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Friday, April 25, 2008

New Orleans - ECMTA

Just returned home from New Orleans for the Ecommerce Merchants Trade Association show. The ECMTA Summit is by and for people interested in selling things online. Uh...that would be me...

On Wednesday I gave two presentations - first, SEO 101. It was an hour long session where I went into the basics of search engine optimization. In common fashion, I spent the first 30 minutes or so talking about what to focus our daily efforts on. I could tell some people didn;t understand the connection to SEO when I first started, but by the end, they were all drinking the proverbial Koolaid.

Almost every person from every business I talk to has the same focus - sell more! But there is a problem inherent to this: If you're focusing on selling things to the wrong people, you're going to be making a TON of effort, with limited results.

Instead, business owners and marketers should be focused on WHO they are selling to, not the sale itself. Which is the easier sale: A guy comes and knocks on your door and says, "Hey, I'm interested in what you have to sell." Or, walking down the street and tapping a guy on the shoulder and saying, "Hey, are you interested in what I have to sell?" It's absurd, right?

Well, sometimes you have to use an absurd example to drive home a very simple, though often-overlooked point. Focus on who you're selling to, not the act of selling, and sales will happen naturally and with much less effort.

So - we take this important lesson and apply it to search marketing. Let's focus our efforts are driving targted traffic and sales are a natural extension of that.

The second session I presented in was Advanced SEO. This was a little more fun because we talked about the fun stuff - how spiders work, Nigritude Ultramarine and all kinds of seo-geek things.

Overall, there was much positive feedback, so I think it went well. Our sales team from Network Solutions closed some business, so it was well worth the effort.

New Orleans was exactly as it was pre-Katrina. Bourbon Street was still Bourbon Street, as evidenced by my hangover on Weds...

Thursday, April 3, 2008

The Networking Deal

Okay, so I have to try it... Today I'll be headed to a lunch meeting of Business Networking International here in Reston, VA. I'll let you know how it goes!

BNI has chapters all over the place. Basically, you pay a couple hundred bucks to join plus a modest monthly fee. For that, you have regular meetings with other members who come together to swap leads, introduce new business ideas, introduce people, etc. Members are encouraged to bring guests - that's what I'll be today.

I'll be going as a guest of Brad Howe from Intellisource Financial Services. Brad is an accounting extraordinaire (he does my coporate and personal returns). IFS has a Web site currently under construction. Guess who is advising him on his yet-to-be-launched SEM campaign? We'll keep tabs on how it goes...

I'm headed out in 45 minutes, stay tuned!