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The latest issue of my Excess Voice newsletter includes an article on how visitors don't stop 'searching' once they arrive at your site. You need to apply the principles of SEO not only to get people to your site, but also to help them complete their task once they have arrived.
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ExcessVoice.com - articles, resources and reviews for online writers, copywriters and SOHO entrepreneurs who write their own sites.
This should get you thinking... What other dying skills and crafts could be given a new lease on life like this?
ExcessVoice.com - articles, resources and reviews for online writers, copywriters and SOHO entrepreneurs who write their own sites.
I've just added a new page at Excess Voice. It's a 'More Articles' page and has 9 articles that were first published at alistapart.com and MarketingProfs.com. More to come.
You can now read a chapter of my book, Net Words, at the Excess Voice site here.
From time to time, in articles, speeches and elsewhere, I have stated and restated: Say something worth talking about.
When you do that, it gives life to your Web pages, emails, newsletters and ads. Say something interesting or noteworthy online, and the network starts to hum. News travels. The viral element kicks in.
So, congratulations to the folks at BanCruelFarms.org for the creation of their flash animation, The Meatrix. It's amusing, engaging, informative, troubling...and it's an ad.
If only all ads showed that kind of imagination.
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ExcessVoice.com - articles, resources and reviews for online writers, copywriters and SOHO entrepreneurs who write their own sites.
Today I sent out the latest issue of my Excess Voice newsletter.
Unfortunately, in one of the 'Readers Write Back' segments, one reader had used the phrase 'kick ass marketing'.
You can guess what happened. A significant number of newsletters were not delivered, because people's filters took exception to the word 'ass'.
Yes, I know why the filters are in place. But aren't there enough things in life pressuring us to be good, decent and politically correct?
This entry in Seth Godin's weblog throws some interesting light on McDonald's latest hissy fit - and a problem in perception that many marketers struggle with.
As Seth points out, McDonalds fails to understand the difference between what 'is' and how they would 'like' things to be.
To avoid similar problems in perception, I have never forgotten a lesson taught to me by an officer in the Norwegian army. (How I came to receive this lesson is a whole different story.)
Anyway, I was young and standing at the edge of some endless Norwegian forest with a map in my hand. I had to get somewhere, and back. Just before I left, this officer said these words to me:
"If what you see with your eyes ever disagrees with what is drawn on the map, always remember it's the land that is right."
Now if only every marketer in the world could paraphrase that just a little and post a note on the wall in front of them that said something like:
"If the market you see in front of your eyes ever disagrees with what is written in your marketing plan, always remember it's the market that is right."
I was going through some old articles of mine and found something I had written back in 2000 that seems worth repeating. Here is an excerpt from that article:
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KEEP IT SIMPLE
The person who best expresses the benefits of simple tools is William Gibson, in his novel "All Tomorrow's Parties."
Here's what he said:
"The handles of a craftsman's tools bespeak an absolute simplicity, the plainest forms affording the greatest range of possibilities for the user's hand."That which is overdesigned, too highly specific, anticipates outcome; the anticipation of outcome guarantees, if not failure, the absence of grace."
He was talking about a knife, one of the simplest of all tools. But he could just as well have been talking about a pencil. A pencil also bespeaks "an absolute simplicity."
I remember back in my early ad agency days, before any kind of desktop publishing software was available, watching Peter Smitherman wield a pencil. Peter was a seasoned art director, and I was his young copywriter. Watching him work with a pencil was a privilege. He could draw a face or a landscape with equal ease. He could design an ad with a few rough strokes, and you'd see exactly how it should turn out in its final form. And he could do it fast. No restraints, no templates, no wizards. Just one hand, a pencil, and a broad expanse of white paper.
That pencil and paper afforded "the greatest range of possibilities." As each layer of graphite was laid across the surface of the paper beneath it, it followed a unique path, never before anticipated or seen.
Then came desktop publishing software.
Design software always "anticipates outcome" to some degree because it allows the user to work only within predetermined boundaries. The possibilities are confined within the vision of the software designers. Having millions of colors to choose from doesn't help. Nor does a menu of 200 typefaces. In fact, as a tool, publishing software is hopelessly overdesigned.
What does this have to do with Internet marketing?
Well, online we also have to use tools with which to create our web sites and the experiences they afford. And on the web we just love to embrace every new high-tech tool that comes our way. Cool toys. Great software. Animate it. Make it rich. Make it stream.
The trouble is, the more overdesigned the tool, the easier it is to anticipate the outcome. Admit it, once you've seen the first second of a Flash intro, you know exactly how it will proceed. Moving text, converging graphics, etc. The only pleasure to be had is in seeing how quickly you can find the Skip Intro link.
And as William Gibson says, " ...the anticipation of outcome guarantees, if not failure, the absence of grace."
Sure does. The web is littered with absence of grace.
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This excerpt is taken from a compilation of 48 of my best articles, written between 1998 and 2003.
An article I wrote for Jeffrey Zeldman's always excellent alistapart.com
Great quote from a recent interview with Seth Godin:
"Now if they're smart, what they'll do -- and this is where a lot of ventures fall apart -- is they'll stop trying to find customers for their products and they'll start trying to find products for their customers".
