This morning was perfect for coffee on the back deck as the sun came up. It was perfect to catch up on reading some industry news in the quiet before the day became full of emails, ringing phones, inevitable discussions of home add-ons and home improvements, and finally a whole bunch of work that, oddly enough, I look forward to doing.

There was one thing that stood out to me while reading this morning. It was a rather small, but powerful, quip on Twitter, and it read “marketing is nothing more than making sure something doesn’t die, so why are you so serious?”

That is why I love content marketing. Other than being a standup comedian, I don’t think there’s another profession where your personality can be so prominent in your work. Of course there are times that call for seriousness, and Lord knows I’ve shown the fun side of myself and my work at the worst possible professional moment, but truth is, we all have, and we all live, and we all move on. And yes, I’ve been told to quit having so much fun at work before. After the stun wore off, I looked at my boss and said “that’s kinda like asking the Pope to quit praying so much. Why would you do that?”

So, whether you’re a serious work ‘til you drop type, a happy go-getter, a fun socialite who craves group interaction, and whether you own your own business or work for someone else, let yourself come out in your work or else you will never live.

Live life you wonderful you,

Larry

Yesterday, I briefly sat down with a couple of friends who own an established new & used car dealership to talk about some web content opportunities. Their situation is unique is some aspects because they deal with an e-commerce business, but it would be an incredibly rare moment for someone to buy a vehicle on the internet and not visit the actual store to look over the car, kick the tires, test drive it, negotiate a price and all the other things you do when purchasing a car – at least, I’m assuming that.

However, a full-blown, fanatically enriched website is a must for a situation like this for many different reasons including being an information hub, building customer trust and most importantly visibility.

The guys know this fairly well already, and know the importance of competing in the Google rankings, but we all know and understand competing organically can be slightly more than overwhelming and leave us awake at night (BTW, take two aspirins, and call Sawfish Online in the morning).

During our discussion one of the guys asked a very good question: “If we rank No.1 on Google for a particular car and a customer clicked on that link and it went to our home page, that’s not good, right?”

Right. The worst thing you can do to a customer or a potential customer is promise to be the best (you’re No.1 in Google after all) and not deliver on that promise. Do not make them search for the car on your website. They will bounce fast than a tossed into a tub. This is called your bounce rate in web analytics, and when your bounce rate is high, it means you have a problem – people are getting to your site, but they don’t like what they see. You aren’t delivering the content. You aren’t encouraging your visitors to stay on your site and gain trust and purchase something.

We didn’t really talk about bounce rates in our meeting, that’s not much of an issue that I know of right now with my friends (thankfully), but focusing on getting high search results that point to the wrong and/or misleading item is a much bigger problem than many business owners realize or even know about.

Here’s how I think of it: Organic search like the example above is much like fishing without bait on your hook. A fish might bite, but if that fish gets off, who knows how much longer it could be before another one comes along and falls for the same thing.

Sincerely thinking about going to Florida to do some fishing now,

Larry

Glossary of Terms

Content
Content is anything on a webpage that delivers information. Content can be copy (words), images, videos, product reviews, blogs, social media posts, sketches and documents that help a customer or visitor understand a message conveyed on a website.

Content Marketing
Content marketing is a phrase that is becoming popular that really means online marketing. It's pretty much the same as traditional marketing with more website and social mediate site marketing opportunities and less print (or traditional) marketing -- although not zero.

Social Media
Social media are all the sites where we share our stuff such as facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, youtube and vine. As busy business owners, these sites may come across as annoying, but social media is becoming more important in content marketing than ever.

SEO
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It's a buzz term that is often used but not always readily understood. SEO is always changing; before it was very technical and secretive, but now it's more about good, relative content. Some legacy SEO pieces remain like keywords and search rankings in Google, Bing and Yahoo,

Content Strategy
Strategy is your plan, and then having back up plans for your back up plans. Calling it a strategy just sounds cooler. It's important to know and understand all parts of your content and how they work in order to form a solid strategy that will set up your business for success.

Content Consulting
Content consulting is when a company like Sawfish Online comes in and gives you and your online content a gentle nudge in the right direction even though you might be doing most of the work. We're experts in content, you're experts in your business, which is why we make a great partner for you whenever you need us.