How Does Google Know if I Copy?

One of the common questions that comes up is “Do search engines like Google really know if I shoplift content from other web sites to update my own?” Another is “Out of all the millions of web sites, how can they know?”

Ask  yourself the following: if Google isn’t also indexing those sites, how would it index your site? How would such a thing as SEO exist? That’s what search engines do – they scan your site for content. There’d be no SEO value in adding content to your site, if search engines weren’t aware of it, or aware of the same content on other sites. And Google reads your site just like a human being – top to bottom, front page to back.

Here are the results you may find from lifting content:

SEO decline. This happens by rewarding the site that had the duplicate content first (it’s copy-worthy – that’s an endorsement – rank it higher) and lowering rankings for the site that had it later – i.e. lifted the content (it’s not original – no sense in presenting it high in search results). When I post, Google is usually aware of my content within seconds. I know – I monitor it. I have automatic scans in place for content theft, but still – I know that a plague falls on the house of anyone who rips it off, because of the way SEO works. [Want to see a Google example? Click the image at right.]

Legal issues. One of these days, the site owner is likely to run his popular material through copyscape.com and see who is using it without permission. [Want to see a Copyscape example? Click the image at right.] Here are the questions they can pursue: “Are you a business? How long have you profited from having my content on your site? How much money did you make in that time, and what percentage of it is due me?” If you could write stellar content and just wait for people to rip it off, you could actually make a business out of it, with a good attorney. It’s the same with multimedia content: grabbing images (photos, graphs, etc.) off the internet that have not been explicitly declared ‘public domain’ and for which you do not have an appropriate license, or are obeying the terms of that license. You’re probably exposed at that point, unless you can make a case for “fair use” – a rule which has its own vague terms, precisely so courts can apply the rule un-evenly and favor whom they wish. We’ve written about fair use on this blog, so we won’t revisit it here, but we’re not attorneys and aren’t competent to offer real legal advice, so if you have questions about it, you should consult an attorney.

Ethical issues. Keep in mind that plagiarism is plagiarism. If it was cheating when you copied that book into your essay in school and represented it as your own, instead of properly attributing it to the author, it’s plagiarism when you do it with web content. If you are going to attribute it, that’s better but doesn’t mitigate the other issues.

Public perception. When someone goes to bookmark your content in a social bookmarking site like digg.com, they will likely get a response that this is duplicate content that has already been bookmarked. This exposes you as a content lifter. Are you a business? What are the potential consequences of a client looking at your site as just a collection of things grabbed from other web sites?

Low social value. Focusing on just SEO is a common mistake of those who believe in the mythology of automatic marketing, and it misses the whole point of why SEO works the way it does. Fresh, original, frequently updated content is rewarded in search engines PRECISELY because that’s what people are searching for, want to interact with, and are responding to. If you’re just slapping in stuff you find on the web content, generally speaking, you’re not really respecting your prospects, how they think, and what they want – you’re just feeding them filler – which means you think people are basically dumb in their buying responses and will warm to any old thing. You’re trying to fool them with fake attention. It’s like a pat on the head – just a bit too patronizing – and if you think that doesn’t come through, subtly, there you go again underestimating your prospects. You wouldn’t put up with it, so why should they?

A dynamic web site is a social entity – an interactive environment. If you really don’t care enough, and don’t respect the visitor enough, that you’re just dumping things into it from other sites, why should they care and why should they stick around? Content is a social compact – you’re promising to be genuine, authentic, and alive. It’s easy to say “blogging didn’t work for me” – it might make us feel better, but it’s really the assumptions we’re acting on that make the difference. Treat people like people – talk plainly – and you’ll earn an audience. Take shortcuts, and it’s like one of those “filler speakers” for hire that will show up at your company for a fee and talk about whatever – give them a topic and a time frame and they’ll come speak “dynamically” for that 30-minutes or an hour – from puppy dogs to sales to motivation to time management. Wow. It’s like serving cheap crackers and cheese whiz at a convention. Everyone’s thinking “how long do I have to stay here?” That’s not a buyer response.

And if I seem blunt about this, it’s because you’re up against the obsolete marketing-think of our grandparents, where people would often buy whatever you throw at them, if it was reasonably new, because there just weren’t so many products on the shelf, and there just weren’t that many plumbers in our town. It was a seller’s marketplace. It doesn’t work that way any more. Look at the shampoo aisle at your supermarket and start counting. Check the phonebook – that antique they keep throwing on the porch every year – how many of your profession are there in your area? Now, we actually have to respect our audience enough to be real. It’s a buyer’s marketplace now. That’s the meaning off social media, of blogging, and even of Google, my friends. The assumption implicit in any successful internet marketing activity today is that we’re searchers, explorers, social people – instead of the web being a ‘marketing engine’, it’s a marketing conversation. It’s more like coffee hour than the sermon, more like a ball game with friends than a scorecard and silence, more like personal coaching than ‘here’s your gym badge, over there are the machines’.

I’m going to push this farther. So much of the time, at Market Moose, we’re offering a corrective – nudging people away from the pitfalls (we’ve all fallen into them – that’s how we know they’re there). But our mission is also to coax clients toward a newer, more current, more realistic vision (as in corresponds with the new reality) for their marketing. So here goes. It’s not just about your marketing. It’s about your business – the substance of who you are as a business and how your business works. I’m often hearing people say, “in my field, marketing doesn’t work” – but I notice that their successful competitors don’t think that at all. In every field, in every locale, someone is making money and being successful marketing their business. I notice that same crowd is often saying, “here’s how I work, we all do the same things, this is what I do, it hasn’t changed in 40 years”, etc. In other words, they’re not adapting or responding to the new reality – they’re telling people how it’s going to be, what they’re willing to do, and doing the take it or leave it thing. However you slice it, this is the old way and, yeah, if your business doesn’t change, you can have stellar marketing, but it’s just a facade. What’s needed is a fundamentally different approach to your own work. It’s amazing how much the new marketing then starts to make sense.

Ever driven up to a run-down roadside motel and heard “$79″… and when you say, “gosh that’s expensive for this!” they just repeated, “$79, plus tax, plus key deposit”. They get away with that for one reason only – there’s no alternative. The moment I open a motel across the street that’s clean, with well-lit parking, hot coffee, and a security guard, they’re gone.

The things we need to be thinking about are:

• How can we increase and maintain better communications with existing clients – communications that go beyond just the purchasing process?
• How can we begin a conversation with the public about our field of work – but, more importantly, about the aspects of it that the public is actually thinking about?
• How can we give prospects a way to stay connected to us, stay in our orbit, even before they’re ready to switch to us or include us in their business plans?
• How can we position ourselves, in all our locales, or in our particular specializations and niches, as the resident expert – the one that is the clear choice – without throwing a lot of sales language at people (“Hey, I’m the best. For quality, buy from me!” -  bleh)?
• How can I build a wider network of people (and where are they all hanging out these days?) that isn’t just people that are immediately “valuable” to me, but anyone and everyone I know, meet, or have a conversation with? – Remember the insurance agent analogy I gave in the video on new marketing.

More of us don’t want to walk in and shake your hand, we want to add each other to our Facebook. I don’t want you to mail me those mortgage rates – I want to see them by following you in Twitter. I don’t want your five page static web site that never changes. I want you to think about what I’m thinking about and give me some insight. Ever visit one of those old-fashioned personal home pages from 10 years ago – it had someone’s favorite colors, they’re favorite rock bands, a bad photo, etc? Ineffectual business web sites are still like that. Well, individuals are way ahead of a lot of companies that expect their business. Individuals are involved in constantly updated statuses and always adding funny stories, interesting thoughts, etc – to their pages (which are now in Facebook and Twitter more than they are in Tripod and Geocities). Businesses are playing catch-up. And not just in how they ‘market’, but in how they do business as a whole. Sometimes, it’s time for an overhaul not of just your web site, but of who you are as a company, and how you operate. It’s that, or join the dying part of the industry.

I have three marketing mentors – three people that, for me, have summed up successful marketing right now:

• Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People). What’s funny is that web 2.0 and social media, like blogging and Twitter, are seeing the fruition of a market based on Carnegie’s thinking. And yet Carnegie started this in 1934. What’s also funny is that it quickly got the reputation from people who hadn’t read Carnegie, of being manipulative – it was actually thought to be more ‘honest and straightforward’ to just make or do stuff and assume people would buy it, tell them endlessly to buy it by bombarding them with ads saying it’s good, and so on. Carnegie saw that stuff as antique back in its heyday. There were Mad Men and there was Carnegie the visionary. And you know his primary idea? Simple: if you genuinely take an interest in people, in general, whether or not they can do anything for you, or seem immediately ‘valuable’ (as a commodity) – if you just interact with them, meet them, add them to your social network as people – you’ll never have to seriously chase business. You won’t have to constantly pitch them on how your services are the best, etc. Again, we talked about the insurance agent in video on new marketing and those guys are disciples of Carnegie.
• Seth Godin (Tribes, The Purple Cow, etc.). I don’t even like everything Seth is interested in or talks about (some of his books are, in my opinion, overly focused on corporate life). But you can’t argue that he can really nail down the underlying ethos and thinking behind the new marketing – the new way of doing business.  Tribes is short (read it in one sitting), and really gets you there.
• Google. Just looking at the meaning behind Google’s activities tells you what has changed, often before it actually has. Google is prophetic. Google understands that we’re offloading more of our activity and thinking online – and that includes our social networking, our buying decision process, and our expectations for interaction. Google knows that documents aren’t static anymore – they’re evolving social tools. That’s why Google is reading your home page like a human being, using artificial intelligence, instead of the old-fashioned way of just picking up key words some SEO person inserted on the back end. They get it, they’re helping drive it, and the rest of us are learning from it.

Well, I think we’ve answered the key questions. Market Moose is available for consulting, including brainstorming for your business. Let us know if we can help.

Frequently Asked Web Site Questions (Part 2)

Should I have individual staff or team profiles on the site?

I think it adds the appearance of depth to your company for people who are interested in that. But people can be fickle too. So any time you feature just yourself alone, some people will turn away, because it looks like it’s just you. Any time you add more people, some people will turn away, because they’re intimidated by it being more than just you. There isn’t one right answer. You weigh your market, your target audience, and how you know they’ve been reacting to you and what they’ve been asking against both answers. For me, I do both, but I put my personal photo and identity right on the front (it’s part of my brand), and I put the staff page a link away. So I’m getting both possibilities in there. The people thinking “can I rely on just you?” can click a button and see otherwise. The people thinking “I want one human being to relate to” have that person on the front. You’re going to lose visitors, no matter what you do, but I still like that approach for me. If your clients are fairly corporate or affluent – you might also want a staff photo (together) at the bottom of your home page.  You can also add one to the bottom of a CONTACT page, if visitors are typically reaching or being assigned to someone other than you.

Staff profile pages have good SEO potential, too. If you create individual bio pages for each staff member, with photo and link to a main staff page, then add a main staff photo to that page, with 100-400 words about your staff as a whole, and do the standard ‘back-end’ SEO, it becomes a nice positive SEO driver. Plus, they don’t have to click each profile if what they’re wanting is an overall summary with the photos.

Should I have multiple blogs?

Honestly, this question is best treated as “nothing matters if you’re not consistent, original, and relevant – but especially consistent”. There’s no point in multiplying blogs if only to have two that aren’t updated frequently. Blogs don’t usually become traffic builders overnight. They do maintain SEO immediately, if you’ve had an SEO overhaul, and you don’t slack off on the blog. Once you’ve slacked off for long enough, it stops contributing, and your site starts sinking in search engine value. So, even without readers, a blog as an SEO driver to maintain and grow your rankings is key. But to build traffic flow, it needs to be continually updated (think thrice a week) with 100-400 words per post of 100% original content that is highly relevant to your locales (which must be mentioned specifically) and/or your industry. If you do that, and you’re being consistent, it will come naturally to you where and how to grow – whether that’s two blogs or just a particular focus, name, and brand for your existing blog.

A more specific answer, though: an on-site blog offers the highest SEO value to your main site (having the front page actually be the blog, as previously mentioned, has the most SEO value). An off-site blog gives you an inbound link to your site (if you do it right), the opportunity to treat it as a niche site, and the ability to gain it’s own SEO and audience and funnel traffic back to your main site. The key thing is to position yourself as resident expert in a particular locale, demographic, or specialization, and continually give away value. No cheesy sales pitches. Instead, it’s your insight, expertise, information, and perspective. You’ll almost certainly get no response for a long while, and little value for a while, but if you’re consistent, the payoff can be extraordinary. Most people just can’t delay gratification that long (a month and they’re done, or maybe they give it a post per month for six months – same difference), or their faith wanes around anything technical that doesn’t work instantly, or they short change it (no prolonged consistency, no originality – they just toss some news articles at it, etc). That’s perfectly OK – the market goes to those who do it right, and stick to it. It’s a kind of natural selection. If you can do the right things consistently, and there’s a reason to have two blogs, go for it. But if it’s just going to be two things you won’t do right or be consistent at, pick one or don’t do either.

Keep in mind, too, it’s old-fashioned (web 1.0) to focus entirely on a web site in particular, anyway – blog or static. That just doesn’t work anymore. There’s a reason why every startup in existence launches into Twitter and Facebook – even before their site is built – even while they’re under construction. The goal in web 2.0 is to integrate all these things to extend your presence – your brand – your expertise where the people actually are. And then give them tons of options and opportunities at every turn to connect with you, follow you, stay in your orbit, join your tribe. You could do a 2nd blog off site, if you’re going to put the energy there too, or instead of. But you also have social media to focus on.

Should I add lots of organizational emblems to my site?

Sure, but I wouldn’t go overboard. I think a lot of the focus on external links and organization emblems is the old top-down product-driven approach of wanting prospects to become clients for the reasons we think they should, or wish they would, or is basically just “this is what I have to offer – this is what I want you to bite on”. Some of it’s fine. But again, what does web 2.0 tell us people are actually responding to? They’re responding to the resident expert in social media, and to fresh, frequently updated, original, interesting content. Emblems are static content. That’s fine, but think of your site in terms of percentages. What part of the pie is static-core vs. dynamic & social. If the static side is more than half, I’d say you’re not adding value as much as you are pushing whatever you’ve got lying around, and people won’t respond as they once did back when there were fewer choices.

Companies took a top down approach when there were only 20 kinds of shampoo. Here, ours has balsam. Buy this. It’s this, or non-balsam. Now there are 80 kinds of shampoo – an entire aisle dedicated to just shampoo. And people aren’t stuck having to pick between just whatever someone wants to offer them. So now companies have to listen and respond (e.g. organics and pseudo-organics). A lot of them won’t change their minds – they’re arrogant – so they keep coming up with some new thing that you have to have and using pseudo-science to tell you that you must have it – “ours has microbeads that are scientifically proven to…” But think of companies like Apple. They don’t say (unlike Microsoft) you have to buy our stuff, or we’ll make deals to package it, constrict your license, pay people to abandon compatibility, stop support, etc. etc. Apple just says, “here – this just works” – that’s what people are asking for in droves. They were very late, which is why a lot of us are stuck with our PCs – because other businesses – corporations – who think like Microsoft does – bought Microsoft products in droves. But once you can get outside their aegis (mobile devices, etc) – apple is king. No words over their sign – just a picture of an apple. They’re listening. People want simple.

So why should people pay you to do what you do? Because you’re a member of _______? All it takes to beat that is a) more choices and b) someone who adds value. Adding value is all about the verb. What do you do specifically that’s different than your competitor? What verbs can I expect from you that I can’t get elsewhere? That’s what needs prominence on a business web site. The emblems are fine – I don’t meant to knock them – I’ve got no problem with emblems per se. they might lend some confidence – but they’re secondary and should occupy a secondary content area – the footer – a secondary sidebar area – an ABOUT page, etc. Check your site stats: if you’re doing dynamic content right, I’ll bet the memberships section doesn’t get nearly the traffic your dynamic content does.

Should I use more photos or videos on my site?

My rule of thumb is to put one photo on any page that’ll sustain it. In other words – that it’s appropriate to have one on. You wouldn’t put one on your site map page – it would just be annoyingly in the way. But on any real content page, there should be one, in my opinion – right aligned at the second paragraph is ideal. If it’s a particularly long page, do two. One right aligned toward the top, one left aligned farther down.

Photos normally have zero SEO value in themselves. But there’s a way to embed at least three sets of tags in any photo and get great SEO value out of them. So they can have that nice, added boost for the page, if you have an SEO person put them in.

Videos can add a ton of value – especially if, instead of uploading the video to your own site, you put it in Youtube, and then embed the youtube code in your site. Youtube is, of course, the largest social network. So, if your videos are creative enough, you can really do some great marketing with them. The same rules apply to them as to blog posts, however.

Incidentally, videos and images (if you take a lot of photos) can be a pain if placed on individual pages – but it’s good form these days to put them into your blog. I’d really only recommend that if you were doing a lot of other text-based updates, and the visuals merely punctuate those or are added into them. Often, I’ll utilize a transcript of my video as the blog post, or I’ll write a post precisely in order to feature a visual image. I wouldn’t advise swarming your blog with videos and images – you’ll lose people, unless that’s precisely the blog’s theme – a vlog (video log) or photoblog. That’s fine to do, too – just remember that text, of some sort, accompanying your posts, is best for SEO value. You could also create an offsite video or photo, and use your onsite blog as a blog. Lots of options. Be sure to feature your videos prominently on your home page. I use a video instead of a personal photo. What’s the difference? A video is just a photo that talks. Also, your web site aside,  you could just use your Youtube channel as a video blog. In general, though, visual stuff – options for people driven by that – is good marketing.

Should I use social media – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc?

Um… yeah. That’s like asking if you should market. Seriously. In a web 2.0 world, if you’re *not* using social media effectively, you really aren’t marketing at all. It’s as if you’ve chosen the corner of the map where 10% of the people are, and ignored where 90% of the people have gone. You could actually market entirely from social media without even having a web site. I wouldn’t recommend it, ideally, but I’d do it in a heartbeat if I had no money to start with, even before I’d spend a dime on a web site. The wonderful thing from a competition standpoint is that most small business people have absolutely no idea how to use social media effectively, so it’s still really wide open. That’s why some consulting time can be beneficial, of course.

First thing I expect to see when I land on a web 2.0 web site? *Prominently* placed icons that link to your social media profiles so people can add, follow, or join you. But of course, if you just create the profiles and the links and walk away, it’s not going to do much. Each social media type requires a certain amount of interaction, time, and attention to be successful. All startups go to social media now. The only people that are reticent are those who started their businesses in a web 1.0 world. In web 1.0, everyone got e-mail and a web site – but reticent web zero people said they didn’t see the need for a web site or understand the point of e-mail – they didn’t want to exchange messages online – they were worried about privacy – they didn’t believe this was necessary to their industry – and they said they’d always use just phone and fax. Those people are either not working in that field now, or they’ve changed their minds. Or else they live in a tiny and dwindling community of like-minded fellows that are holding out for “retirement”. In web 2.0 there are just as many people saying they don’t see the business potential in Twitter and Facebook (most of them claim their particular industry is uniquely unsuited – “Sure I can see it for x company, but people I don’t believe it’s going to be effective for people in my industry” (they’re quite wrong, of course – because people already are. For every industry there are three significant groups – those who are trying to ignore social media (like people once tried to ignore e-mail), a huge group of people trying to treat social media like a license to spam (they’re going to fulfill their own prophesy – for them – no, it won’t be effective), and there’s a smaller number using it very successfully in any industry. Just as with “going on the internet” was in web zero, there are plenty of people saying they just aren’t interested in changing – they’re worried about privacy, don’t want to exchange messages in the new medium, don’t want to risk negative backlash, etc. You see where I’m going.

So it’s just necessary to really shift and realize that web 1.0 is dead. Dynamic sites beat static sites consistently, hands-down in search engine results. Twitter and Facebook are the new “word of mouth”, the new “networking”, and in many ways the new “yellow pages”. I’d hate to be reduced to just hanging flyers and waiting on yellow page calls in the current environment, while occasionally blitzing people with spam. Social media offers a rich environment for marketing to anyone that can be genuine. It requires authenticity. If you can do that, you should be in social media. Short answer? Um… yeah.

Should I use a mobile (cell phone) contact widget on my site?

Only if you want prospects to text you and you plan to respond quickly. If you find either of those annoying or unlikely, no. You could also just say, on a CONTACT page, “call or text me on my mobile”, include your number and skip the widget for maximum compatibility with more networks.

Market Moose builds web 2.0 web sites, performs search engine optimization (SEO), and provides consulting on internet marketing strategy – nationwide, all industries, any kind of business or organization.

Frequently Asked Web Site Questions (part 1)

Can I integrate a specialized search tool on my site (e.g. a specialized MLS search)?

There are a few options for integrating an external search tool on your site.

• Send them off site to the tool. There’s no control in that, and visitors are leaving your site. They might get confused and not make it back.
• Frame the tool in either a regular frame (shows your header, their page) or iframe (shows your header, sidebar, and footer, their page). That keeps visitors on your site, but the frames can be feel a bit awkward. Also, results might take them off site – and there’s not much you can do about that – if the tool is programmed that way.
• Integration of the tool into your site. This requires the tool provider to provide you with embeddable code, and requires your site platform to provide that. Alternately, some site platforms have add-ons that permit integration of popular tools. It will depend on your platform. This is the best for a truly integrated feel and for keeping visitors on your site, but obviously the provider of the tool may impose fees or limitations on use. You’d want to check w. them, before starting the process of integration.

Should I rearrange my navigation or links/buttons in a specific way?

I don’t think any single button or link’s placement is critical, other than core content like HOME, CONTACT, and the BLOG – those are pretty critical. If you sell a product or service involving online ordering, the ORDER page is also critical. However, overall, a rationally ordered navigation that meets visitor expectations is a good idea. Navigation organization is crucial to making your site accessible and attractive to visitors, satisfying their need for well-arranged information and, more importantly these days, for making interaction with you straightforward.

Should I put my specializations and niche info on the site?

Yes, any particular area or activity that you specialize in should be on your site. If there are just a few, each one could be a page. The page should be linked to the front via a text link, indicated in a blurb about your specializations – for maximum SEO, page rank, and accessibility. Also consider a niche site. Niche sites are inexpensive secondary web sites that exist to maximize traffic in one particular area. They’re usually 1-3 pages, and focus on one particular demographic, locale, or service, and are designed to funnel traffic back to your site. The most effective kinds of niche sites are dynamic sites – i.e. blogs. There are other marketing options for niches, too, utilizing social media. But content is king. Any opportunity for you to put content on your site that’s 100% original, highly relevant, and frequently added to, is one you should take.

Should I update my existing core content pages?

If you have more or updated material, sure. The focus however, should be mainly on keeping the dynamic content portions of your site updated. Updating the core content pages all the time isn’t really necessary. Maybe occasionally take another stab at them or tweak them. But look, the focus on core content pages is old-fashioned. Web 2.0 doesn’t work that way. Instead of wasting energy on your lowest value pages (the static core pages that never change) – spend it on your high value pages (your blog – the part of the site that has the potential – if you do it right – to drive the most traffic and retain and create the most interest – and your home page). You either have the web 1.0 type of site in which case, it’s kind of a sleeper: you update it once in a while, but basically it doesn’t change much, and you accept the limited marketing potential of that. Or you have a web 2.0 site – which lives – it’s being continuously updated – and those updates also are being carried over to social media like Facebook and Twitter. In that situation, your core secondary pages should be solid, adequate to contact you, and provide all the information needed for a business decision, and your home page should offer your core marketing presentation, but it’s actually not your main ongoing focus. The focus is the part of the site that’s alive, dynamic, and growing – the ‘blog’ portion. It’s a hard mentality to change, and not everyone is willing or interested in doing that. But it’s the right answer for maximum success in a web 2.0 world. The short answer any time someone says “should I add something to or update (one of my core static pages)” is always “sure, why not? If you have something to say, say it”.

Should my blog be my home page, or should I have a static home page?

There’s not one right answer – it depends on your goals. Besides the old fashioned web 1.0 site format, which just doesn’t have a lot of sustainable SEO value or generate a lot of sustained traffice, you see three main formats for web 2.0 business sites:

• The dynamic front end, with core pages secondary. Primary marketing content is in the header and sidebar, and continues on an “ABOUT” page. Maximum SEO and highest potential for visitors and marketing.
• The static front end, with dynamic content secondary. Blog content falls on it’s own secondary page, with core marketing material on the home page. Seemingly the older web 1.0 style site, but with a blog added on. Maximum input to the buyer’s decision.
• The hybrid front end, with both static and dynamic areas of the home page – e.g. core content and blog excerpts in different sections of the home page. This is a mix – you’re getting some increased SEO value and some increased marketing input, but not the maximum of either.

When I started my business, I emphasized the purely dynamic front end. I wanted maximum throughput to get it off the ground. Besides, as you’re growing, your business will take on more definition than it usually has at the beginning. I think it’s more important to talk to your prospects than anything – no matter where you are in your business cycle – but especially at the beginning or when you’re launching a new marketing direction. As time went by, I realized I had three core directions I wanted to emphasize to my prospects and clients. However, I wanted the intense marketing benefits of a dynamic front end, and I didn’t want to overwhelm that with too much static content like a lot of the hybrid front ends I see. So I made a hybrid, but really kept the static content minimal. It positions my services prominently at the sacrifice of some SEO value – but then not all my internet marketing efforts are in the web site basket, either. I actually utilized a ‘trick’ though, making the static home page content capable of dynamic updates. In other words – it’s just a set of “sticky” blog posts in specific categories, rather than “hard-coded” content. This lets me freshen and update even my static content instantly. The rest of the front end is the blog itself.

Quoting News in your Blog

Some blogs are just running excerpts from news articles. These are generally worthless for marketing and have negative SEO value. We’ve written about duplicate content before, so we won’t go into that here. But there are times when you want to use part of a news article in your posts.

The first issue is permission. You can use a certain amount of text under “fair use” but you can’t quote the entire article or a huge segment without reprint rights. Often reprint rights are accessible – you just contact the paper via their web site about reprint rights and specify your reason and that it’s for a business blog, etc.

However, under “fair use”, you could probably reasonably quote a couple of paragraphs without a problem. We’re not giving a professional rule of thumb or legal advice about the length of a quotation – fair use is vague in the law – intentionally – so they can go after people selectively rather than evenly. But personally this writer will quote a couple of paragraphs at a time without incident.

Assuming you’re going to do that, for maximum SEO (search engine optimization), quote the piece in the context of your own post, article, or blog entry – with at least 100-200 words before and after. Examples are [here], [here], and [here].

If there’s enough of a lead-in, the article will be more likely to get treated as unique by google, even with the quotation in it. That way you actually get seo value out of it. Plus, it’s bad form to just slap a quotation on your site with nothing else – because visitors see it as lowering the value of your site – there’s nothing there they couldn’t have gotten elsewhere. Best practice is put quotations in the context of you making your own set of points.

Originality is king. If you see something in the news you just have to use, write a short (less than 500 words) article that’s the article that *you* would have written for the NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, or whatever, and include the quotation section in the middle of it, at the appropriate point. It’s fine to even take an article in a completely different direction than the original writer, because that’s precisely the point – borrowing the quotation but using it in the context of your own purposes and direction. You don’t want to represent it out of context, but you’re entitled to do more than just mimic someone else’s article – again added value is what’s important – don’t make it a rip off of someone else’s piece, because then they just don’t need your site – they can go to the source. Remember, search engines make the big internet small.

Lastly, you could include just a link to another article, with a few comments, but that’s bad form. It sends people off site without good cause. Plus – just a link, by itself, can lower SEO (you’re giving away juice). Instead, put a link to the original article in the quotation source. Like this:

Mr. Elienberg wasn’t a Comcast employee, but a so-called independent contractor working for a separate company. This month, he sued both companies, for allegedly depriving him and other contractors of overtime pay and benefits by not considering them employees.The case highlights a perennial issue for employers that is gaining new prominence during the recession. Lawyers say employers are trying to avoid hiring full-time employees by tapping contractors, as workers seeking better pay and benefits turn to the courts. – [Wall Street Journal, Oct 19, 2009]

Besides, chances are the link is going to break at some point, when the source site overhauls their site, removes the article, or starts charging for it. Block quotes are nice, by the way: no need for quote marks or italics with a block quote, and it’s appropriate for quoting in extenso and for visually displaying the quotation in a more interesting way.

That’s it. Use quotations and links judiciously, be original, don’t duplicate other sites wholesale (it’s getting you nowhere and ruining your SEO), and don’t quote our of context, but do use visual styling, and do express your own ideas in your posts. Market Moose provides consulting on internet marketing strategy to small businesses.

Audio: Do I Really Need a Consultant?

The Value Proposition: “Is Small Business Consulting Worth It?” From the Market Moose Podcast.

Interview of Market Moose founder Daniel DiGriz by Steve Pruneau (Free Agent Source). Daniel explains how consulting services, specifically in the area of internet marketing, can pay off for small businesses, even if you’re not used to working with consultants.

“Why re-invent the marketing wheel, by trying to learn it all yourself?”

Music: “Recercar 2” by Paul Berget (Magnatune label)

Standard Podcasts [16:58m]: Play in Popup | Download

Daniel: I’m Daniel DiGriz with Market Moose Internet Marketing, we help small businesses grow by building an effective Internet marketing plan.

Steve: I’m Steve Pruneau from Free Agent Source, we create the best of both worlds for independent professionals and entrepreneurs. All the resources of a traditional company, combined with the freedom of freelancers and entrepreneurs.

Daniel: And this is the Market Moose Podcast bringing you interviews and insights to help your business market and grow on the web.

Steve: So Daniel today we’re going to talk about, how is it that consulting can create value for small business, is it really worth the cost?

Daniel: We get that question a lot. Because a lot of businesses start out, especially small businesses not being used to paying people for ideas. It’s hard if you’re a one person shop for instance, to pay another person for just what they think or just what seems like talking. But in actuality, spending money on consulting can be one of the most effective and wisest business investments you can make. After all,  you’re a specialist in what you so whether you’re an attorney, an appraiser, a psychologist, etc. So, getting a specialist involved to help you do something like Internet market. Someone that brings knowledge and experience that you might not have, somebody that can bring an aerial view to the topic and give you some real direction, so that you’re not just kind of swimming in the wind, hanging a website out there, handing out business cards. That’s often the most effective way to spend your money, a lot cheaper than just throwing piles of dollars at an Internet mechanic that builds and builds but you don’t know whether it’s going to be effective.

Steve: Yeah but, a lot of us don’t want to be marketers. We have our own trade skill and our own profession that we want to basically get on with and how do we know that we’re really going to get something tangible back?

Daniel: That’s a great question. The beauty of consulting is this pay as you go. Right? now, a lot of people of course try to lock you into a contract, but I would avoid that really at all cost. An effective consultant lives on his reputation and lives on the strength that his advice and his coaching and his guidance and his expertise. So you buy a few hours, you start out with an Internet Marketing Consultant for example, and you see where it goes. and if that person is not delivering tangible results, if you’re not getting return on your investments, then you stop and you find the right person. Unlike hiring, sort of a technical specialist who’s knee deep in things you may not understand and has you locked into a contract and you’re already throwing huge piles of dollars at it. This is actually an effective way to make sure and measure that you’re getting tangible results.

Steve: OK, but isn’t this really just somebody’s opinion and couldn’t I find all these opinions on the web?

Daniel: Well that’s a great question. So, you really asked two questions though. One is, is it just someone’s opinion? And two, couldn’t I just get this information on the web? So let me deal with them one at a time. So, the first question, some of it is going to have flavor from a person’s personality, from their perspective, from their experience. That’s exactly one of the reasons you should be involved with a consultant as a small business. You may have a lot of experience with some technical facets of Internet Marketing for example, you may have built a website once, or you may have sent out an email marketing campaign. But nothing really compares to someone who’s had the experience invested in these things for years. So yeah, there’s a little bit of perspective if you will, I wouldn’t just call it opinion. There’re some real key points that you’ll find most Internet Marketers saying to you over and over again and so you can do web research and if you hear something from your Internet Marketing Consultant that sounds far fetched and way out there, there’s no harm whatsoever in Googling some of the terminology he’s using and see if what he’s telling you is something that other people are talking about.

But the other question that you asked is, “Couldn’t I just get this information off the web?” And the answer is actually, “Yeah.” Maybe a lot of Internet marketing people wouldn’t tell you that. But the truth is, depending on how many hours you have in hand and how much time you’re willing to spend, not only to get this information, but to sift through it, weed out the stuff that’s just snake oil. Because there’s a lot of that out there, there’s a mine field of people saying, “Hey, instant results. Guaranteed stuff.” And when you read their pseudo essays you’re looking at, “Pay here”, at the bottom and a PayPal link. So, you’ve got to be careful about the so-called information that’s out there. But you can sift through this stuff and a reasonable, intelligent person can go through it. Often times, there’s some terminology involved and there’s research on the research. So if I read an article that’s got six terms in it I don’t understand, I may have to open several more web browsers to really get what the person’s trying to tell me. There’s absolutely nothing to stop you from becoming your own accounting expert, your own billing expert, your own book keeping expert. But there’s a reason why small businesses tend to get an accountant involved or tend to outsource that. The same thing is true with Internet marketing. In the time that it takes you to do that research, it’s often easier for you to just go out and get another client, you could have been doing other work by now and the money that you make off of that should more than pay for your consulting professionals.

Steve: So is that what the value proposition is? Is it that, the money I want to spend here should get me the knowledge and I guess, the results faster and more efficiently than if I were to do it myself? Is that it?

Daniel: Well that’s always I think, the quotient isn’t it? In small business, it’s time versus money. So, one of the things for instance, I’ve done a little work in project consulting and one of the things that always comes up is we can do just about anything. Which do you want to spend more of? More time or more money? So, as a small business owner that’s really the case too. What you’re doing is you’re saving money by saving time. So you can invest that time in what you do best and your first question was, “Hey, I’m a real estate appraiser, I want to spend my time appraising and have somebody else do the marketing, I don’t necessarily want to become an expert.” That’s exactly why you get a consultant involved. You can spend those hours doing what you do best and making money and generating income or you can spend that time saving money by doing all the research yourself. I publish a blog called, the Rules of Work, rulesofwork.com, if you want to visit that, and one of the points we made in a recent article on that blog is that, it’s counterintuitive. But the best way a small entrepreneur or small business can spend their time, is not saving money it’s making money. If you look at successful entrepreneurs, that’s where their time is devoted. So, if I spend several hours to save myself ten dollars, if I spend a lot of time researching online because I don’t want to pay somebody the ten bucks it takes for them to do a small task for me. Have I spent my time effectively versus making three phone calls and getting a client that day. So that’s where the value proposition I think, comes in.

Steve: Wow! That’s very profound.

Daniel: Well, thanks. We like to hear that here at Market Moose.

Steve: Do you think some people just have a hard time getting over the fact that I’m actually going to put some money out there and all i’m getting back is this information, this consulting advice. Is that a problem for some of your clients?

Daniel: You bet. It’s a problem for some of our prospects but it hasn’t been a problem for some of our clients and I’m not being smart-alecky, but I want to tell you the difference. The difference is, yeah, if you don’t know what you’re getting, if you’re reaching out for an intangible, it’s kind of like the old P.T. Barnum thing, right? P.T. Barnum was famous for getting people inside of a circus tent with various oddities and things. But a lot of them were tricks, “Step this way to the Great Egress,” and when you went there, you were outside again. You paid five dollars to go to the Great Egress but it turned out, it was just leaving the tent because an Egress is an Exit. So people are wondering, “When I pay my five bucks and I go into the tent, is it going to be a scam or am I going to get something that I can carry home with me?” And that’s a fair question, which is one of the reasons why most consultants start with an initial consultation. So we do that, we have a free thirty minute consultation to start with. If we don’t deliver value in that thirty minutes or if your consultant, whoever that may be, whether it’s an accounting consultant or an appraisal consultant or a legal consultant, if they don’t deliver value in the first thirty minutes to an hour, chances are they’re not going to deliver value consistently over time. So yeah, you want the consultant to prove themselves and that’s why I say that, for our prospects, sure it’s an issue. But once we do the initial consultation for them, an overwhelming number of them become our clients. That’s us, we’re not trying to laud our own services. But that’s what any good consultant should be able to say.

Steve: Let’s talk about a different type of client and this might be someone who, maybe they’re willing to take the leap on the value proposition, but suppose it’s somebody who really doesn’t know much about the Web. Of course they’ll know their own trade and profession but wouldn’t know URL from HTML. How do you feel about working with those type of people and do they fit within the Market Moose client base?

Daniel: Sure, that’s a great question. Well, first let me say, not everybody in the world goes with our company Market Moose. I want to broaden that question and just say, “Is this the kind of person that an Internet Marketing Consultant would be helpful to.” So, there’s a couple of answers, some people don’t know anything about the Web and maybe it’s a generational thing or maybe it’s just that they spend their time with a tool box crawling under a house, and those are perfectly acceptable reasons. So, I will say that, most people do need to learn a little bit in order to be effective. You can’t simply outsource 100% even if you can outsource 98%. You’re going to have to know, I mean even just you making a judgement about what to pay for, involves a certain amount of consulting. If you come to me, for example, and you say, “Hey I want a website, because I’m convinced that a website is going to make me money.” It is my duty as an Internet Marketing Consultant not to just take your money. It’s my duty to say, “Look, things have really changed over the last five years. In the old days when there was only ten thousand websites out there, you throw up a website, it never changes, it has five pages, it’s like a static business card and you walk away, and if you have a website, yeah chances are you will get some visitors.” These days when there’s a hundred thousand websites, that’s really different, and that’s just your industry. We’re not even talking about other sites that bleed off your clientele. So in that market, it’s my duty to say, “a website alone, putting all your eggs in one basket isn’t necessarily the best choice. Maybe you should think about, having a website sure, but also doing a little bit of marketing in Facebook, or doing a little bit of marketing in Twitter, and we can kind of guide you through the mine field and make that easy to understand.”

It’s the duty also of an Internet Marketing Consultant to speak in plain English. I’m not going to throw a lot of terminology out there. The mythology is, well the word Technogeeks, right, and that may have been true again five, six years ago when all you had to do was throw up a website and hire a geek to do it. These days you really need somebody that understands small business,  how business works and how different kinds of industries really do grow and get clientele and then can talk to you just like you and I are talking now. So that’s one answer, the other answer is, that often our clients will start out with something tangible. I mean here at Market Moose we do hands-on work, mechanic work, so you can come to us and say, “I want a website.” We can say, “Sure,” and we’ll build it for you. That’s hands dirtying, toolbox type of work. But in that process, you’ll learn things because through our interaction you’ll pick up that, “Here’s why I’m putting these words in this portion of your site. OK, you’ve told me you want to include your resume on your website, let me give you a way to do that better,” “what if we format it like this because this is going to get you more clients. This is going to appeal to Google better if you do it this way,” and through that process, there’s a little bit of consulting involved and you start picking up the value of it. So, I think a lot of people, they start with a tangible thing in summary, and I think that a lot of people, basically it’s our duty to sometimes not just say yes and grab the fistful of dollars, but to push back a little bit and say that, “Not everything that you’re about to throw money at, is going to be the most effective.” And that’s consulting too, usually part of that free consultation we give at the beginning.

Steve: Yeah, I wasn’t sure you were going to touch on that and I was going to say. Now even if you’re a little bit concerned about being able to understand any area that’s new to you, if you take the jump, you get in touch with somebody who does know, then just that exchange is going to bring familiarity and confidence. And it’s why we have tour guides, it’s why we go with somebody who’s already been there. Just segueing to another point that you made, even though your firm or any other consultant that you hired to do something, generally they can’t do a hundred percent of it. Inevitably some of it comes back, and we have to do some of the work. I really wish I could hire a personal trainer who would really make me ripped.

Daniel: You and me both buddy. I’ve got a few pounds that I’d like to just put on his plate instead of mine.

Steve: Yeah, and inevitably what happens is, I actually pay them money to tell me what to do. But the reality is, if I knew a hundred percent of what to do, I wouldn’t have to pay him the money, and they do actually reduce the amount of time that I would spend. The same thing is true with the dentists. You’re paying money to the dentist and what happens at the end of the appointment? “Well, you really need to do this and that differently and now come back and show me the results.” And I think for some people who really want to avoid that, you can probably avoid a lot of it, but in the end you’re going to have to be involved. I don’t know of any business people that can’t be a hundred percent not involved. And so, if we are in business, I think we’re stuck. By the way, if you ever find a way that we can avoid being involved, let me know and I want to pursue that.

Daniel: Yeah, both with Internet Marketing and with losing weight. You bring up two great points. So one of them is, Gee, when we pay consultants sometimes we’re concerned that, “Hey, all I walked away with is advice this time on what to do better,” and of course that’s exactly why we pay. I joined the gym recently and the first day at the gym, I thought it was going to be like any other gym, and I walked in and I have a great doctor, I really do, but my doctor had given me advice and the advice was, lose fifty pounds, just the kind of thing you were talking about. So I go in to the gym and I say, “I need to lose fifty pounds and my doctor tells me that the way to do it is everyday I need to come in here and just pound it out for thirty minutes until there’s sweat dripping down my face and go as hard as I can.” And the personal trainer spoke up and said, “No, you don’t. Your doctor is almost right, you do need to lose the fifty pounds, we can tell that by looking at you, but what’s really necessary is for you to find your target heart rate and stay at your target heart rate. And that’s what our job is, is to help you find that. So we’re going to advice you.” So they modified the advice. So the beauty of that, and one of the reasons I’m still a member of that gym, is that I didn’t just go out and run as fast as I can around my block for thirty minutes everyday, which wouldn’t have been an efficient burning of calories. I wouldn’t have lost the weight as quickly. But I lost ten pounds in thirty days because I stayed within the target heart rate and followed the advice. So it was totally worth it. I could have done that myself and saved the cost of the gym, but I’d still be running around the block wondering why I have to eat a ton of calories to put that stuff back.

So, the other issue is owner involvement, and yeah, Internet Marketing does not work without some owner involvement, and so people always say, “How involved do I have to be?” “I don’t have a lot of time, I don’t really want to do this.” The answer is, “Look, the owner involvement stuff, is the fun stuff. You hire me for the boring mechanic work and you hire me to educate you and give you the main sense of direction, but if you’re willing to spend thirty minutes a week on your business doing some stuff that’s kind of fun, you can grow your business significantly through Internet marketing.” You can hire us to do the specialist work, but thirty minutes a week, if you don’t have thirty minutes a week, ten minutes every other day, five minutes everyday on the average. If you don’t have that, your business is not going to grow anyway and no amount of throwing money at it or buying an online solution that, “Hey, I’ll spend a thousand dollars on this, they guarantee results.” None of that is going to be effective. When somebody calls you up on the phone and says, “Nope, you don’t have to do anything, just give us your credit card number and the address of your website.” Do not give out your credit card number, it’s not going to be effective.

Internet marketing is just like invoicing, it’s just like accounting, it may feel like pulling teeth sometimes, it may feel like a trip to the dentist, but it’s part of your business, it has to be done and it requires a certain amount of your involvement. You can’t just go to the dentist for a cleaning very six months, you have to brush your teeth and floss, right. And we all hear that and maybe we floss more than we did before. The same thing happens with Internet marketing. I tell people often, “Hey you need to update your website, you can’t just leave it sitting there in a coma because if there’s no signs of life, why should anybody interact with it or give you an order.” So people say, “Oh yeah, I know, it’s been three weeks.” and I’m like, “OK, but you got to get it in gear.” and so I become the dentist, you’re totally right. But without a dentist or without a personal trainer, I’d really hate to think where I’d be right now.

So, again i’m Daniel DiGriz with Market Moose Internet Marketing and we help small businesses grow by building an effective Internet marketing plan.

Steve: And I’m Steve Pruneau, I’m a guest. It’s been my pleasure to speak with you Daniel, thank you.

Daniel: So this is the Market Moose Podcast, bringing you interviews and insights to help your business market and grow itself on the Web. Thanks very much for joining us today.

Internet Marketing: How to Fail Successfully

The Negative Power of Self-Fulfilling Prophesy and Retranslating in your Internet Marketing. How we help ourselves fail successfully.

Sometimes, to get a message across, you have to write in ‘the negative’. When what’s needed is a cultural paradigm shift on the part of small and medium business owners to be effective in their internet marketing, merely saying “you gotta do this, and this, and this” doesn’t always get through. People tend to reinterpret (retranslate) what you say to fit with what they already think, and then they’re not actually hearing you. One of the ways we like to be different is being blunt, a little bit in your face, and showing you the recipe for failure, not just the prescription for success. Why? Because so many people are cooking their own marketing ‘meth’, so to speak, and it’s starving their business of both new clientelle and extended relationships with existing clientelle, both of which are the keys to growing their business. So here goes – we’ll start with some of the ‘negative’ things that business owners say about their own marketing (or lack thereof):

“I don’t think blogging works in my situation”: Usually when we hear this, we look at a couple of things: 1. How consistently the person has blogged. If it’s once or twice a month, better plan on years to get substantive results. Consistency, frequency, originality, and adding value are the rules. If you retranslate that into “when I get time”,  you’ve already decided to be unsuccessful. 10min every other day – 30min/week will do it – it takes as long as a re-run of some dumb sitcom. 2. What they are posting. If it’s mostly about you and your business, and not about things of interest to your audience, or its material lifted from other sites, plan on it never getting a readership. These two things really amount to almost all of it. There are no instant results from blogging, only substantial results, and only if you follow the rules: consistent & frequent, original and add value. Don’t know what to write? That’s what consulting is for. Whether it’s us or someone else, get someone who can coach you on what to do. You wouldn’t try to get fast running track without a coach, would you? That’s a recipe for a tweaked muscle and a short overall run.

Some people retranslate this into, “I’ll pay someone to do it for me.” Yeah, good luck. The big corporations tried that, too. Probloggers for hire. If you’ve got that much money, knock yourself out, but what they found is that there’s no substitute for the involvement of the owners and stakeholders of the business. That’s why anchor people blog now, even if they’re not always the sharpest tacks, rather than some geek working on his own in a blogging closet in the back. Don’t retranslate. Learn, grow yourself, and get involved in your own business – and yes marketing is your business. If you’re not involved in your marketing, you’re not involved in a big chunk of it – you’ve abdicated, and your prospects will follow suit.

“I joined Twitter (or Facebook) and it hasn’t generated any business for me”: Usually, we look at the following:. 1. Have you done little but join? If your focus is on merely having an account and expecting people to rush the doors, cancel the account. The time is better spent in the food court at the mall. 2. Are you spamming? If you’re mostly posting your prices, service lists, advertising language, and letting people know you’re available, you’re doing anti-marketing. Stop it. Silence is more effective than that. At least with silence, you don’t chase anyone away. 3. Have you been consistent over time? Another word for “tweeting” at Twitter is “micro-blogging” and some of the same rules apply, even if it’s the size of a cell phone text message at Twitter or a paragraph on Facebook. 4. Have you integrated Facebook and Twitter with your web site? If not, why not? – you’re wasting opportunity. Why do three times the work of maintaining three things, when you can tie them together and be more successful focusing on one? Don’t understand what to do? That’s what consulting is for, once again.

“I have a web site and never got any business from it”: This is a big one. We look at several things.

1. Is it your grandfather’s web site? Web time moves much faster, like dog years. If it’s the web site from that long gone era where you put up a bunch of static pages that never get updated (about us, contact us) and that’s all it does, you’re right – it’s doomed. At that point it’s just a complicated phone book entry, and you could have got your phone number on the net for free. That’s the only people who’ll use it anyway – people who already know your business and just need the contact info. Web sites with nothing going on are in a web coma. People might visit, but they don’t stay long. The “if you build it, they will come” only ever worked in Field of Dreams. Web sites with good dynamic content will always trounce web sites with static content, both in search engines and with visitors. People retranslate this into, “I’ll change the colors once in a while, or post a new photo next quarter.” They’re not listening. Those things have little or no search value, and every time a search engine rescans your site for real, substantive, text-based updates, and there are none, it ranks it lower. It’s not going to wake hordes of buyers into a frenzy of contacting you, either. Sorry, but it’s been this way for the last few years. The blogging era changed everything, even if no one notified most of us. That site that’s been around for years and used to do well? It doesn’t need a visual makeover (which is what people who are retranslating throw their money at). It might need that, but first and foremost it needs consistent attention to dynamic content. In granddad’s day, you threw it up like a billboard and hoped for the best. In the post-blogging era, you update your site for 10min every other day.
2. Is it stolen? People don’t like that word, because the internet makes it so incredibly easy to lift copy from other people’s web sites, but we like the shock value, because it communicates that that’s exactly how search engines treat it. Call it what you want – “duplicate”, “borrowed”, judge or not judge, but search engines automatically detect and bury sites that take content from other sites. It’s what they’re best at – scanning your pages, and comparing them with other results. Better to have one page of original content (you’ve seen those successful niche sites) than 25 pages of plagiarism. Stop stealing – it’s marketing suicide! Original content trounces everything else. A search engine that ranked 10 duplicate web sites at the top would be abandoned by users. Search engines survive by rewarding the originator, punishing the copies, and selling ads alongside great results. A lot of people retranslate this and “rewrite” the content they’re lifting. They’re not listening. Even if it’s 70% similar, it gets picked up as duplicate content, and the site is buried accordingly. Besides, your site is a clone, so  you’ve given people no reason to do business with you vs. the other guys – you’re not respecting how your clients actually think. Shoplifting content is like shoplifting from K-mart – by the time you do that much work with such little result, you could have just done it the right way and come out way ahead.
3. Does the navigation suck? If you have more than 6-8 buttons on the left, and more than 5-6 at the top, it’s like a pileup on the freeway – cluttered, chaotic, and people will go around it if they can. If you have that much original content, that’s great, but you need drop-down menus. There’s also a rational organizational process to navigation and layout, and visitors have certain expectations that need to be accounted for, even if you do it creatively.
4. Is it all about you? Have you treated your web site like an extended online advertisement? If that’s all it is, and it gives nothing of interest to visitors beyond “buy my stuff” – if it contributes nothing, or worse yet – all it contributes is links to other people’s contributions, then it has no marketing value – in fact, it’s a negative, not a zero. Why do you think search engines punish sites for having too many outbound links and reward sites that everyone links to? Don’t give away your juice. Marketing and advertising are not the same thing. And people don’t need that long to read an ad, anyway. If you’re going to advertise instead of market, pay the $250 and put a short ad on Facebook. It will also have a much lower return on investment than your web site would, if you were using it successfully for marketing, but if you’re not going to, then you’re not going to, and you’re reduced to advertising being all you have. Effective web sites offer original insights, analysis, and advice. A lot of people retranslate this into paying a service to put their news feed on their site, but they’re not listening – original content – not someone else’s contribution, but yours. Once it comes from somewhere else, I don’t need you anymore – I cut out the middle man and go to the source. It’s not just giving to the March of Dimes – businesses with successful internet marketing are *involved* – in the sense that they’re giving their time and attention, their insight and expertise, to earn the status of resident expert.
5. Have you staked everything on just the web site? Does it have many ways to connect with you (e.g. social media, comments, subscribing, etc), or is it inviting a “Hmm. That’s a nice web site. Well, gotta go now.” (lots of hits, few hits converted into contacts). That’s what happens quite often to those $3000 flash web sites – very pretty – visitors pat it on the head and move on. Of course, if the site is static (infrequently updated) or just a sales flyer (it’s all about you), the chance that people will use the opportunity to connect plummets dramatically. But a site that does the other things right is just throwing away opportunities by *not* providing lots of ways to connect and interact, especially in a web 2.0 world of social media like blogging, facebook, and twitter. Ever felt like everyone around you was having a conversation that you weren’t part of? If you’re wondering what the heck to do with facebook and twitter, they really are. Some consulting time is useful here – you need to learn, from someone who knows, how to extend your brand (your business identity) to the places where all the people have gone, without alienating them by old-fashioned spamming. Catch up, grow, learn something new, or become obsolete and watch the cobwebs grow on the web site – those are the choices.

“Internet marketing doesn’t work in my industry, niche, or local market”: This is the most important one, because it’s a statement that successful internet marketing, for you, isn’t possible. Substitute “blogging”, “social media”, “web sites”, or just ‘marketing” in general, and if you’re saying it won’t work for you, you’re right, you’re done, and your consolation will be the consolation of all self-fulfilling prophesies – you aren’t wasting your time on something that isn’t going to help. One of our clients is a gym, and they help their clients with the same thing: “I can’t lose weight,” “I’m too old to change”, “I’m not strong enough to work out”, “I don’t think I can change my lifestyle”. Clients of every business have self-fulfilling negative prophesies that they tell themselves. Your clients have them too, even if you don’t know what they are. In fact, knowing what they are can help you open up new avenues of service by creating new avenues of possibility. And we’re not talking about touchy-feely rhetoric.

If you’re a real estate appraiser and you know that a lot of home sellers are settling for bottom dollar on their homes, because the market is down, could a pre-sales appraisal show them a more accurate value, and possibly indicate things to emphasize to get more value? If you’re a home inspector, wouldn’t a pre-sales inspection give them info on what things to repair or improve to optimize their sales position? But those clients are out there thinking, “I’ll have to settle for what I can get. There’s nothing else I can do.” You see? Negative self-fulfilling prophesy. And when they take a fraction of the value, and sell the house, they’ll think it proves they were right, and “at least I didn’t waste time trying to get what it’s worth”. Self-fulfilling prophesy. That’s a marketing opportunity screaming out for you, if you’re in that industry. It’s the equivalent of marketing suicidal language on their part, and it can be the same with your internet marketing.

Just because you don’t see how it works yet, doesn’t mean it can”t. It maybe hasn’t, because you haven’t done it right, and it maybe won’t, because you aren’t availing yourself of the best advice or consulting out there, or are retranslating and not following it. Sort of like following the advice to go on a vegetable diet, and then eating five pounds of starchy vegetables at dinner – or hearing “this pill, along with proper diet and exercise” and then you’re just taking the pill, and the rest is an afterthought. That isn’t what your doctor meant.

There isn’t a single industry, niche, or local market in which one of two things isn’t true: a) someone is successfully doing internet marketing. b) no one is and good gosh, it’s wide open, and someone is going to figure that out and corner it successfully. And that brings us to one last thing.

“There’s too much competition. I can’t possibly be successful against the other guys.” Internet marketing isn’t interchangeable. If you think it is, you haven’t been listening – you’re retranslating. The fact that there’s heavy competition in your area, therefore cannot mean internet marketing is likely to be unsuccessful. It’s another negative self-fulfilling prophesy with a bogus reason attached to it: “There are too many of them, and only one of me.” That’s your greatest advantage. There’s only one of you. The new web 2.0 marketing *depends* utterly on defining your business differently than your peers. We often hear people say, “I do the same things as every other plumber.” Then that’s your first marketing problem. Notice we didn’t say internet marketing. You’re stuck – you can’t do marketing at all. You can advertise, but good luck with that – rate of return is going to be even lower than most ads, precisely because you have no market differentiators. Your first order of business is to start doing things differently. Find three things that you *will* do differently to deliver added value to your clients. Brainstorm. If you only give it 5-minutes of your attention, why should prospective clients pay more attention to your business? Click on, click off, same as the other guys. You either involve yourself in the marketing of your business, at the core or, you’re right – it’s hopeless – just not for the reasons mentioned.

Hear this now: Any business in which the core owners and stakeholders are not involved in the core marketing, will be unsuccessful in their internet marketing. Web 2.0 makes that clear. You either love your business and care about it enough, or you don’t. It’s like a family member. You raise your business the way your raise a child. You invest in it, nurture it, and pay attention to it. Marketing is every bit as much a part of your business as invoicing. If not, you’re stunting its growth, and the opportunities don’t last forever. You can always begin, at any time, from where you are – and you can be successful, but the unique opportunities at each stage of business growth don’t really ever come back. Don’t stunt it – get involved or starve the marketing for your involvement – those are the choices. You see how, as with family, many people do the latter

Do people really offer up that litany of negative self-fulfilling prophesises? You bet. All the time. Constantly and continually. After all, how do you think we live with a decision not to succeed? Not to grow? We create an explanation, a new explanatory paradigm of why success wasn’t or isn’t possible. It helps us maintain the status quo, remaining unhealthy – personally or in our business – even if it’s not helpful. It’s how we comfort ourselves when we aren’t doing what is essential. It is how we fail successfully. We can only stand so much knowledge that it’s really us – that we are really our biggest problem and, more importantly, we are really our best avenue for success. Again, not touchy feely – these have been constructive, concrete examples and information. What you do with it, or whether you make the decisions necessary to go forward, are up to you.

This has been a candid, unshirking, delving into the reality of what holds us back in internet marketing. We hope it helps. We do have some sugar coating, actually, and we use a little of it most of the time. But sometimes, a tart apple with a little salt is better than another bowl of syrupy cobbler.

We’re Market Moose. Tart where it counts.

10 Creative Ways Small and Medium Businesses Use Youtube

Youtube is a huge venue for user-uploaded videos. It’s also, however, one of the largest social networks on the internet. Millions of people are interacting on Youtube on a minute to minute basis. Youtube is therefore a huge social media market with enormous business potential. Like all social media venues, the protocol is to give value away and cultivate a following. As with Facebook, there’s significant SEO potential (after all Google owns Youtube). But the real value is in organic traffic to your web site and interacting with (commenting upon, sharing, and subscribing to) your videos in the same way that people interact with blogs or your Facebook page.

1. Search Engine Results

The SEO value of videos, podcasts, and images are in the title, description, and tags. Properly optimized videos often rank highly for their targeted keywords on the search engines. Businesses take advantage of this to get lots of exposure.

2. Generating Leads and Traffic

From both the SEO and the social media value (sharing, commenting, subscribing), videos on Youtube can be a good medium for generating leads and traffic. Instead of focusing all your efforts on a web site alone, videos that offer advice, insight, analysis, training, explanations, etc. can actually help you generate leads. A lot of businesses use Youtube the way others use blogs.

3. Training and Instruction

Whether sustaining the growth of your business by implementing training for internal audiences, providing training for your client base, or simply making a case for all the things you say all the time anyway, videos can extend your business’ effectiveness and marketing, just as they do internally for large corporations.If you’re weighing the benefits of giving classes locally (a great marketing technique) vs. doing it online, what not record your local classes, and upload to Youtube. A lot of businesses do both.

4. Extending your Brand

Youtube can help you build your brand very effectively. Create a channel with your company name and logo and use video to explain your core values, your unique market differentiators, and explain where you add value. The number of business Youtube pages is growing exponentially.

5. Client Testimonials

Invite satisfied clients to upload their video testimonials, helping you build credibility and increasing your sales. Or ask key clients to let you film a brief testimonial, then splice them together with video editing software, to make a combined video. Most startups provide a variety of video types on Youtube – instruction, sales, and testimonials too.

6. Your own Infomercials

Why spend money on old-fashioned TV ads when, cost per value, you can do it on Youtube? Whatever product or service you’re offering, make a case for it using your own infomercial format. If Youtube is the new TV, you see the next logical decision, and this places advertising in the hands of everyone. But the rule of the thumb is be incredibly creative. Just an ad spot will get few views – but an interesting show that entertains, while positioning your service or product is a good sell.

7. Fun as Publicity

If you haven’t seen the Trunk Monkey videos, they’re worth your time. Humor is a great way to get attention. Create highly informative or funny videos and disseminate them using services like tubemogul. Humor can break through the “spam” barrier and giver your website more eyeballs, increase your popularity as the videos go viral.

8. Tutorials

Tutorials are a specific kind of training and instruction, so we list it separately. Provide clients step-by-step videos guides for things related to but not including your services and products. For instance, if you’re a real estate agent, explain how to stage a home. If you’re a landscaper, demonstrate the best times to water your lawn.

9. Your Talk Show

Like podcasting, you can do video podcasting, addressing issues close to the hearts and minds of your clients. If you find customers talking about a specific issue, take their side and add your two cents in an ongoing series addressing their concerns.

10. Product or Service Trailer

You’ve seen movie trailers. Product or service trailers utilize the trailer-style for a fast, quick and captivating presentation of your offerings. Think about what you’re doing for clients, and roll-out new products and services, before they launch, with “coming soon”.

Keep in mind that you can upload videos to Youtube, then embed them in your own web pages, occasionally changing them out for newer ones as you go. Youtube makes this easy by providing the correct code with various options for size, etc. It’s a great way to send clients from your web site to your Youtube page, increasing interaction and viral spreading of your marketing, just as it brings clients to your web site from your Youtube page and the branding you add to each video. Make sure all your videos  mention  your company name and web site address.

Advice: don’t agonize over the equipment and setup first. You’ll make some trial videos anyway. Focus on brainstorming creative ideas without criticism, and on narrowing down your central message into key bullets, your elevator pitch, and your market differentiators. Pair the two – your creative ideas with your market message, and make some videos. You can always redo them later, but getting the process started will give you fast experience with what works and what doesn’t.

Video: 3 Things Search Engines Want from Your Web Site

In this video, Daniel DiGriz discusses the three primary things that search engines, like Google, want from your web site. These are also the things that make it most effective for internet marketing with site visitors.

Hi. I’m Daniel DiGriz, president of Market Moose. I’d like to talk with you about the three things that search engines are looking for in your website.

The first thing is original content. By “original,” we mean that it’s unique to your website. It doesn’t appear anywhere else on the Web. A lot of people think that it’s okay to lift content off of other sites and use that in their own sites. Sometimes, I’ll even see people make blog posts out of news reports that they found on The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal websites. The problem with this is that search engines are well aware that this happens. First, they detect the site that had that content the longest, or the first site that put it up, and they rank that site higher. After all, they’re copy-worthy. You borrowed their material. Second, they rank websites that have copied that material much lower. If your site consists largely of material that you have borrowed from elsewhere on the Web, you’re going to want to replace that with original content. So, the idea is for you as the site owner to contribute to the site’s content yourself, and to structure that content in such a way that it is effective for marketing and contains the key things that people need to make the decision to deal with you.

The second thing that search engines want is relevant content. By “relevant,” they mean the same things that consumers mean when they’re searching for material on the Web. If I’m a consumer and I want to find a mortgage broker in, say, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, what I’m going to do is type, “mortgage broker vancouver island bc.” If those words do not appear in the website that I’m looking for, the website is not going to appear in the search results, either. So, the idea is that the content you’re writing should be relevant to two things. First, it should be relevant to your industry. It should contain things like the types of services that you provide. Second, it should be relevant to your locale. No one goes to the Web and simply types in the words, “real estate agent.” If they do that, they’ll get real estate agents in New Mexico when they’re looking for real estate agents in North Carolina. Instead, they’re going to type in “real estate agent” or “realtor” and then a place name, such as the city and state. So, you want to make sure that the content that you are writing is highly localized (highly relevant, that is) to your locale, and also highly relevant to the services that you offer.

So, to recap: search engines want content that is original and content that is highly relevant.

Lastly, what Google and other search engines are looking for these days is content that is frequently updated or fresh. Back in the day when search engine optimization first took hold, it was all about simply being found and using techniques to locate your site, but there are a lot more websites now. Many of those websites – especially blogs and forums – are dynamic sites. They are updated all of the time, frequently changing and having additional content added to them. Search engines tend to rank those sites more highly these days. So, if you have the old-fashioned static site from, say, five or six years ago with about five pages – a homepage, a “contact us” page, an “about us” page, and a couple of others – then that site is far less likely to be found than any of your competitors that have a dynamic site. A dynamic site is one in which you are updating the content frequently. By “frequently,” I don’t mean once every six months. I mean more like three times a week. What I tell people is, “If you’ll spend five minutes daily or ten minutes every other day doing a 100-word update to your site, you are far more likely to get traffic.” If that update is relevant and original, it will make your website more attractive to search engines than your competitors’ static websites which haven’t changed in months. That’s why most websites these days have a blog component. Business websites, for example, have really launched into blogging.

To summarize, the three things that search engines want are original or unique content, content that is highly relevant from a search engine and a searcher’s standpoint, and also content that is frequently and freshly updated. Keep these things in mind, and your site will dominate your competitors’ sites in your particular market.

Thanks very much. This is Daniel DiGriz once again from Market Moose Internet Marketing.

The Perils of Small Businesses Imitating the Corporate Web

It’s one of the great insights about growing and sustaining your small business that you can adopt and adapt many of the processes found in corporate life. I utilize corporate interaction tools – from calendar invites for meetings to action items to status updates. Corporate standards like specification documents, sign-off on scope of work, followup points, and appropriate deliverables are also part of our processes. This is all well and good. One great thing that corporations have developed is internal processes that yield standardized, repeatable, sustainable results with consistent payoff. We can all learn from that.

It’s one thing to borrow corporate processes, but there are some real perils in borrowing corporate style. Web sites are a prime example. So often, web design for small business revolves around trying to look like a corporate site. Everything bland, everything under one brand, very little connectivity, most of the effort is spent on trying to limit the footprint, control the visitor, and keep everything under one roof. Disaster for small business. A better model is Web 2.0 startups. Startup businesses who are doing on the web what the corporate committees are afraid to, are doing it quite successfully, and are taking a huge chunk out of corporate market share.

Corporate web sites try to brand everything themselves, and omit anything that would require sharing space or credit. They pay extra to put their own name on other people’s services.
Web 2.0 startup web sites collaborate with lots of brands, giving that collaboration prominence. When you see “we integrate with Harvest, Outright, and Shoeboxed” you’re in a Web 2.0 environment.

Corporations focus on the web as a medium for transactions. A virtual cash register or billboard. They are slow to catch on to social media, blogging, and other forms of interactivity. Most sites still provide only a contact page. Or if there’s more, they make it secondary. Their first entrance into social media is usually like their site content – a form of advertising, which most people treat a lot like spam.
Web 2.0 startups make staying in their orbit primary. Social media links are prominent. The focus is on brand loyalty by joyous participation. They cultivate their “tribe” by adding value constantly – blogging free information, insights, and advice – instead of making everything a sales pitch.

Corporate sites make everything clean, pristine, and formal. The better ones have a real-ish mascot person (Progressive’s girl, Subway’s guy). But the interaction that would actually come with real people is pushed to the back.
Web 2.0 sites give you some genuine human scruff. There’s plain talk, photos of real people, and your comments are often part of the front page. They not only say they want feedback, they often feature tough questions from clients.

Corporate web sites take feedback from a contact form. In response, you get a form letter, as the first try.
Web 2.0 web sites make feedback part of the site itself. They include a forum, or invite public blog comments, and usually the response is personal – from either a ranking employee or a captain or guide among dedicated fans invited to help newbies along.

Corporations hire a firm to get research on what you think, want, and will buy.
Web 2.0 startups crowdsource their ideas. They ask you what you right on the site, and in external social mediums like Twitter.

Corporate web sites put their services above everything. The focus is top down. ‘Here is what we offer. Which one do you want?’ The landing page is mostly static. It’s as though social interaction were an afterthought. The equivalent is that person we all know who shakes hands and then asks who is your insurance carrier.
Web 2.0 web sites include generous dynamic content on their landing page, which not only gives them better search engine optimization (SEO), it seems like someone is home. Services don’t take a back seat, but the site is also not just an ad sheet.

Corporations are trying to extend their brand into social media (like Facebook and Twitter), but they really don’t get it. Mostly, contacts revolve around their web site, and their service or product offerings.
Web 2.0 startups start out in social media first, often while the web site is under construction. They often build a community *before* offering products or services. Their brand is not dependent on the web site. The site becomes the central hub of their marketing, but not the sum of it.

Comparisons are plentiful, but the point is this: Anyone can throw up a corporate-style web site. There’s actually a formula – just like there is for most corporate processes. A lot of research has gone into it. Some of it’s right, and some of it used to be right, but hasn’t been in what, for the web, is a long time. You do need the basics – a Contact Us page, an About Us page, a Privacy Statement, some Terms of Service (TOS) for online participation. But merely duplicating the corporate footprint and slapping a blog and some social media icons on top of it, does not make you effective in a web 2.0 world. What does, actually, is rethinking your interactions with prospects so that you can attract new types of clients to build your tribe (again, referencing Seth Godin’s book Tribes) and compensate for client turnover.

In other words, it’s not all about the web site, and it’s not about tossing up the right pages, which can be done in a few hours. It’s about completely re-envisioning how relationships with consumers are built. That’s what web 2.0 means for small business. It means you can’t just copy anymore, because consumers have gotten smarter than that. It means you can’t just build it and expect that they will come. It means, more than anything else, that you’ve got to be involved. Small businesses that won’t hear that won’t be successful in this medium, the new web, the internet market not as it will be, but as it has already become.

So next time you’re looking at web sites to imitate, whether it’s corporate ones or your competitors, stop. Instead, look for people to imitate. That’s the meaning of the new web, also. The web site doesn’t mean half a damn, if you’re not doing what the successful people are doing. Even if you just duplicate some web 2.0 site, it doesn’t mean it will be successful for you. And not because your industry is different, or your clients are special. It’s because copying doesn’t work anymore – not the way it once did. What good is throwing up a blog if you’re not going to do with it what businesses who have been successful with blogging are doing with theirs? What good is having a new logo and a presence on Facebook, if you’re just going to camp there and wait for people to find you – that’s not what successful web 2.0 businesses are doing with their logo and facebook account.

You’re going to need a marketing plan – an approach that goes beyond merely acquiring widgets to add to your web site. It may be an unpleasant truth to businesses that aren’t prepared to change, both how they do marketing, and some internal processes accordingly, which is what consumers influenced by web 2.0, whether they realize they have been or not, will require. If cultural change is not part of your small business culture, then you have something else to learn from corporations. It’s not how to build a web site. Those guys are still back in the 90s on that one. But what corporations often have down, or at least pay good lipservice to, is the need for change management as a routine part of the business. The need to adapt as the public changes. One can easily find a lot of small businesses, especially single-owner shops that, in the face of a changing outside world, just keep their heads down and keep plowing away with all the more vigour at the same old thing. And with varying degrees of success. You often get something for working twice as hard – it’s just that it’s not usually twice as much success.

If you don’t know much about how to approach the new web, the new consumer, and what to do about your internet marketing, that’s when you need an internet marketing consultant. I’m really not trying to tout our services. There are lots of qualified people. We’re here, of course, but our approach is to keep giving away insights, advice, and information, for free, and we figure those people who should become our clients will be. If we take care of everyone, some, by offering tips, tricks, and not shirking on the substance, people will take care of us, too. That’s how we do web 2.0. Now, if you’ve read this far, you’ve got to ask yourself how you are doing it. And if you represent a corporation, you already got this information from those firms you hire to give it to you. Whether you heard it or not, well – that’s really the question.

Telling it like it is. Market Moose.

The Rules of Using Photos on your Web Site

Imagine going to a web site trying to sell you professional services.  You work in an office. You dress well and take care of personal hygiene. But when you get there, the staff photos are scruffy looking, frowning, mug shots! What’s your buying response like at that point?

A lot of people wonder whether they should even have personal photos on their site. If your pets look better than you do, should you really have personal photos at all? Should you hire a model?

Sites with no personal photos look dead. So yeah, you need photography with actual human beings in it, if you want a response out of the 50% of visitors who are socially motivated. Whether it’s you, clients, or just guys that look good in their Dockers, you need something – and make sure it’s on the landing page, at a minimum.

Most people look decent in decent clothes and with a smile. No need to hire models. I’ve been building business web sites for ages, and I have yet to see someone so hideous that a coat and tie, or some professional attire, and a genuine smile makes a bad photo.

Dress like your clients. Here’s a tip – if you get your hands dirty for a living, but your clients work in an office, put on office attire. The reverse is true too – just ask every politician that speaks at an AFL-CIO rally. If you work in an office and your clients get dirty for a living, ditch the tie and put on a blue collar. Maybe even a hardhat, or hold a clipboard. Dress like your audience.

Use a flat background. Whether you get portraits made, or are just taking staff photos outside your building, get some photos in front of a flat background of only one color. It can be a good idea to get in a skyline or something, but a background that’s too busy distracts from your other graphics and site colors,  like your  logo. And try to avoid shadows! Photos with flat backgrounds and no shadows can be easily photoshopped for various uses, cutting out the background without losing part of your hair.

Get professional portraits. Eventually, you’re going to need these. Your photo is part of your brand. It’ll be your avatar in places where you aren’t using a logo – like maybe Twitter or Facebook. It’ll be your personal motif you add to e-mail newsletters and web sites. Pay a photographer and tell him you don’t want to buy any prints at all. Just the disk, please. Why scan photos in, reducing their quality, when you can start out digital? No one wants print versions for professional work. Go digital, and get it done in the right light, with lots of different poses, so  you can take them home and use different ones for different purposes. Make sure you’re leaving with at least a 2-3 good images that you like on that disk. When people listen to what you say, they are also looking at how you look. If you’re in a hurry and need it tomorrow, CVS and Walgreens do on the spot passport photos. Tell them you want a plain background and maybe an angle shot at your face instead of straight on, to avoid the mugshot look.

Wear the glasses sometimes. If you wear glasses, get photos with and without. And ask professionals in your target audience for their opinion on your final pics. Personally, I don’t like having my glasses on in my photos, but they do make me look smarter and also more approachable. Without them, I’m more like an alley cat. With them, I’m like a well-heeled Russian blue. So, I wear them for pro pics.

Using models isn’t wrong. You may want some professionally licensed model photography for your site. Don’t swipe it off the net, or you’ll regret it later. If you use it, pay for the right licensing first. The plain truth is that about 10% of the population looks better to 90% of the population than 90% of us do to each other.  If you’re looking for people who look truly happy, fit, excited, beautiful, and involved in whatever you’re selling, that’s exactly what models do. And small businesses should take a cue from the big guys in this regard – commercials, corporate sites (often doing many things wrong, they do this part right), product catalogues – these all use models for a reason.

Invite everyone who works with you. The front person needs separate photos, but staff photos are quite effective for marketing and company image, also. Whether your people are employees, contractors, colleagues you share work with, or just a couple of family members who join you part time, and maybe a temp from an agency, invite them to do staff photos for your web site, and individual photos and bios for staff profiles.

Get permission. If you use staff photos, get a release form signed for use of their photo on the internet. And not the old-fashioned model release forms that don’t have clauses for internet use. Get one that’s up to date, with the web in mind. I won’t post mine here, because I’m not a legal expert and not offering legal advice. But if you want a copy, and you’re already a client, feel free to request it. I’ll share it as a “this is what I’m doing” – not as a “here’s what you need”. Consult an attorney – that’s what they’re there for – to keep you from meeting other people’s attorneys.

Resize and crop those darned things! The biggest issue, literally, we see with photos provided by our clients is that they’re the size of a wall. Lower the darned resolution on that camera to the smallest it’ll do. Photos for the web need to be fast-loading. Windows picture viewer fakes it, by showing you the size you expect, but that’s not the real size. Use something like irfanview (and tip the man for using his software – it’s worth it) to see the *real* size. If you’re taking pics at maximum resolution with you’re camera, you’ll probably see an eyeball filling your monitor. Yes, that’s how big it actually is. You can use the same software to resize your existing photos to something reasonable, like 400px width. Even if you *display* the photo at smaller width on your site, it’s loading the entire photo every time someone loads the page, slowing down your site, chewing up  your web space and bandwidth, and all for nought. Don’t waste the net, or your money, or your visitors’ time. Shrink those photos for the web. And crop out the needless backgrounds. If there’s a table edge in one corner, use the same software to crop it. Rule of thumb – show what’s relevant – omit what’s not.

Don’t make your business site a personal home page. A lot of people want to put photos of their cats, their favorite vehicles, or their kids on their business web sites. As someone who does internet marketing, I walk gently here, unless I think the client is open to advice. But my general advice is, unless you’re a micro-business and family or pets or your vehicles are part of your brand, don’t. There’s a difference between a personal home page, which has your favorite songs, colors, etc. and a business site. The former is what Myspace is for. It’s free – use it. Better yet, if you’re in business, use Facebook for that. You’ll get more value. Your business site needs to appeal to the model visitors that constitute your prospect and client demographics. And they’re looking for specific kinds of content. If you don’t know what to put on your site, that’s what an internet marketing consultant is for. We’re happy to help, or there are others out there.

That’s it. Straight, no-nonsense advice on using your photos on your web site. Let us know if you think of something we’ve skipped. We’re always accumulating new ideas and insights as well. Have fun. I can hear those digital cameras clicking away already.

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