David Snyder - Internet and Startup Enthusiast
Greg Boser and I manage the search business unit at BlueGlass. It’s a dynamic partnership that seems like it came together via fate.
We both have interesting stories about how we got into this business, and are cut from a similar cloth of self made entrepreneurs.
[Read more...]
Yesterday we announced the launch of BlueGlass, our newest project, and the collective product of several people’s passion.
In my life I have had a few dreams:
1) To marry an amazing woman – In 2005, this dream came true when I married my wife.
2) To be an amazing father – In 2005, this dream also came true, and then again in 2008, with the births of my sons Dante and Dominick.
3) To become a professional musician – Total failure. I am pretty good on a bass guitar however.
4) Become the world’s greatest Internet Marketer
I was batting 50% until yesterday, which is pretty awesome. However, looking at things now, while I am not the world’s greatest Internet Marketer, my company is positioned to take a run at the status of the world’s greatest Internet Marketing agency.
Many people have read the history of how I got into Internet Marketing, but I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the history of my role in the birth of this company from the very beginning.
Search & Social Begins
In May of 2008, I was working as an in-house SEO at JRDunn.com and living with my expecting wife and son Dante in Delray Beach, FL. I had never spoken at a conference before, and had received an invite from Kevin Ryan to speak at SES Toronto on Twitter. This invite came from me pestering Kevin on Twitter, which to this day sticks with me. Most people would have told me to beat it, but Kevin gave me my first major speaking spot.
My goal was to work as an in-house SEO and grow a lead generation network in my spare time, but when you are a Dad you don’t have spare time, so I needed some help. That same month Jordan Kasteler hit me up to interview me for a post he was doing on the unsung heroes of Internet marketing. We had never met in person, but got to talking and found we had quite a few similarities:
1) We both loved The Bouncing Souls
2) We were both young and had both agency and in-house experience.
3) We were both really into tattoos
4) We both were work and studyaholics
5) We were both talented
The conversation took off from there. We decided to take a look at starting our own lead generation company. The concept was flawed however because we lacked one thing most lead gen companies have, money. So we came up with a concept for a company called Search & Social that would utilize our Internet marketing skills to help clients with their needs, and use that work to bring in capital for our lead properties.
We thought this was a pretty unique concept, where marketers would be working and learning on their own properties, and utilizing that information to aid clients. By mid June, we were a legitimate company, with zero capital, no office, a couple of hundred dollar or less domains, and a VPS. At that time Search & Social was born, and so was my son Dominick. That same month I traveled to Toronto to speak, and on my first ever panel one of the co-panelists was Internet Marketing superstar Chris Winfield.
Scary SEO
In October of 2008, we were still trying to land our first client portfolio and build out our website network. We got lucky enough to partner up with industry leader Loren Baker on a project we were calling IMBroadcast.com. We basically wanted to see if we could do what Loren had done for SearchEngineJournal.com with video. To kick of this web property and get Search & Social some much needed marketing I came up with the idea to do an event in South Florida called Scary SEO. Jordan, being smarter than me, realized this event probably wasn’t the best idea since we had very little money coming into the company, but I could not be dissuaded. We invited our friends to come and speak, and live streamed the event. We got a ton of buzz. We also got a pretty big bill for the event. I had to sell one of my cars to actually pay for the event, a fact that not even Jordan knew until now.
As a family we were willing to put everything into my dream to be the best Internet Marketer on the planet. This is a theme that will run throughout this post.
Search & Social in Utah
In October, my wife and I also visited Utah and decided that we would take a crack at living in the state in order to grow the business. We had already invested so much, and my amazing employer, JRDunn.com, was willing to come on as a client. If we were ever going to try to make this happen it had to be now. On top of that Search & Social had its first major client ready to sign.
So off we went to Utah.
The major client fell through. It was pretty tough to look my wife in the eye for the first two months in Utah. However, Jordan and I began to get more speaking spots, and a larger and larger network. By February of 2009, we had somehow put together enough money to begin to hire some staff, and continue to scale our growth to a point we knew we could become profitable.
The one thing to remember here is that there are two little kids making these sacrifices with my wife and I, and this is something I advise any entrepeuner to think about before making major risks. Kids fuel your passion, but also increase pressure.
IM Spring Break
In the Spring of 2009, in all of our brilliance, we decided to throw another event in South Florida with the help of Loren Baker. This event was amazing, but it was also an amazing financial loss. I look back at this as money well spent now, but at the time it was tough to lose five figures on one event. We had made some amazing friends that continued to support us. Two of these people included Chris Winfield and Brent Csutoras, two of our future partners in BlueGlass.
The event is still talked about by people, and as Jordan and I boarded our plane to go home we got a call from Loren, he wanted to merge Search Engine Journal, Inc. and his consultancy with Search & Social. It was a perfect fit.
Unprecidented Growth
From the point we announced our merger in June of 2009, until the end of that year, we saw growth that we had not anticipated. At this point our entire lead gen network went to the backburner, we had to scale at insane rates to keep up with the demand.
Two things fueled our growth:
1) We had made a name for ourselves as the guys in the industry that you could trust and wanted to work with
2) There was an insane need for link development at that time
3) We get sick results for people. We keep things pretty close to the vest, but I am pretty proud of what we are able to do.
Due to the growth we had some major issues:
1) We were not prepared for the reporting and customer service clients expected
2) We didn’t know how to scale staff
These turned out to be amazing problems to have, because they were the catalyst for us creating the software behind Second Step Search and our current procedures that I feel are the best in link marketing. We grew our revenue by 500% from June to December.
We figured out how to turn the difficult to monetize SEO consulting model into an extremely profitable results driven machine. At the end of 2009 we launched Second Step Search to begin offering our software and resources.
A Late Night Call
In April of this year, I got a late night text from Chris Winfield asking some cryptic questions. I was intrigued and asked him to give me a call. Over the next three hours he told me about some offers he had for 10e20 that didn’t feel like a good move for him, and it had him thinking about what could be accomplished by creating a powerhouse company with intergrated service offerings. It seemed like a great idea, but how plausible was it?
My main thought, “How the hell are we going to merge all of these chiefs into one company?”
But the most amazing thing about BlueGlass so far has been our ability to create logical organizational constructs, and moving partners into logical business units. So for example, I am not running 1/7 of BlueGlass fighting over every move, instead I handle 100% of search marketing for the company. This concept, and some amazing early advisers we brought in allowed us to build a pretty impressive company in 1.5 months.
So what is BlueGlass?
1) A company with over 40 employees, several hundred contractors, and 4 offices. (We will hopefully be opening BlueGlass China in the next 12 months)
2) A company that offers a full suite of Internet marketing services and workflow solutions/software with staff members of unparalleled expertise handling campaigns
3) A company dedicated to giving back to the Internet marketing community through content and conferences
4) Likely the first of many agencies to roll up out of several successful consultancies into one powerhouse
To me it represents a little more. This is the completion of another of my dreams, and now reopens the world to me again. I am looking at everything through new eyes. How can we take something as amazing as BlueGlass and make it something even more amazing? What will the next dream that I will look to conquer?
This story should also serve to explain the road we had to take to get where we are today. It was tough, and I often wonder if we didn’t have luck to thank as much as hard work and talent. Regardless I now sit at my desk, at one of our companies four offices, and think , “is this real?” It often doesn’t seem that way to my wife and I. Two years ago we had to sell a car to pay for an event, and now we are putting on amazing events like BlueGlass LA just for marketing purposes.
Hopefully this explains to you why this is such an incredible moment in my life, and I want to thank you all for supporting me on my path to date.
Clarification : Before reading this understand I have at NO point asked Verizon for a reduction on price, I was offered a reduction. I accept the fact that I knew the TOS and I am legally bound to a contract. What I am trying to accomplish with this post is an education of other consumers that might be trying to understand Verizon’s data roaming. If you feel this is not a topic that consumers need to be informed about, perhaps you can explain why in the comments. Did I make a foolish mistake by not exploring the data roaming more in-depth, YES! Did Verizon have tools to keep this all from happening, YES! Will other people make this mistake, lets hope not after this post.
For the last 6 months I have been a relatively big Verizon fan boy. The switch from T-Mobile meant I had increased data connectivity and my two favorite gadgets- my Droid and Mifi. I felt as though I had found a mobile carrier I could finally be comfortable with long term…
Then, on March 25th, I got a call from a Verizon rep letting me know I had a payment due of $256 …. and a current balance of over $7400. They couldn’t possibly be talking about my account could they? Did they mix me up with somebody else?
At the end of February I went on a business trip to visit some clients in Tel Aviv. I had forgotten that T-Mobile had been my carrier during my last trip overseas, so on the way to the airport I decided to call customer support to check on the functionality of my two fav gadgets during my week long trip to the Middle East.
First off, the customer service rep informed me my Droid would not get service in Tel Aviv. (This turned out to be untrue. I was able to use my phone for local and international calls with reasonable roaming charges)
Secondly, the person informed me that my Mifi would work overseas- I was hyped. He informed me as I got ready to go that the data would come in at 2 cents a kilobyte.
I was thinking to myself: Wait… What the hell does that mean?!
At this point in the story it is probably important to explain that while I am pretty savvy when it comes to most things, however, concepts such as data size and usage are both areas where I’m on par with the average mobile phone consumer. I love how they explain the most simplistic things, but nothing that could really affect how much you’re being charged:
I asked the customer service rep what my normal data usage costs are so I could compare it. He stated that because I was on an unlimited plan, I was not charged by kilobyte. Okay… that wasn’t much help at all, nor did it answer my question. I explained to him that I just didn’t want to come back to some huge bill and wanted to be aware of any charges I might incur. The conversation ended with him trying to send me a global phone despite the fact that I was leaving for the airport. While he might have intended on being helpful, it certainly didn’t turn out that way.
When I was in Israel, the internet connection in my hotel and at my clients’ office was pretty much worthless. I used my Mifi without a second thought.
During my time in Israel I used over 350,000 KB of data. Most of this data was most likely me having to reload the horrible connection everywhere I went. This was not even heavy usage for me… I have killed my 5GB maximum several times.
Let’s say the average webpage, including images, flash etc., is 300kb. At the rates I was charged, I could view 9 webpages before I met my average cost of monthly data service.
To put everything into perspective, a 15 minute Skype call would cost $875.
Watching one music video on Youtube would cost you about $200.
I can connect up to 5 of my employees to my Mifi; if I had traveled with a team to Tel Aviv and used my full 5 GB of a lotted monthly usage I would have come to a $100,000 bill- something that usually costs me $50. The thought of that even “accidentally” being allowed to happen makes my head spin.
Obviously when I received my call on the 25th I was a tiny bit upset. I couldn’t even process how this happened.
The gentlemen on the other end explained my data usage. When I explained that I had no understanding of what the kb usage meant, he stated, “Well sir you knew the terms of service.” From that moment on, this became a theme for my interaction with Verizon. Note that they use the word “knew” and not “understood.” It’s as if they are implying that one should be able to comprehend the words written on the TOS, but it wasn’t so important that they actually understand it.
I explained that I was distressed; I had not been alerted during my use of the cost rising, and also that the unusual use and cost did not trip some sort of alert. These are concepts that almost every business service I have, including Amex, use to protect their consumers and themselves.
He stuck to the line that I knew the TOS- even though if they look back into the recorded conversations, the TOS was the 2 cents a kb I questioned before I left and never received a clear answer for. I explained I would likely be leaving Verizon due to this issue, and would do everything to tell people what was being done to people that used data overseas. Neither of these concepts seemed to matter to the customer service rep. Perhaps it was because the $7400 bill represented my contracted us with Verizon for the next three years. Why did they even need me as a customer anymore? Or did they only want my money?
The ugly truth is that upon investigating the issue, I found a number of things could have been done by Verizon to protect me as a consumer. They may not mention them outright, but they are there. The fact that these things were not done can only lead me to assume that Verizon would rather their consumers “understand” as little as possible about their TOS.
Verizon should have noticed erratic usage, tripping off a red alert.
1. Verizon has a detailed history of my usage information. They could have easily told me on the phone, when I asked, what my average use would have meant in terms of dollars.
2. I found out when I got back that the VZ Manager software in the Mifi can track KB usage when tethered. I never tether my device so I did not know this. The customer service rep could have educated me on how to use the device to track data use and thus keep my costs low. This was something that I was told I could have had explained to me by an executive customer service rep, which led me to ask “How come you are telling me this now, if this is common knowledge for customer support?”
The real issue is: how does Verizon allow use of a device, such as a Mifi hotspot, in areas where they cannot get their customer’s quality data costs? This is pretty easy to control, and yet Verizon does nothing. No consumer wants to pay $6 per website- clearly it can’t be to serve their customers.
I spent a few days venting on Twitter about the issue. This put me in contact with every Verizon account, who would then pass me on to the next Verizon account. This was a super annoying way to beat around the bush.
Then one of the Twitter accounts told me this:
I was beyond pissed. I’d had it. How could they treat customers like this? How could they fail so badly in terms of customer service? I tried to equate it to my business to put it into perspective- Say we ran an Adwords account for a client, based specifically on what the client asked, but did not monitor the account and let it run to 30x the normal spend. We would be responsible for this. Not contractually, but ethically.
At the beginning of April, I got a call from an executive customer representative. This was the biggest customer service fail of the entire experience. She was condescending and didn’t want to hear my concerns.
She asked, “Mr.Snyder how much of this bill can you pay?”
Being honest I said “All of it”
She wanted me to come up with an amount so they wouldn’t have to claim any wrong doing, essentially trying to shut me up. But I can pay it, I am not about to lie. This entire issue for me was not about money; it was about how a company, that I was extremely loyal to, could treat me so terribly. The conversation ended, but she called me the next day.
I told her, “You asked me yesterday what I could pay, and I said all of it.”
“Yes sir. Then I told you we would reduce the bill to half if you are willing to accept that. You did know the terms of service.”
Since I had acknowledged that I should have done a better job looking into what the TOS meant to me, I was willing to accept this. It meant I was being honest, and that I could continue to seek out answers with a clear conscious.
I want the point to be clear.
I am not bitching about my bill. I messed up by trusting my mobile carrier in hopes that they would care enough about me to prevent this from happening. I am pretty embarrassed by how stupid I was by assuming this.
What I am upset about is the data roaming policies of Verizon in reference to their products that are ‘data only’. Their customer service policy could easily be augmented to protect their customers better. T cherry on top of the nightmare- the insanely horrible customer service- has me really thinking about leaving Verizon. But where do I go? The customer service rep let me know that any carrier would charge me for data roaming. Since she felt the need to enlighten me about that, I am looking for the carrier that will help me understand the terms of service that they offer me- rather than hoping I exceed the bounds of their contract in some way.
Since Verizon obviously doesn’t care about its customers concerns, I was hoping to open up my comments section as a place for you to voice your frustration with the company. Please refrain from becoming too emotional, profane or vulgar.
Update: Based on the commenter below “Nope” I thought I would break down why I am upset in terms that might make it easier to understand
You are on a road trip to and pull into a gas station, it is only full service.
The sign says – 2 cents per minim
You ask the gentleman that comes to you window, “Excuse me, what is a minim?”
He responds, “It’s a unit of measure smaller than a gallon”
“Well how much will it take to fill my tank, I usually pay $45 for 15 gallons?” you ask.
He responds, “Well I can’t tell you because we charge in minims.”
“Can’t you convert this for me, I just don’t want to spend a ton on gas?”
“No”
“Well I have to fill up so I agree to your 2 cents per minim,” you finally relent.
The gentleman fills you up and brings back a bill for $18,432. He explains “You knew the rate of the gas and agreed, I will need my $18,432.”
It’s true, you agreed to the gas rate, but did you know what you were agreeing too? As you drive away you wonder if the system the gas station put in place wasn’t done in order to confuse their customers into agreeing to the purchase.
Now I will concede that kilobytes are easier to figure out in terms of their relation to megabytes and gigabytes, then minims to gallons, however their usage is anything but an easily figured metric. Every email, webpage, IM, and file on the internet is a different size. It’s almost impossible to know before you use data how much you are going to use, and tracking it is impossible without software specifically for the task.
I have detailed a lot about myself in the last six months on this blog. Most of it has been to share my story to show others what they can achieve, and also that issues will come along, and how to handle them.
When I first started immersing myself in this industry I had a tough time. People will find this interesting, but I am painfully shy. Like to the point where I am uncomfortable in large social settings. I have figured out ways to cope with my social awkwardness in order to keep myself from handicapping my growing businesses.
I know there have to be others out there like me.
Next week I will be in New York for SES New York. I am attending to show off our new company Second Step Search, and to speak on a few panels. I would love to meet as many people as I can while I am there. However, if I don’t get things rolling before I go, I will spend all my time working.
So here is our chance to be social in a setting of comfortability. Let me know something about you, and also let me know if you are attending SES New York. If you see someone interesting in the comment thread reach out to them as well. Get a pre-conference conversation going and take it into the event.
I know people hate it when people out others, but I have to do this. I ran across a site that:
1) Creates multiple pages with substantially duplicated content.
2) Has “doorway” pages created just for adsense programs with little or no original content.
3) Has already been caught buying links for one of its international sites
4) Creating pages with malicious behavior
Matt should shut this obvious blackhat down.
Matt you can find the site at Google.com (you will note that I nofollowed the links to them to avoid a penalty from being in a bad neighborhood)
In January, I watched the annual group of “top lists” roll buy with disgust.
What utter bullshit.
If anyone’s top list of anything is as vertically driven as those then that person should just lock themselves in their closet. The reality is that as humans everything inspires, influences, and shapes us. For me this is definitely true. I come from a non-marketing background, and have been influenced by people ranging in levels of success, and walks of life. Most people that influence me I have never, and likely will never meet. I pull my inspiration from a much larger pool.
I am most impressed by people who hustle against the odds to achieve success, regardless of the level of success.
Thinking about it more I realized that almost daily I think about certain influencers, some I know personally, some I obviously don’t, and decided it would be awesome to share such as list.
And so here they are, in no particular order (because this grouping of people is as random as it gets).
My Mom and Dad instilled the relentless drive for success and work ethic I have now. A bit of a gift and a curse. What really inspires me about them is that they always provided for me and my sister regardless of external influences. They created their own paths, and careers out of nothing more than hard work.
Work harder than hard
When I first met Neil he was a dick to me (I probably deserved it). The second time I met Neil he really showed me how brilliant he is (and he wasn’t a dick). Neil is someone I look at on a constant basis to exemplify the hustle it takes to make it online. He has also been willing to share the lessons he has learned on QuickSprout.com. He has followed a diversified path to success and that is what I admire most about him.
Try new and different paths to success
Pete Cashmore has turned Mashable, and his own brand into one of the most valuable brands in Social Media. He jumped on social media before Youtube or Facebook were popular, or before Twitter even existed. He was truly a pioneer in the social media content space, and has continued to create a quality product over the last 5 years.
See the possibilities in something new
From AffiliateSummit.com
I don’t know if someone’s story in the business and overall perspective has effected me more than Rae. She is not only an amazing online marketer, but she got to where she is through struggle, which is something I associated with right away. And now that she has success? Like any one who is truly motivate, she only wants more, which can be seen by the success of her consulting company Outspoken Media. (which she is partners with Lisa Barone and Rhea Dysdale)
Never settle
I group up completely immersed in hip hop culture, and there are very few business and cultural entities that I have more respect for than Russell Simmons. If you look at the history of Hip Hop/Rap’s emergence as a mainstream form of music, almost everything flows back to Simmons. He was also the industries first mogul, and major trendsetter. Mix all of that with the longevity of his success, and it is easy to see why I have so much respect for Russell Simmons.
Be brave enough to create something entirely new
So this week was more of a roller coaster than usual, and like all things interesting in my life I figured I would share it.
A bit of chest thumping, but whatever.
This was probably the most cliche statement in 2009, so I am sure your eyes are rolling. BUT, what do you do when it is YOUR company that needs to be transparent. Not a hypothetical company, not a Fortune 500 , not a client … your company, the one paying your bills.
This week we had two issues arise with work we were contracted to do for clients. Both of them were honest mistakes, and the kind of issues that can happen to anyone, but we were at a cross roads with both clients. The issues were severe enough to warrant us being taken of the accounts. In reality, both issues were caused by circumstances that are not part of our everyday business, or that we even knew were going on (this lesson feeds more lessons to come). But that is the reality of doing business.
As a business owner do we cover our tracks, and do whatever it takes to keep the client?
No. Instead we chose to man up, take blame for our mistakes, offer swift actionable changes to benefit the client in the situation. Now by doing this we knew we were likely going to lose the account, however something interesting happened, the fact that we were transparent, willing to fix the situation, and provided excellent customer service in both cases caused the client to realize how safe there business actually was with us. We were not the company that was going to mess up, and leave them in the lurch, instead we were the company willing to protect them at all costs, despite our benefit or loss.
When your company is humming along and being profitable, it is sometimes hard to stop the machine to make repairs you know are necessary. With the above issues however, this month, we halted several of our process, and made massive overhauls in the middle of work. Very few companies would do this, but what we realized was that our mission has always been driven by Quality, in services and customer service, and if we have processes that aren’t giving our clients that one basic principles they must be scrapped and redesigned, from the ground up.
As you can imagine the reinvention of process in our company was a huge undertaking for our staff, so I decided to sit out in the main work area yesterday to help them along. I was surprised, and delighted to see the aggressiveness and enthusiasm they had about tackling the challenge. It made me realize that the ingenuity if our staff is something we should harness via processes and not suppress. By creating challenging assignments, not only will it make the staff rise to new levels, but it will also produce the best quality services for the client.
Seriously! This never came up in testing?
Lately I have grown exhausted.
Search & Social has grown to be a pretty important player in the search marketing space, although we normally remain pretty quiet about it. Our second venture, Second Step Search, hasn’t even been officially launched into Beta and is already cash flow positive for the entire year of 2010; no small feat for a software based endeavor. And all of this has led to my energy consistently draining.
I stay up at night thinking about things like profit margins, growth projections, and how to stay ahead of the insane learning curve that the internet poses to marketing companies and entrepreneurs alike.
None of this is natural.
Man is supposed to worry about finding shelter, food, and keeping their family unit secure. Most of our modern concerns are not bound to reality. They are concerns that revolve around money, the future, and other things we have little to no control over.
Then in the middle of concerns over nothing, sometimes reality comes creeping in, and the force between the two opposing ideas can literally cause a person to crack.
Case in point:
Today I had to go read story time at my son Dante’s school. He is 4 and attends a Montessori day school here in Tampa. Each week they have a parent come in, and this week I volunteered. Early this morning I dreaded it because I was in a horrible mood, worrying about all of the things that I become focused on during the course of a work week.
I showed up early to Dante’s school, and got to hangout with him and his friends on the playground.
I felt a swelling in my throat. Weird enough, but I moved on.
Story time was set to begin. I brought two books from home, Pog and Dr. Seuss’s ABCs, and we all headed in to hear them.
We sat down, and first up was Pog, which is a cool story that flips the concept of monsters upside down. I started to read, and again felt this swelling in my throat as I looked over to Dante’s glowing face. He was so excited to have his daddy at school, and sharing “our story time” with his friends.
I finished the first story, and we moved on to the next. It was our ritual that Dante helps me read Dr. Seuss’s ABCs since it is one of the only books he can help me read. He scooted over to me when I was ready, and began to read the first page with me.
Here I was with my 4 year old son, who was reading openly to his class. I quickly realized how impressive he was, and important to me. How Dante, his brother, and mother, our family, is the MOST important thing I have accomplished in my 29 years.
Reality crashed into my unnatural concerns and I cracked.
One page into the story I had to excuse myself. I walked outside of the classroom and began to openly weep. Now imagine that sight! You are a teacher and in your hallway there is a 6’2. 275 pound, tattooed man crying. I know some people will think this is ridiculous behavior for a grown man, but I really don’t have much respect for those people.
I was crying tears of joy. I had realized what my reality was. It was not what car I drive, how much money I make, or any number of other things I dwell on daily. It was my family. Before you say thats because I don’t have to worry about money, remember where I came from.
I regrouped and returned to story time. Dante and I reading OUR story to the delight of his class. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, and I am still reeling from it as I write this post.
It’s strange how the universe chooses to bring us back down from the great heights we create for ourself. Hopefully I can hold onto this grounded feeling for a while.
My family and I spent part of the last week in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and Epcot. As we made our way through each ride at the theme parks I began to realize a pattern:
1) Lines are setup to build up anticipation for the ride itself
2) The rides themselves are awesome, but only last mere moments, in most cases a fraction of what is spent waiting in line.
3) After every ride you are let off into a shop with themed items based around what you just experienced. The kids then go ape shit over stuffed dolls going for $50 a pop.
I began to see a pattern that can be utilized easily on the web
Conversion = Marketing + Branding + Quality Content
Use this as a layover for the web:
1) Create a great piece of content that appeals to the direct demographic of your products consumer. As an example this infographic by Billshrink.com is a great way for the company to draw interest from gadget types and phone consumers in general, then notice the ad on the right hand side.
2) Market this content in a way the builds your brand presence as well as traffic to your site. A holistic marketing campaign mashing search and social media. Zappos has done an amazing job of this, as well as Amazon.
3) Match products and offerings to people enjoying your content. Tripadvisor does an amazing job of this. People use the platform to scope out travel need sand reviews, and Tripadvisor then gives them the option to book. The content is the crux of the conversion experience.
Think about your website now, and your conversion rate. What are you missing from this equation? We work with a lot of site owners who have great products and we can build them traffic, but they are not willing to shape their site for the consumer experience. A simple change like adding reviews to your sites products can have a tremendous impact. Beyond that, brand building can turn customer acquisition into customer retention, and this is where real growth begins to compound.
As an Internet Marketer I use a ton of tools on a daily basis, and our staff uses even more. It is part of the game, and weeding through the crap can take a ton of time.
What takes even longer is training a staffer how to properly use the tool.
This is the disconnect that happens with tools related to Internet Marketing. People think if they buy a great tool, automatically it is going to create a change in the way they approach and succeed on the Internet. That’s a bunch of hot garbage.
A hammer, in and of itself, is simply a mixture of wood and steel. However, in the right hands a hammer can build a home. No matter what the hammer is comprised of in terms materials, in the end it is just a tool, and without expertise it is worthless on how to use it, it is simply a way to hang a picture.
This is a problem I see with a lot of Software as a Service.
That is part of the reason that when we designed the tools for Second Step Search we built them with labor as a major component. Think of it as “Service as Software”. The tools allow us to find links, qualify them, and the labor builds them. On a massive scale. The same with our content offering. We can produce more content, in more languages, at higher levels and lower prices due to the software we have built to manage the writers and editors who create the copy.
Imagine a tool, that doesn’t leave the heavy lifting up to you. It is a restaurant, where all other marketing tools are a grocery store.
That’s what makes me so excited about this project. We are giving people tools to get actual production they need, regardless of their personal skill set. I know personally I have tried almost every SEO or social media tool on the market, and probably have found 5% to be useful for my daily work. The issue is that most of these products were created for the developers themselves to use in conjunction with their skill set and knowledge base, leaving them almost useless in anyone elses hands.
On that note, there are tons of great tools, and SEJ Tools offers a version of one of them. What I will say is that if you are purchasing tools to equip your staff, you should also equip them with training on how to leverage those tools effectively.
