEMRush.com.  And this is in spite of the fact that the competing site has about 30 times as many inbound links to their site because they bought them.  They had clearly subscribed to ‘link farms‘ and other unscrupulous black-hat link-building entities in order to get so many links but that hasn’t helped their site rank organically for the keywords relevant to their business.

Both my clients expressed similar sentiments when referring to their competitors’ shady efforts.  They wanted to undermine them by reporting their activities to Google, to discredit them in blogs and forums, etc.  And while it is admirable to want everyone to play by the same rules, one has to only look to the steroid scandals that Major League baseball has endured for the past decade or more.  The players who were caught cheating suffered irreparable damage to their reputations, the careers and their legacies – not to mention their overall physical well being.  And who came out of it smelling like a rose?  The players who took the high road.  They saw what what was going on and while they knew it was wrong, it only served to make them be the best they could be through hard work and determination.

The advice that I gave to my clients was simple: Focus on the things they can control and the rest will take care of itself. Google consistently makes improvements to their search algorithms and subsequent ranking systems to reward the sites with the best content.  They also take notice of the tactics that are solely intended to game the system and take measures to ‘punish’ those sites.  It is an ongoing cat and mouse game between the search engines and the people trying to manipulate their rankings.

As a webmaster, you can’t control what other sites are up to, but you can certainly spy on them.  You can keep an eye on their activities by simply using a variety of tools such as SEMRush.com and the Yahoo Site Explorer.  You also can’t control how the search engines respond to their marketing efforts, but you can monitor it.  If your competitor’s site isn’t ranking as highly in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) as you are, then why bother worrying about it?  You have a finite number of brain power that you can dedicate to thinking about your web presence – spend it wisely.

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.

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.

The fact of all of this is pretty similar, if you’ve been even moderately successful in one line of work, you can succeed in another.  I am not saying there won’t be rough patches, but in the overall scheme of things, you know way more than you think you do.

Don’t believe me?  Think your base of knowledge is common and unremarkable?  Take a minute and think about a topic you know a fair amount about but don’t consider yourself to be an expert in, like a hobby or general interest you’ve had for a while.  Maybe you’re a history buff or a baseball fan.  It doesn’t matter.

Now find someone who knows nothing about the subject at hand and teach them what you know.  Let’s take baseball for example.  I played baseball for several years when I was growing up and I’ve watched the game my whole life so I know quite a bit about it, but I am by no means an expert.  Now when I imagine myself trying to teach someone the game, I get lost in the complexity of everything I know to the point where I wouldn’t know where to start.  When I think about balls and strikes and runs and hits and errors and home runs and the difference between force outs and tagged outs and the difference between called strikes and swinging strikes and stolen bases and ground rule doubles and knuckleballs and fastballs and suicide squeezes… I could literally go on and on and on about the things I know about baseball – but even then what I possess in terms of knowledge only firmly qualifies as a fundamental understanding of the game.  In no way am I qualified to manage a Big League team.

But, to someone who knows little to nothing about baseball I can literally answer every single one of their questions confidently and authoritatively, which will position me in the mind of the other person as a solid resource for baseball information.

Another example of someone making a living off of their hobbying experience is video games.  I know of a few people who are very good at a popular online computer game, take screen capture videos of them playing and create tutorial videos to help others.  These videos get hundreds of thousands of views, which opened doors to advertising opportunities.  Another gamer created a membership site where people could get help from a community for a monthly enrollment fee.

You know more than you think you do.  Give yourself credit for what you know, learn a little bit more to feel more confident about yourself and go for it!  As I’ve said numerous times, it’s better to regret something you did than something you didn’t do.

I was in a casual conversation recently with a friend/business colleague of mine who asked me point blank why I have my toll free number dial directly to my cell phone.  His tone wasn’t necessarily critical per se – but more of an overt type of concerned observation as to why I would go to the trouble and additional expense to set up an ’866′ number, just to have it ring straight to my hip pocket.  He implied that employing an additional service directing the caller through a series of prompts would be a much better implication that I am a large successful entity.

At first, I was a little annoyed at this suggestion, but it occurred to me that my friend wasn’t wrong in the traditional sense; it’s that his sense of how small business is conducted has shifted dramatically in recent years.

The advent of blogging, Facebooking, Tweeting and the overall unprecedented access that the everyday person has to virtually everything they could ever want to find out has remove the facade of businesses small and big alike.  The old days of the mystique that businesses were afforded have been replaced with an age of complete transparency.  The internet has placed everyone in a glass house.   Those who accept and embrace this new shift in culture have thrived; those who’ve rejected or ignored it have paid a price.

The reality about transparency is that this is not a bad thing at all.  Is it really unfavorable that your clients are able to verify almost every claim you make?   Not if you’re genuine.  However, if you didn’t really manufacture all of the products on your site like your ‘about’ page says you have, then you’re probably going to have a huge PR problem sooner or later.

So why do I have a toll free number at all?  The reason is simple:  Professionalism.  Even though all calls ring straight to my cell, my email is @gmail.com, I work out of my home office and I seldom delegate, it’s still important for me to be a professional – and to promote an image that instills confidence that I am someone who can and will deliver what I say that I will.  That said, it’s not my position to try to appear to be something I’m not.

I am not a corporation, and when you call my number you’re not going to have to press ‘one‘ for English.  What would be the point?  So you can momentarily get the impression that there are other people here?  Why would I want to waste peoples’ time?  Why should I run the additional risk that they will hang up just to give off a falsehood such as portraying myself as bigger than I actually am?  Is this going to boost confidence?  Maybe, but only until they find out the truth.  And it isn’t a question of if, but WHEN they realize I was lying, how is that going to look?  That I was so insecure about what people would think about my operation that I had to put on a mask?  I don’t know about you, but if I encountered someone like that, I would pretty much irrevocably label them as a huge douche and swear off any chance of ever doing business with them.

The Internet has leveled the playing field in the sense that you can tell the frauds from the real deal pretty swiftly.  Pulling the wool over the eyes of the entire public is a daunting task in and of itself.  Think about it.  Remember that old adage your dad used to say that went something like “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time”?  Well this is more true today by a factor of 100.  If even one person sees through your bullshit, the connected nature of the Internet means that information literally travels at the speed of light.  The viral nature of the web, combined with the almost scary  amount of influence that blogs such as The Huffington Post and TechCrunch possess means you’ll be dead in the water faster than you can imagine.  And chances are, the cat will be out of the bag before before you even know it – and by then damage control will be a pipe dream.

By now there’s no excuse for not taking advantage of the amazing amount of opportunity that effective participation in Social Media can offer.  SM can and will provide a benefit to your life or business whether it’s connecting with someone who knows someone who needs a service you provide, or if it simply offers a way to hook up with a handful of new people to play poker with on Thursday evenings.  There is quite literally something in it for everyone.

But, when talking amongst colleagues, clients and prospective clients who may be a little late to the party about the benefits of Social Media, the single most common point of resistance is that participating in Facebook, Twitter and the like is an unproductive use of their time – especially when they consider all of the other ‘real world’ obligations they have pulling them in 100 different directions.  The truth is that although there is a little bit of a schedule commitment to Social Media, it isn’t nearly as much of a time-sucker as it is often perceived to be.

We all know someone who spends hours a day on Facebook.  They seemingly update their status hourly with all sorts of useless and uninteresting tidbits ranging from announcing that they are home from taking their kids to school to complaining about the old lady driving 20 miles per hour under the speed limit on a two-lane country road making them late to whatever destination they were headed for.  These types of stories – while always related in a mocking tone, are not the best use of Social Media, and this brand of obsessive behavior is the exception, not the norm.

The cool thing about Social Media is that while you choose your own level of involvement, the success you’ll derive is not proportional to the amount of time and resources you dedicate to the activity.  As I was explaining to a client during a presentation just the other day, Social Media is the type of endeavor that shows a lot of back end benefits that you don’t always see right away – and it isn’t something you can force.  Successful participation in the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube is a very organic, genuine process.  The cream rises to the top and the pretenders and offenders are very easily and swiftly weeded out.

The trick to finding time for Social Media is to remove the idea that the activity as a whole is a task or a chore.  You’re using it to connect with people.  If you’re a business looking to get new clients or customers, use it to add an element of humanity to your business.  Engage people and provide value by way of free information, or simply join or start a conversation.  It’s called Social Media for a reason.

Twitter and Facebook are set up so that you can conveniently receive an email anytime you’re mentioned or something of interest comes to light – and there are external tools like TweetDeck that also make using the sites a more efficient undertaking.

When you’re starting out, plan to spend five minute, three or four times a day playing with your Social Media accounts.  Find people to follow or friend up, retweet interesting stuff you find, post interesting questions to garner responses, or respond to the posts of others.  There are many ways to use these tools – but the trick is to have fun with it.  If you don’t enjoy yourself, then don’t participate, because it will be obvious if you aren’t into it or you are only in it for self-serving reasons.  Value the experience and value the connections you’ll make and relationships you’ll create, and you’ll reap the rewards for a long time to come.

I received an email last week from a gentleman seeking advice on escaping the worker-bee lifestyle that is traditional gainful employment to pursue a more fulfilling career path.

I wrote a short response and encouraged him to friend me up on any of the social media accounts linked in my email.  His remark was one I’ve heard all too many times:

“I have been resistant to the social media sites (which I know needs to change) but I have a minimal presence on Linked-In so I can connect there.”

I don’t want to be too hard on my new friend, as this is a very common attitude amongst people who on the surface see no legitimate reason to spend a bunch of time connecting with strangers.  I understand the mindset 100% – as many people who know me will gladly point out my stubborn unwillingness to conform to the activities of Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and the like.  But, I eventually realized that the ROI for time spent online is not always quantifiable in the traditional ways of thinking.

If you are finding yourself questioning the need to participate in Social Media, consider looking at it from a different perspective.  The next time you’re at a party, or a networking event, or even simply in a social setting where you know less than half the people there (like a wedding reception), think of how many people you’d remember if 1/3 of the people you didn’t know handed you a business card.  Would you remember who gave you what?  Maybe, but if you’re like me, chances are the conversations will begin to run together and putting a face to a business card you find in your shirt pocket on laundry day will be about as likely as Kate Gosselin remembering all of her kids’ names at first glance.

And that’s where Facebook comes in.  Think of Facebook as a Rolodex on steroids.

Rolodexes – remember them silly little things?  They are filled with neat little 2″x3″ notecards (3″x4″ if you had the deluxe model) for you to write anything and everything you could cram onto that tiny white canvas about your contact – and they were even tabbed alphabetically!  What could possibly be better?

Well, 30 years ago the answer to that question is probably nothing.  But times have changed.  Remember those business cards you collected at that meeting?  With Facebook, you can look them up and become their friend, whether they are a business or an individual – and learn all about them.  Instead of a stale notecard in a Rolodex, you get a whole bunch of information about their work, their family, their interests, hobbies – all kinds of stuff that you can use to connect with them on a personal level.  Furthermore, you can also follow the people that they already connect with and meet those with similar interests and/or needs.

And not only will you learn all about them, they’ll learn all about you. Furthermore, they’re going to remember that you were the one out of all the people they handed business cards to that night to follow up.

I know what you’re thinking, that this sounds all well and good, but isn’t it more than a tad presumptuous to assume that someone wants to be your friend after one meeting?  While this might be closer to reality in social circles, it’s different online.  On the Internet, people are on there to make connections.  While it’s true that there are some that only friend up people they know in real life, the majority of people will be happy to make a new friend.  I know I always am.  I’ve met a ton of cool people through Facebook and Twitter that I’d never have had the chance to encounter otherwise.

In fact, if you enjoyed reading this or any of my other work, why not take a second and friend me up.