Net Neutrality And Your Business
Yesterday the FCC voted to adopt the rules for Net Neutrality. While this has been in the press for quite some time, the question regarding how this will impact individual businesses is still being raised. Here’s a quick synopsis of what’s going on, and the danger of this open door.
Does Net Neutrality open the door to further restriction?
Net Neutrality and Business Practice
Net Neutrality is primarily aimed at Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) in order to keep the Internet “free and open”. PC Magazine published a great article this morning about what the overarching rules for ISP’s is:
…the FCC did provide an overview of what’s included in the order and it breaks down to three high-level rules: transparency; no blocking; and no unreasonable discrimination.
Transparency: The transparency requirement basically requires broadband providers – fixed and wireless – to be more transparent about their activities. They need to be upfront about how they manage their networks, how well (or poorly) their networks perform, as well as details about their plan options and pricing.
What’s in your head?
Whatever it is, wouldn’t it be better if it were shared? In talking with entrepreneurs looking to leverage the Internet more effectively I often recommend they start a blog, especially if their business is dependent on their expertise. Why?
Blogging is about building authority and fans
When someone is blogging, it’s usually with the intent of building their authority in a marketplace. As that authority begins to develop, or continues to grow, people seek out that person or company.
If you’re in business, you likely know a lot about what you do. You also know a lot about your industry and what others don’t know. Given this expertise, you do educate people, but only when you’re on the phone, or in a meeting. How much more productive would it be if you were educating your client base with one hit?
But I don’t like to write
That’s okay. Writing isn’t about sitting down and writing, like what you had to do in college. Most people, unless they were going to school for journalism or literature, don’t particularly like to write…unless they can rework their thought process about writing.
$99 Market Visibility
Is it possible to get anything substantial for $99 anymore? It sure is! Normally I don’t talk about services in my blog posts, but this was too good to pass up.
In the September 9 Weekly Marketing Nuggets, I talked about the importance of taking control of your profiles on sites like Google Places, Foursquare and Yelp!. For just $99 you don’t have to worry about learning how to do this yourself. Rather, we’ll go find where you’re currently listed, and if you’re not, we’ll get you listed on these three important sites.
But is this right for every business? Nope! And that’s why we don’t take orders online. Rather, fill out a quick form, and we’ll contact you to discuss whether or not this is the right opportunity for your business. If it’s not, nothing lost. If it is, you’ve just gotten a piece of gold for the relative value of a penny.
What do you get by marketing on these types of sites?
- Get current customers talking about your business
- Market specifically to people who are visiting your business or others around you.
- Promote specials and events specifically to those who want to know about them.
SEO is more…
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is much more than simply keyword stuffing, link building, and code optimization, though each of these is a part of the overall strategy of SEO.
This week Google launched what it calls Google Instant Search. If you haven’t heard what this is, you can learn more through this video. While this change does make the job of organic SEO different than it has been in the past, it is still a very relevant process.
Matt Cutts from Google explains some of why SEO is going to be around for years to come…this is coming from the folks who are supposedly making it impossible. Check out the video.
What I really appreciated about what Matt had to say here is that SEO, but probably more properly labeled Internet Marketing, is so much more than simply getting your site and ranked. Proper website marketing is about user experience.
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CAN I SPAM?
It’s common for me to be asked if something is possible, like sending bulk email to email addresses found online. It really comes down to should I not so much can I. However, let’s take just a couple minutes and look at exactly what you can and cannot do with email marketing.
The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 governs email marketing. In it, we learn several things we need in order to be legally compliant when it comes to email marketing:
- Be honest about who you are and what’s in your message
- Give your address.
- Give an opportunity to opt out and honor requests.
Most email marketing platforms help you maintain compliance. The platforms I would recommend looking at are iContact, Constant Contact, MailChimp, Exact Target, or Vertical Response. All of these are good, and it’s just a matter of finding the one that works best for you and your budget. For the Weekly Marketing Nuggets newsletter, I use MailChimp.
To harvest or not to harvest…
It is very alluring to pull email addresses from websites like the Chamber of Commerce, BNI, company websites, or other places that have made these email addresses publically available. In terms of legality, it is a gray area, dependent on the Privacy Statement and Terms of Service from the site hosting the data, as well as whether you used an “automated” means to obtain the data.
More importantly, in my humble opinion, is the possible repercussions to your business’s reputation, as well as the effectiveness of the marketing. Let’s tackle this in reverse order.
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Introducing Weekly Marketing Nuggets
Tomorrow we’ll be launching the inaugural issue of Weekly Marketing Nuggets. This is a weekly newsletter with tips of how to leverage the power of the Internet to aid your developing business.
Tomorrow’s topic will be the new Facebook Places. You won’t want to miss one issue.
What topics can you expect to see covered?
- Paid advertising for your website (PPC, CPM, Banner ads, etc).
- Social Media Marketing (from Facebook to Twitter to Foursquare, and everything in between).
- Content Development (blogging, corporate website development, etc).
- And so much more!
Sign up now to receive the inaugural issue tomorrow!
The mind of an IMP
Is that like an IED? Not exactly. IMP, that’s an Internet Marketing Professional. While we may be able to extract significant “damage” to client’s competitor base, no road-side bombs are employed.
As I’ve been working on launching my own company, it dawned on me that some people may not understand what an internet marketer actually does, and the mind through which we operate. Here’s my answer:
Intelligent – Internet marketing professionals are intelligent. We have to know what the current trends are in the market, what’s going to impact a targeted market, and what the new strategies and technologies are to make that impact.
Best practices suck!
I recently ran across this ad. It made me stop, and really pay attention to it for a minute. Why? It broke all the “best practices” of banner advertising. I was intrigued enough, I clicked through, and spent at least 3 minutes looking at the site, just because this ad intrigued me.
So what made this ad so appealing? It was a simple compliment. Sure, it wasn’t from someone I know, or even knew who was paying the compliment, but it was nice. It broke the convention of letting the audience know who was posting the advertisement. It even broke the convention of giving some indication of the product being offered. It was a simple banner with a compliment.
This can be so powerful it will drive traffic. Here’s the logic: if we can engage the audience, we can convert the audience. A simple, yet very effective method of engaging the audience is to not attempt to engage, but actually engage them, not to sell them. This ad demonstrates the effectiveness of this type of advertising. Social Media Marketing also demonstrates this type of marketing.
Don’t get me wrong, best practices are good. They are demonstrated ways to success. However, the drawback to best practices is with the speed at which things change with today’s technology, those who wait for “best practices” are chasing the wave, instead of riding it.
What are you doing to break out of best practices and engage your audience?
Your message is doomed…unless it’s fun
Think about marketing for a moment. When you see something depressing, or see something that is “truly professional”, are we drawn to it? Not normally. Rather, we are repulsed by it. Why? We want what is fun; we want what makes us feel good.
This was reiterated by a Volkswagen commercial I saw on YouTube this morning. What is Volkswagen’s purpose? To sell cars. However, they don’t get caught by the trap of only trying to sell cars. They have fun doing it. In this video, the message is clearly stated that their vehicle can match your fast pace life…but that their cars are fun as well.
So on this Friday afternoon, I hope this video brings you a little joy, as well as inspires you to not be caught too hard by the “purpose of your business.” Accomplish your goals, but help people enjoy the process.
Localization
No, this is not an article about the GPS enabled apps we find on more and more phones. Â Rather, let’s explore an increasingly popular topic among web marketers: Local Search Marketing.
By definition, local marketing is targeting your Internet Search Marketing efforts on the geography near where your business is located. Â Using tools and sites like Google Maps, Four Square, Yelp, and many others, businesses are able to market specifically to their target market.
The question I keep hearing is if this type of marketing is for everyone. Â While this is a great strategy for success for brick and mortar businesses, more and more companies are moving virtual. Â Also, we see the world is continually shrinking through continually growing use of the Internet. Â With that said, some businesses are well adept local marketing. Â If your business’s primary source of income comes from traffic through your storefront, then yes, this is the correct focus of marketing for you.
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