Vox Fortis Communications

I have come to a realization recently about my career path that has started living and breathing on this blog. (Ok, I know it hasn’t been breathing much lately…I told you to give me some time.)

Since I went freelance last year, the bulk of my work has been in SEO. How this happened, I’m not entirely sure, given that I was originally a web copywriter and project manager type. Don’t get me wrong, I have an extensive background in online marketing, but it wasn’t really what people were hiring me for…however, it’s served a unique purpose it seems, in SEO.

Looking back on some of my entries, it might sound like this is the end-all be-all of what I believe online marketing should be. Believe me, it’s certainly not. As good as I’ve gotten with SEO, I find myself missing the other avenues of online marketing that I used to do daily when I worked for bigger companies. From time to time, I encounter companies that are pursuing these other mysterious worlds on their own: email marketing, blogging, social networking. The list is practically endless.

And also, from time to time, they mention in passing they’re trying one out now, or that they tried one in the past and it didn’t work at all.

That said, because I’m getting tired of writing about SEO in here, let’s examine some other avenues. Today’s topic? Email marketing.

It’s just spam. No one uses email marketing effectively.

Boy, it would be nice to have some form of monetary something-or-another every time I heard that.

Let me assure you, email marketing DOES work…but like any form of marketing it has to be done effectively. A lot of the clients I’ve heard this from will drop ten times as much on a direct mail campaign as they will on an email one because they have a preconceived notion that it’s physical and somehow more effective.

While you can certainly track many forms of direct mail success, one of email’s strengths (like any online marketing vehicle) is that you can measure e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. It’s also its downfall, because people will try and send one or two, and get frustrated and give up when they don’t get the open rate they want, the website traffic they want, or the number of sign-ups they thought they’d have in a few weeks. (It’s also worth noting that just because a medium is less measurable, it doesn’t mean it’s less effective)

So what’s the deal with email? Why do companies invest millions in the people, the technology and the patience? Let’s review the basics to a strong email program:

Don’t expect what email marketing won’t give.

Email marketing is primarily a retention tool. So many companies get frustrated when they spend thousands on an email list, send a generic blast and get bupkis in return. Guess what? Those people might have unknowingly missed the little checkbox on whoever’s site they signed on for that said, “Yes, I want to hear third party offers” or something of the kind. They don’t want to hear from you. (I’m sorry, I know that kinda sucks to hear.)

Approach email as your friendly salesperson if you had a storefront. (Maybe you do. And if your store people suck, now’s your chance to raise the bar!) Reach out to the people that have purchased, let THEM invite others to hear what you have to say…which obviously means, you better make it good.

No one opens my emails.

What do you see when an email pops into your inbox? Two things, usually: a “from” field and a subject line. If your subject line is the same everytime, or has zero compelling copy in it, I wouldn’t open it, either. Take a step back from your email and look at it later. What’s the most compelling thing in it? 80% off your entire stock? 10 secrets to withdrawing from the Satan-creator of Starbucks’ addictive recipes? Think like a consumer. What would make them care enough to doubleclick on YOUR email?

Test it. One of the most frequent tests done in email marketing is subject line testing. Split your audience in half, send the same creative version of the email but with two different subject lines. Your consumers will tell you what they care about if you take the time to gather some data.

No one clicks on my emails.

Um, ok. I know this is going to sound really lame and obvious, but I have to ask it: are you giving them something to click through on? If you’re trying to drive traffic to your recipe website, don’t fill your email full of recipes. If you give me everything in the email I need, I have zero reason to click through. Use it as a marketing vehicle for your site. Give teasers for the dishes that have recently appeared on your site with photos. Give the START of a recipe with a link to click on to see the rest.

People want a reason to come to your site, you just have to give it to them.

I’m not acquiring emails on my site.

I have to start by saying that if your traffic stinks, then don’t worry about the rate at which you’re acquiring (or not, acquiring, apparently) email addresses. Remember, we’re approaching email as a retention tool….there have to be visitors there to retain! But let’s pretend you’re pretty happy with your website’s traffic, in general. Why aren’t they signing up?

First, where is your email capture field? Is it below the fold? Check click overlay patterns on your site and see where people are going the most and position the field there.

Second, do they understand what they’re getting? You can’t just have a capture field in there with generic text about “sign up to receive updates.” I don’t know what that means, and if I don’t know what it is, I don’t want it coming to my inbox.

This sounds basic.

Sure it does smartypants, but you’d be shocked how many people get really upset and give up after a month. That’s not to say that these simple things would solve everything for them, but in over half the cases I’ve seen fixing just some of these issues result in a dramatic difference. And you know what? I worked in a huge dot com, pushing millions of dollars through the email channel, and really….it all came back to basics. Yes, we had some pretty flashy resources and technology at our disposal, but we were held to the same metrics that any small business owner would be: open rate, clickthrough rate, and conversion rate.

Millionaire corporation or not, they’re still your customers - how are you talking to them?

First, a shout out to a great email written by Caroline, who proves that sometimes “SEO Service” spammers mess with the wrong lady.

There is so much to-do around inbound links these days, it gets hard to decipher fact from fiction. Yes, inbound links are important, but they often get positioned as a silver bullet for getting your website ranked. In truth, they’re a valuable piece of the equation, but there is absolutely nothing that will help your site as much as a properly constructed one from the get go.

I hate to use a housing market example, especially given the state of the thing, but it’s a valid one. Putting a million links to your site is like sticking a bunch of “For Sale” signs all over the place. And with crappy providers, it’s like putting a “House For Sale” sign up in view of an unemployment line.

You can’t put your house up for sale with a bad foundation. I mean, you can, but good luck selling the sucker when the inspection takes place. Think of Google like your house inspector…it shows up and wants to see the goods. No meta information? It checks off the box for foundation defects. No keywords? No anchor links within the site? Lots of flash and images? It checks it off as faulty plumbing.

I see a lot of freelance listings for sites asking for a provider that will get them 100 inbound links. Then I’ll curiously check out their site, see that it’s not optimized at all, and feel bad for them. Obviously someone told them that inbound links are key, and they don’t even have a solid cement slab going on. Let’s set aside the fact that the type of site where the links come from, the words they use to get to you, etc are all important factors….these poor people are desperate to get their site ranked, and they think they’re buying a quick and easy way to do that.The best way is still a solid foundation with healthy text, and continually updated content. There’s just no way around that. With over 70% of people using search to find things, it’s obviously a very viable promotional vehicle for your website…but like any good tool to build a business, there’s no get rich quick scheme.

First, a hearty thank you to all of you who asked where I have been. The last few months have been a blur, and something had to give with my time, which unfortunately wound up being my beloved blog.

The good news is, the dust has settled, and I have managed to budget my time in such a way that I can get back to this here thang.

Freelancing has been hard for me the past few months. I had one great month, followed by a scary-skimpy month in April. I cried. I felt like a failure. I actually started applying to full-time jobs, momentarily seduced by words like “steady paycheck” and “benefits.”

Here’s the reality, and to keep with the theme of my writings here, I’ll put it into internet marketing context.

If Google was indexing my life and my thoughts, and I punched in certain search phrases, none of them would return with “full-time job.” None. Well, except for “reliable pay” but that’s the only one. My keywwords would be things like:

Freedom to choose my work
Freedom to choose my clients
Ability to work from anywhere
Never working set hours

And many other things of the like. And you know what? Not one returned search term would refer to a full-time job. Even despite my frenzy for a few weeks, I couldn’t escape the thoughts that crept in…the ones that reminded me of all the reasons why I ditched my corporate job to begin with. Those keywords look something like this:
Cubicles
Micromangement
Petty, corporate sharks
Busywork
Glass ceiling

Which keywords do I want applied to my career? That answer is easy, even if sometimes the path isn’t. I had to let go of a client that just wasn’t working. It was a conglomeration of things, but suffice it to say that it was income that was hard to let go of. It made my April pretty paltry, which is what launched me into a “why am I putting myself through this” phase.

But I remembered why. I landed a gig last week that I’m rather excited about, should bring some steady income, with really fun people. It smacked me upside the head as I did some work this past weekend and took an hour off this afternoon to watch some TV. All those little things that I know I’d absolutely ache for if I was back to sitting in a car and commuting every day, sitting in a windowless cubicle and being beat over the head by upper management. I just don’t miss any of that, even if I miss the steady paycheck at times.

So, I’m back and re-rooting myself in the decision that being an independent contractor is best for me. Here I am, I’m digging my heels back into my blog and hitting “go.” The good news is, having a few months like this has refreshed the wealth of things for me to write about here, so I’m optimistically saying there will be no shortage of information, and no shortage of me hanging onto those keywords that got me here in the first place.   

And people wonder why I’m a web analytics nerd.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit my web traffic is pretty sad. It’s not what it should be given that I do this stuff for a living…which is probably why I don’t have the time to put my mad skillz to use in my own little space here. That said, I still look at my analytics every day, because I’m compulsive that way.

I was sipping my coffee, checking out yesterday’s numbers, and was interested to see there was a spike. I was curious as to why, so I checked out my referring traffic, and drilled down to a particular link that was doing it. It’s an “XHTML Challenge” and there on the page was my friend Naomi over at IttyBiz vs. my piddly little site right here. You can check it out here. I have no idea what the stuff on there means (other than our content ratios, which shows right there why she has a much bigger audience than I do). I do know that even though at the moment I’m winning 7 votes vs. 3, I will likely lose because I don’t have scores of minions. (Though I do love my faithful readers, and you know who you are *cough*JuddandMichael*cough*.)

The interesting part is that you can see who started the challenge, and it’s none other than Jon over at Freelance Folder. (At least I think it is. It’d be a mighty huge coincidence if there was another “JPhilips” out there who reads both Naomi and myself.) I suspect that because he’s male, he wants to see a girlfight complete with mud wrestling, but he’s also probably smart enough to know that Naomi and I are the furthest thing from that.

Then again, would it get me more readers?

I don’t know about all of you, but I never get to read all the stuff that’s in my RSS every day. It’s too crazy how often Lifehacker updates. I can keep up with the once a day posters, but my BoingBoing feed is a lost cause. I’d love to find some new blogs about small business, but I have no clue when I’d squeeze that into my day…somewhere between my phone calls where I’m simultaneously answering emails, maybe? Yeah. Not ideal.

A few weeks ago, Shane was all, “Pssst. I’m working on something cool.” So of course I’m all, “Your wife is pregnant?” Well, no. But until the human baby makes an appearance, he’d been putting intense work into another baby: Sproutwire.

I shamelessly love the Shane and Peter blog as it is, so I was intrigued to hear there was another project in the works. And it’s so genius, and created by a group that specializes in UI anyway, I’m just geekily excited to be in on the beta. The site is called Sproutwire, and it will serve as a hub for articles related to small business, vetted and served up to you on a gorgeous Sproutwire silver-platter-like-designed site every single day.

For people like us that can’t get enough reading about small business, this is a Godsend.

You know what else is a Godsend? ME. (I’ve always wanted to be able to say that.) As a reader of my blog, and because Shane is one of my blogosphere homeboys, you can get a sneak peek at the beta launch as well. Follow this link, input your email and you’re in line for when they lift the veil on the beta version this Friday.

See? You knew there was a reason you came here. So go. Now. Do I need to say it again? Go sign up for Sproutwire beta, fool!

The pup has a fascination with the ice cube dispenser on my fridge. It grinds up the cubes (because crushed ice is really the only way to go) and she sits there, ears perked, waiting for the magical ice chunks to plunk onto the floor.

This isn’t unlike finding and deciding on your keywords in several ways, believe it or not.

Some are bigger than others.

When people search, it’s like they’re at a doorway, and when someone enters their search term and hits “enter” 50,000 people want to charge through the entryway. Google is the hall monitor that helps arrange them in a more orderly fashion, but those other sites are still your competition.

When the dog sits there and waits for the ice cube, she’s going to gravitate towards the bigger ones…the problem is, if they’re TOO big, they won’t fit through the dispenser. They need to be ground down a little more.

Pick SEO keywords that are in the sweet spot.

If you pick something like “freelance design” for example, you’re going to have trouble unless you’re someone really well-known. Access to a robust SEO tool is your best friend when it comes to saving yourself time on competing for words that have insane competition. I always try and find what I refer to as the “sweet spot” for clients: words that get decently searched, but that don’t have the whole world as competition.

So take the previous example. Let’s say you’re a freelance designer, and there are a few thousand searches a day for that term, but millions of pages that you’d be competing with…get creative. Check into searches for freelance design specific to your area, or explore the option to add adjectives in front of the term like “affordable.” Granted, the search volume won’t be as high as something like “freelance design,” but you’re not going to get any of that traffic by trying to compete with the biggies anyway.

Start with the big ice cube, and grind it down.

Look at those biggies first. Don’t avoid the huge terms you know you can’t compete on, but use them as the big ice cube you whittle away at until it’s small enough to fit through a relevant search.

The eager searchers on the other side of the screen will snap you up when your smaller cube fits through the door.

While I’d like to say I should kick Shane in the shins for giving me homework, I can’t. I’m still being a jackass with updating, so he’s giving me a reason to. It’s so easy to get utterly wrapped up in your business to the point it’s next to impossible to talk about it, and you find yourself staring at a blank screen, pretty sure you have nothing worthwhile to impart. Apparently, my strange habits have been deemed worthy of sharing, so it goes to tell you never can tell.
So, Shane’s asking a group of us to expose parts of our weird little worlds. We all have our quirks, and most of them probably don’t come through on electronic mediums like this. Without further ado, here’s a glance into my weird little world.

I can’t stand things that clang.

Let me clarify. Got a set of keys? Please. For the love of all things holy…do not jangle them. It literally makes my teeth hurt. A close runner up is silverware being clanged around. It’s my worst nightmare to be in a restaurant with a kid banging silverware together. My teeth feel like they’re getting the creepy crawlies. I have no idea where this comes from, it’s been that way for as long as I can remember.

Oh, and if you get the devilish look in your eye and do it on purpose, you’d better duck. Silverware does serve useful purposes other than giving me the heebie jeebies.

I will do 18 loads of laundry…and not put it away.

If anyone can explain this phenomenon to me, that’d be great. I start feeling nutty when there’s too much laundry piled up. Nothing makes me feel better than shoveling that stuff into the washer and getting it outta my sight. Then I drag my feet on the folding thing, but it’s still a necessary evil if I want to get through the other piles of laundry.

Then?

It sits in a neatly folded pile. Like, forever. I HATE putting it away. I have no clue why. My closet is nicely organized, but I cannot force myself to walk it from the pile on the trunk to the shelves in there. Rationally, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Then?

I get annoyed because it’s sitting there. So I start wearing what’s sitting out there to get rid of the pile. Months later when I actually look in my closet, I’m all, “Wow, I forgot about that shirt.”

Yeah. Wonder why.

My kitchen sink can gross me out.

There can be explosions of junk ALL OVER the countertop in the kitchen, but my eye will go right to the sink. To any weird little pieces of food stuck on the stainless steel. To any dark splash marks from the morning’s coffee that was dumped. To the ONE glass that might be sitting in there. Everything else fades away, and that’s all I see.

Consequently, I’ll wind up absolutely scouring the sink, and leaving the rest of the crap everywhere.

Don’t ask. I have no idea.

I am on the Most Wanted list for houseplant death.

I am absolutely horrific with indoor plants. I seem to do ok with the ones outside (which usually consequently fry in Virginia’s summer heat) but I should attend some kind of group therapy for what I impose on houseplants. They’ll be there, on a stand of some kind, and I’ll walk right by them. The poor things are probably falling out of their pot trying to wave me down. “Hey! YOU! Waitwaitwait! I’ll do it! I’ll jump.” And I breeze on by, oblivious to the leaf depletion that happens thanks to lack of water or a feline that gets the munchies.

So there you have it. I kill plants, I hate keys and silverware, I have an odd obsession with my kitchen sink, and no matter how many times I walk into my closet in a day, I refuse to take clean clothes in there.

Told you I was weird. Good news is, we all are.

Before we get to the second lesson in the puppy SEO series, I had an epiphany while I was traveling this past week about creature comforts.

I am pathetically addicted to electronics. Save for a novel of some sort, when I travel there are some items guaranteed to be in my carry-on bag (which won’t include anything liquid related thanks to the brain children of Homeland Security…I use expensive crap on my hair and already learned that lesson the hard way): ye olde Nintendo DS (with a copy of Yoshi’s Island or a Kirby title, since you’re curious about the levels of my immaturity), the iPod, and my laptop.

Of course, all of these things require electricity. And you know what? No friggin’ airline has the same way of providing power, if at all. I considered getting this, but then read up on the airline I was taking only to find out that basically….you get no power to your seat, fool. You will be confined to a 5-6 hour cross-country flight, sweating as your battery meters peters out to nothingness.

What does this have to do with anything, other than me being a high-maintenance nerd? I’ll tell you what.

Earlier in the week I met with a new group that has presented a really awesome partnership opportunity for me. Ironically, the president and I are alums from the same company, though at different times. He’s refreshingly together (you deal with enough business owners who have no clue what’s going on or what they want, and you appreciate the ones who have their act together) but at one point he said something like, “I’m sorry, I know I’m structured, it’s left over from corporate America.”

I never expect clients to do anything differently than what they’re comfortable with. It’s the creature comfort factor. Maybe I’m a flexible person by nature, but I’ve heard some horror stories come from clients about freelancers they’ve worked with. Yes, we all need to set boundaries from freaky extremists to keep our lives sane, but part of being in business for yourself means giving clients what they need and what they’re comfortable with. It’s a fine line, and you will certainly find employers/clients that will push the boundary.

Be reasonable. Don’t force feed clients things they’re obviously not comfortable with. Working with a lot of freelancers can make people who need your expertise feel like me when trying to find an airline power source: no two are ever the same, and they don’t want to spend money on something if it’s not gonna work. Being flexible and reasonable is something that takes practice and negotiation. Hopping a cross-country flight isn’t exactly part of my normal day, and it came sooner than I thought it would, but the bottom line was that a group I work with needed me to do it. It’s a group I thoroughly enjoy working with and am already learning so much from, so that’s a movable boundary in my world. They’re knee deep into a campaign, and didn’t want to run outta juice for their DS.

So, that was my mini-epiphany for the week as I grumbled my way through the headache that the world of travel has become. That, and in general, flying sucks…but I can’t think of a snappy way to equate to working for yourself, so this is what you get.

For more on being what your clients need, check out this entry. And if you still are liking what you see, subscribe to me.

Thanks to the popularity of My Puppy Can Teach You Marketing, it’s now time for the next lesson in the series: My Puppy Can Help You Understand Basic SEO - Lesson #1.

I’m not talking about crazy blitzing to get your site into the #1 ranking in some ungodly amount of time. I don’t practice that stuff anyway, though I’ve been asked to. What do you, as a business or site owner, need to understand about search? My puppy has the answer, thanks to her piles of sticks. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read the first entry already, wouldja?) Instead of how selecting her sticks is like marketing, let’s look at how it relates to search engines.

It might seem like the first question should be: Does Google even know you have a stick? It’s not. That comes at the end. Let’s start with the foundation.

What’s your stick all about?

The search engine only has a few precious ways to figure out what your stick looks like: what the site has on it, what other sites point to it, and when they’re pointing, what words they’re using.

The only thing you have absolute control over is the structure of your site and what you’re telling Google about it. When my pup looks at all the sticks in the woods outside (and trust me, there are plenty of them) she knows what she sees…some are bigger, some are smaller, some are brown, some are decomposing.

Don’t let Google think your site is of the decomposing variety…splintered, unfocused, and basically dead and useless. (Unless that’s your thing. Hey, on the Internet there’s room for everyone.)

Let’s assume you want to be brown and full of yummy bark (which, by the way, she skillfully peels off and spits out.) Your bark is that outside layer, the first thing the search engine looks at. It sees your url, which nowadays, can be very hard to make straightforward and relevant. It looks at your page titles, your meta data, and what your pictures are named. It’s peeling away the bark, and trying to figure out what pile you belong in.

The first thing I see a lot of clients rush toward is the body copy and keyword-stuffing in that regard. That won’t do you much good until Google looks at your site’s foundation first and figures out if you’re a log, a twig, if you fell from a Maple or a Spruce. Make the process easier for it (and better for you) by using those precious keywords here FIRST.

You’re reading one of the most impatient people on Earth, who wants to jump into customer-facing content like it’s a drug habit. I get it. But, you have to think bigger picture and in a more methodical manner when dealing with search engines. They were written by engineers for goodness’ sakes, so get in that mindset and make the behind-the-scenes foundation solid before you do anything else.

Stayed tuned for Lesson #2 of the Puppy SEO Series this week: finding your keywords.

I got in the car yesterday to go to the post office. As a regular community member over at BookMooch, I had a moocher who was waiting on a novel I’d recently finished. I live in an wee town in Virginia on the skirts of a metro area. This should not be any kind of production whatsoever…less than 5 minutes to the post office, tops. (Plus, I’m an impatient person, so…there’s that.)

I turned out of my development onto the main road where they were doing road work. Nothing big, one of those little buggy deals that punches squares into the asphalt (or is it concrete?) so they can insert the reflectors along the dividing line.

I sat and waited, and I started to get edgy. I watched the Highly Unnecessary Eighty Point Turn of the buggy, orchestrated by a construction guy who had originally stopped me by doing a hand wave while not even turned in my direction. He also had a walkie-talkie that didn’t appear to be getting any use.

Finally, I go on my way. On the way back, it was another annoying experience, but for a different reason.

As I drove toward the site, there was another guy there, but I saw a ray of hope in the situation because he had one of those tall signs. You know the kind “slow” on one side, “stop” on the other.

That’s where the hope ended, as I drove closer and could see him better. I was, by the way, driving closer because his sign had the “slow” turned towards my little car. Then I noticed his hand waving, indicating a stop….while not looking at me.

I stopped, utterly confused. Could I go? Was this a test? Was there a hidden camera looking to see how many citizens would just blow by? I looked around for an answer from the pine trees on either side of me. I looked back at the guy.

No eye contact, no nothing. I didn’t even know if he realized I was there. Maybe he wanted me to go but has a hand tic and I was going to make him feel bad by responding to that and not the friggin’ HUGE orange sign he appeared to be in control of.

As you can see, this was turning into a borderline existential crisis for someone that overthinks things as much as I do.

It’s also a really, really good example of your role with the clients.

You are the conductor.

Your client audience is looking to you for direction. They want a confident recommendation based on the expertise they’re working with you for. Don’t overwhelm them with choices or decisions on services they don’t know anything about. The best way to avoid that is to ask questions initially, and ask a lot of them. The key is to not ask questions about whether they want an email campaign or not. The key is to ask, overall, what they don’t have that they know they need. What struggles are they having? Don’t add to their pain, find out what it is and cure it.

Conductors serve more than just an audience.

They serve the musicians.

Whether it’s a client’s web page, their seo, their copy (or maybe all three) you will be directing the orchestrations that will make things happen. You’re the person that will stand there, conduct, and then turn to face the audience of your clientele, and it had better to be thunderous applause. If it’s not, it’s your fault. You can’t turn around, shrug, and say, “That tuba player sucks.”

The tuba player might suck, but it’s your job to keep that from the client and make him play better. That, or find another tuba player.

Don’t mix signals. In either direction.

Like my friend who had the “slow” sign in one hand the “c’mon, move it along” in the other, don’t confuse your clients. No matter what’s going on with the orchestrations behind the curtain of their project, convey what’s important for them to know. Give a reliable quote for the services they need (which goes along with the question asking I just kicked your tush over). If you assume they understand what everything includes, you’re in for trouble. Nickel and diming over things will confuse your client and could make them feel like you’re putting one over on them. Things like “Oh, I thought I was just writing your copy…it didn’t include any revisions or editing.” I don’t mean major, huge project scope changes, but things that should naturally come with any package. Deliver consistency so people will buy tickets for repeat showings.

Don’t overwhelm while trying to show off.

Although this is probably more apt to match with bands infamous for long, drawn out jam sessions that make some of us weep with boredom, I’m sticking to my analogy, dangit.

Remember, they hired you to do something they couldn’t. The more complicated you make it seem, the more horror you’ll see on their faces. Sure, if they ask to see the sheet music then show it to them. But don’t conduct, try and teach them how to conduct, make revisions to the sheet music…you get the point.

Keep practicing.

You’ll stumble. I guarantee you will. You’ll eat some costs and time you didn’t account for, you’ll work with bad contractors who are handling pieces of projects, and you’ll probably wind up firing that tuba player.

The good thing is, most people weren’t born like Beethoven. You won’t wave that baton and get perfection at first, but you will get more efficient every time you do it and will eventually be on the way to creating your own little masterpiece of a business.