Recent Articles
Always Optimizing
Dec 3, 2009 Business & Marketing, Search and SEO, twitter Leave a comment
There was a game show on TV when I was a kid that I really wanted to try-out for and become a contestant. I don’t remember the show as much as I remember the Grand Prize offered each week: a 5 minute shopping spree at Toys-R-Us. I didn’t really care about being on TV or anything, I just wanted to be on the show for a shot at the prize! Was I a toy freak? No, not really. I just discovered a way that I could take advantage of the prize!
You see, I’d watch in agony each week as the kids who won would run through Toys-R-Us and make the same mistakes over and over. They’d all do the same thing: with huge eyes, they’d frantic their shopping cart through the store filling it with things like bikes, skateboards, basketballs, huge stuffed animals, radio control cars, and other huge items. I swear one time a kid tried to stick a trampoline in his shopping cart. Watching these kids would frustrate me because they were doing it wrong! They get to keep everything they could squeeze into one cart. If only they had my strategy, they could have gotten all those toys and more. My plan was pretty simple to. If I were on the show, I’d run straight to the baseball cards and fill the cart until it was overflowing. I could then maximize the space in my shopping cart with some of the smallest, yet highest valued items in the store. I wouldn’t need to run all the many aisles, I could maximize my full 5 minutes in a single spot. After I took home my loot, I’d open all the packs, sort them out, create a few sets, and resell those sets plus the highest valued singles back to my local baseball card dealers (there were many in the 80’s and early 90’s). With the money, I’d return back to Toys-R-Us and get the toys I wanted and still have a lot of money left over.
As my friends know, I’ve always been a entrepreneur geek. Sure I enjoyed making money, but what I enjoyed most was optimizing a little-known process (which could also be thought of as exploiting a loophole or exploiting the system). My career choices are pretty much par for the course from my humble beginnings. As a Search Engine Optimizer and Social Marketer, I look for ways to “optimize” the experience for my clients. I make their website more suitable for success within search engines and social networks. Back 3 to 5 years ago, I was simply exploiting holes in Google’s algorithm. These days I play their game, but still have many opportunities to leverage social networks like Twitter, reddit, StumbleUpon, and Facebook in the process.
I enjoy it. It’s fun to be able to make changes and see how it affects the traffic coming into the site. I’ve been on the tipping point for a few months with one of my sites, and I think we are about to release a product (another website) that will soon push it over the edge and give me the results I’ve been looking for for so long. One downside to this business is that it can be entirely frustrating to not get the results you were hoping for as soon as you want. But when you do achieve success, it is very rewarding. So I’m hoping this little extra “oomph” that my team has been working on for the past 2 months will really jump start something good. We’ll see what happens. But our shopping cart is full and we are more than ready!
Tiger’s Reputation
Dec 1, 2009 Business & Marketing, News and Blues, reputation management 2 Comments
I’ve always been a fan of Tiger Woods, and I always love a good reputation management story. Unfortunately, Tiger Woods’ reputation is being slaughtered at the moment. And he’s doing nothing about it.
I have to agree 100% with Andy Beal’s comments:
He owes his fans, the media, and his sponsors an explanation.Yes, he does!
They invested their time, their money, their emotional commitment to Woods. He sold them a brand and now he’s not living up to it. Just like any other “product” its customers deserve to know why it’s not “working” the way it has for the past decade or more.
Cold? Sure! And Woods can continue to hold onto his privacy if he so chooses–as Bobby Brown would say, that’s his “perogative!” But, at some point he needs to decide what’s more important, Tiger Woods the person, or Tiger Woods the brand.
Because Tiger Woods the brand is in a lot of trouble at this point.
With OTHER huge brands riding the Tiger name: Gatorade, G2, Nike, Buick, Gillette, EA Sports, and more. All of these brands will need to rethink their sponsorships and face-time with Tiger as a spokesperson if Tiger continues to dodge the press.
I sure hope Tiger considers his reputation and decides to be a bit more vocal about the incident.
Blog Gone But Not Forgotten
Sep 3, 2009 Blog General, Business & Marketing, Florida Leave a comment
Don’t fret. I’m still around. On Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and a few other places. Mostly Facebook.
Scatterbrain random updates to hold you over:
- Summer in Florida was just another Summer In Florida. No storms yet, so it’s been a pretty calm and HOT year.
- I have a few queued posts that I’ve started that I hope to post soon. I also have a few queued up in my head that have yet to be written.
- Lately I’ve been focusing on Facebook marketing. This is a whole new world to me. Not only is it exciting because so much is possible, it is also a very large opportunity if done right. I started in Email. I went to Search. Dabbled in Social. But it’s Facebook that has the potential to be bigger then all the others combined. This is truly a new frontier.
- I’m not running nearly as much as I hoped. Busy being a dad, a husband, a co-worker, an employee, a manager, and a marketer. But I’ve scheduled some time for myself in the immediate future.
- I hope to write more about Facebook advertising. I’ll post what I can. But I’m not a guru. This is a learning experience for me too, so don’t expect anything earth shattering.
