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How NOT to Use Social Media for Your Pizza Business

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

About two months ago I read an incredible book by Chris Brogan titled “Trust Agents“.  I loved the book so much that I purchased additional copies and mailed them to all of my clients.

In short, the book goes over how businesses (or individuals that want to brand themselves) can use social media in ways that work to their advantage.  Things such as gaining trust with your followers, providing them with value, etc.  It’s an awesome read and one of the very few books I’m passionate about recommending to others.

There’s an etiquette (and strategy) in promoting your business on sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. You don’t want to come across as a spammer, pushing out sale after self-serving sale and think that your followers will hang around.  Everyone loves to buy, but no one likes to be sold to.

Today’s perfect example of this is a conversation I had with Ferraro’s Pizza, a Saint Louis joint that uses Twitter to promote themselves.  Before this week, their Twitter account was abandoned, unused and dormant since mid-October.  Then today, the account suddenly pipes back into action – promoting their great lunch sales over and over again.  In a matter of 9 minutes, Feraro’s sent out 5 tweets about their specials. That’s. Excessive. Click to continue »

Posted in Marketing, books, competition, social media | 19 Responses »
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Dominating Your Niche

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

I’ve got some clients who are not really serious about their niche.  They dabble around with a few hundred bucks a month and think that they’re going to get big gigs from it. Month after month they trudge along but never really get anywhere.

Then I’ve got other clients who are afraid to grow.  Their niche in the Saint Louis are is WIDE OPEN, and they see what Internet Marketing can do for their business, and they are afraid.  They aren’t afraid to spend the money, they’re afraid that their business will grow and they’ll have to “do more things” like hire people, etc.

And then I’ve got a few clients who own their niche.  They are excited about where their website is taking them.  They are attending industry conferences and shows, constantly prowling for the next vendor that shows signs of Internet awareness (so they can partner up and dominate even more). These clients are online day and night, learning about their industry, teaching themselves SEO basics (so they can spot opportunity) and they aren’t afraid to email me with questions and bounce ideas off of me.

Those are the clients we all love to have.  They aren’t here to joke around.  They are here to do business, make money, and dominate their niche.  They see the potential in their business online.  They see new niches that branch off and strengthen their core, and they dominate them too.

Check out what Gary Vaynerchuk has to say about using the Internet as your business platform and then let me know how I can help you get there.

Posted in competition, niches, personalities, small business | 2 Responses »
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Analyzing an SEO Spammer

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

We’ve all seen the emails, promising us high rankings if we’d just reply.  Personally I’ve deleted hundreds of them, ignoring their great offers of near-world peace.

For some reason though, today I thought I’d just check one out.  The email was just like the others.

From: Jerry Dennison
Subject: your website
Date: January 21, 2009

We can put your site at the top of a search engines listings. If this is something you might be interested in, send me a reply with the web addresses you want to promote and the best way to contact you with some options.

Sincerely,

Jerry Dennison
Big Block Search

So I thought I’d do a little research on Jerry’s website, and his claims to get me to the top of the search engines.  Which is cool, because I really want to rank for the term ‘SEO’.  I’m sure if anyone can do it, Jerry can.

First stop, BigBlockSearch.com.  It’s a pretty generic website, most likely it is the same landing page as all the other SEO-spam emails I get.  There’s a form that I can fill out to find out more information.  No information about the company, no other pages.  There is a little blurb on the page about Christmas approaching.  I guess they mean Christmas ‘09.  Man, this company is on the leading edge!

There’s two contact us links on the page, both going to linda@.  Hey wait, where’s Jerry?

So I fill out the form (Get a free review of your website!) for one of my newer websites, along with the message ‘not sure what you can do but we need more traffic’.  I don’t want to leave a phone number, so I leave it blank.  Whoops.

Guess I should filled that out.  Interestingly, the title bar says Unable to Send E-Mail – CoffeeCup Form Builder. Ah, coffeecup.  FrontPage’s cousin.

So I hit the back button, fill out all fields, and hit Submit again.  Funny thing, I get the same result.  So apparently they aren’t relying on the website to generate many leads, or their site just happens to be down when I visit.  Either way, it doesn’t look like my chances are good for my one-word ranking.  Darnit.

Next stop: WHOIS.  According to them, the site was just registered in December of 2008, its not even a month old.  Yet, it says that the site is climbing the Alexa rankings like mad, and that it gets over 3000 visitors a month.  Wow, really?

The domain is privately registered, so that’s a dead end.  The server is located in China, and when I click through to the 2 other websites hosted on this server, they both come back as Chinese sites.  WHOIS gives them an SEO score of 68% (I know it doesn’t mean much, but still, shouldn’t it be 100%?)

Next stop: archive.org.  It’s a long shot, but what the heck.  Sure enough though, no info.

Last stop: Google.  Maybe they’ll have some info for me.  I really want these guys to help me rank.

Hey, I’m in luck! My buddy jerry is listed here, linda is mentioned here, and here too.  There are some other mentions, but they are all about the same.

Darnit, it looks like my rankings are still far off.

So the big question still lingers, what is the purpose of all of this?  They obviously aren’t getting much business from it.  3000+ visitors? I don’t believe that.  Especially when their forms don’t work.

My only theory is that they are simply using it as a ruse to gather email addresses for other spam-related mailings.  The SEO stuff is just a ruse to get business owners to fill out the form for their email address.

I should also mention here that I could have emailed “Linda” for more info, but I decided that was probably a bad idea. I’m really hoping I’m wrong, and that Jerry (or Linda) will get me to the top of the search engines soon (sarcasm).

What’s your theory?

Posted in Marketing, SEO, competition, personalities, site ranking, spam | 1 Response »

Is Your SEO Firm Hurting You?

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Check out the latest blog post over at Where Is My Business

Why We Only Take One SEO Client Per Industry

Posted in SEO, competition | No Responses »

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