Monthly Archives: September 2007

Ownyourbrand.com

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I recently came across this site and decided to engage the author for a comment he made in one of his posts. His comment was, “Remember, a true brand owner refuses to tell anyone’s story but their own.” I took umbrage with that comment with the following:

  • Marc Says:
    September 6th, 2007 at 11:39 am Mike, shouldn’t a brand owner be someone who “chooses” to tell their own story,”rather” than someone elses? Unless, you/they pay me to tell your/their story, then in that case, I will evangelize rather than “tell”. Just thinking that to refuse, might be burning a bridge.

    •  Mikes comment was the following:

    Mike Wagner Says:
    September 6th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    Marc,

    You make a good point! No reason to burn any bridges.

    The formation of the my proposition that a brand owner “is someone who refuses to tell anyone’s story but their own” comes from my consultative work with owners, senior executives and managers who often imitate the brand story of others rather than create their own unique story.

    It’s an abdication of their own creative powers either individually or collectively to be authentic and different.

    Plus, “me too!” brand stories are seldom remarkable in a noisy marketplace.

    That’s why I suggest this “me too!” path is one that must be “refusted.”

    Of course marketers get paid to tell the brand story of their clients. And that’s a good thing.

    Still, the best is when a brand story finds such a deep level of affinity with consumers that they voluntarily tell the brand story of a product or service they have come to love.

    Thanks for making the conversation all the better here.

    Encouraging to hear from you.

    Keep creating,
    Mike

    Which leads me to say that Mike is right and so am I!!! The bottom line is you need to create your own identity with your brand. You need to have uniqueness, and the product needs to be able to stand on its own without the primary selling point being a low price point. That’s the great thing about marketing or the challenge of marketing. Someone creates a product because they see a need. But then after they have created that product ,they are now in the same boat as their competitors, how  do they differentiate themselves?

    The essence of the true marketer is someone who can step in the shoes of their client and understand the product, the audience, the message, and the best method to get the message out there. Wouldn’t you agree? What am I missing?

    Emerson, what’s in a name? or Emerson Direct, what does it mean?

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    What does Emerson Direct Response mean? It actually starts with the web site Emerson Direct and from there it has other iterations such as Emerson Direct Response and Emerson Direct Marketing. All of these names point to the Direct Response Marketing Industry, but if we really want to dig deeper, The name, the actual root origin of the name Emerson Direct comes from, a cat… That’s right, a cat.

    We digress though. Emerson was not just any cat. He lived to be 19 people years, and to a cat thats older than dirt. Emerson was also one of the coolest cats We had ever been around. Cool in the sense, that he was quite unflappable and very much a people’s cat. Ornery at times but always very affectionate. He was a sleek siamese blue point, and his name truly fit his demeanor.

     We could tell many stories about Emerson but lets just say that we miss Emerson and although he was replaced, he was never replaceable. So in tribute to Emerson, Emerson Direct was founded.

    Sites worth a look at

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    In our quest to find sites that actually bring something to the table other than an offer to increase our PR and drive traffic to our site we submit to you 4 websites that are worth a deeper look.

    First up is Blurtit.com  BlurtIt.Com is a British web site that started as a way to draw attention to people’s blogs, or web logs, in one central location. As an innovation, BlurtIt tried a new “Questions and Answers” page, and it caught on like wildfire. Now there are thousands of visitors from abroad, the US and elsewhere, asking and answering questions for free. It’s pretty cool to see what people need answers to. We suggest you bookmark it.

    Next up is Feedmap To quote their site, “That’s right – feedmap is about mapping your blog! Using FeedMap you can tell the world where you are blogging from! Or you can simply search for bloggers right around where you live! Or even better let other local bloggers to discover your blog. And, of course, don’t you want to display a nifty blogmap on your blog too?….

    Ok so maybe you don’t want people to know where you are blogging from especially if your name is Ann Coulter. Strike that, maybe you do, if your name is Ann Coulter (we’re balancing the left and the right) But nevertheless, we thought that feedmap had a pretty nifty widget.

    A  site that we haven’t had enough time to test drive yet is called Rateitall 

    RateItAll is an online community and social network built upon one of the most extensive and diverse online databases of opinions, ratings, and reviews in the world.  Participating members of RateItAll can earn cash for various activities on the site.

    We have also seen some complaints about it as well, so just because it looks good on the surface, make sure it’s all together under the hood. This isn’t an opinion but…

    Next up is BlogPulse which is really cool. BlogPulse is a service of Nielson BuzzMetrics and  is an automated trend discovery system for blogs.  BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs. So it’s essentially a blog trend tracker. Check it out.

    I can get you a top ranking in all of the SE’s! (umm..ok!)

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    So I did a search the other day( don’t we all do searches?) on the term, “search engine marketing” and the results blew me away. The tool, said that it had been searched upon 33,000 times! Oh and not in one month, that would be per day, on average. PER DAY!! Someone grab a calculator and do the math real quick. 

    Ok so, if we go by that stat, and for the sake of error we cut the number in half, that’s only a term that was searched upon 5 and a half million times in one year.  Ok I have some questions…

    What the hell is going on out there? Are there that many people who need help? Are there that many web site owners who have no clue what they are doing and thus are looking for search engine marketing professionals? Or are there that many search engine marketing professionals out there, that DON’T know what they are doing and are ALSO looking for help? OR, do the SE’s change so much that web owners and search engine marketers alike are constantly in search (pun intended) for help, a leg up, or any and all information that can push their site onto page one on all SE’s? (Notice I said, page one. I think getting on page one, let alone the top 3 should be most people’s goals.)

    So anyway, what is it? Why such a huge number of searches on that term? Chances are the answer is all of the above. Which leads me to the premise of the title. You just really do not know what you might be getting when you hire a search engine marketing professional. But the easiest way to check their work is verify their work. But that might be where it gets dicey. I could tell you that some of the sites that I have worked on are Amazon, E-bay, and E-trade. Then I could tell you they are number one for their primary key words, and there would be no way for you to dispute it. But what you may really need to know, is what has this person done with “other” keywords and second tier keywords and phrases… what have they done to a sites overall structure before and after? and what were the immediate and noticeable results?

    But this is where you can truly find the proof. Work with individuals who have actually worked with “other” companies that they don’t own. Where the relationship is strictly employee/employer. That way you can ask, What was your site PR before they started working on it? Where could you find the site before they came aboard? What is your ROI like now?  Are you satisfied?

    The questions are really quite simple, but some site owneres are just dazzled by the BS that these folks can throw, and they are obsessed with a high ranking and traffic and a Top 3 or top 5 rankings in 48 hours (those are paid inclusions) or better yet straight PPC rankings. If someone does not know the difference between an organic ranking and a nonorganic, it will appear as a if it is a top 3 ranking, won’t it? The fact of the matter is that the job of a SEM professional should be to educate and counsel, so that a site owner can truly appreciate what goes into a top 3 ranking. The difficulties, the challenges, and the constantly changing landscape. The space (search engines) changes so regularly that it’s almost as if someone comes into your clients office in the middle of the night and re-arranges everything and changes your passwords their passwords and logins and hides everything, and it’s up to you to put it all back together again before 9am. Then explain to your client, why they(the search engines) did it, when for all practical purposes everything you have done has been A-1. Try explaining THAT to a non-hip SE person!

    I know thats a loosely based definition, but you get the point. And maybe that is why deep down, the number of searches done on “search engine marketing” is so insanely high. Because the rules of engagment change so much, we all must keep looking for the latest information to help us, to give us an edge.

    Just beware of the snake oil salesman and the old adage, “if it’s too good to be true, it prolly is.” Because chances are, they might actually know less than you.