Schubert Solutions

Spam filters are a godsend.  If I had to sift through all of the ‘discount pharmaceuticals!’ and ‘loan offer!’ messages every day, it would take up half of my morning, at least.  Now, since it’s The Future, we have programs to do it for us.

For marketers, however, spam filters are not quite as beloved.  They eat corporate newsletters and special deal e-mails, and often, marketing content never reaches the intended recipients.

How can you avoid getting snagged by the spam filter?  Check out these quick tips:

• Avoid phrases that are popular in spam e-mails, like “Click here!” or “Why pay more?”  Filters can be especially finicky about the word ‘free,’ so break out the thesaurus for some good synonyms (here’s a few to get you started:  complimentary, gratis, on the house).
• Don’t use all caps or copious exclamation points, and pay careful attention to grammar and mechanics.  These factors are not only important for the spam filters, but they’re crucial if you want message recipients to take your marketing content seriously.
• Keep changes in font color and size to a minimum.  In fact, it’s best to avoid them entirely–especially fonts in red and/or green.
• Attachments are a big no-no.  Try to keep your e-mail as small as possible, because large messages are quickly rooted out as spam.
• Don’t hire a shoddy HTML developer to create your newsletter.  Clumsy code, along with messages composed of a single image, will get your message dumped in the spam folder quicker than you can say “FREE Offer!!!!”
• Only send messages to clients that opt-in for your e-mail correspondence.  Unsolicited messages are spam, whether you think they are or not.  The more users that report you as spam, the harder it will be to get messages through the filters.
• Be sure to test each message by sending it to several test e-mail addresses across various e-mail clients.  This way, you can see if the spam filters are nabbing the message before it reaches the inbox.

When I was younger, I had a favorite tree.  It was a fallen down river birch with bark that peeled back and revealed tons of squiggly lines embedded in the wood.  Every day, for however long that fallen tree stayed in my backyard, I would sit on the ground and analyze the squiggles.  I told some of my friends that the squiggles were hieroglyphs and I was the only one who could read them.  They believed me because they didn’t know any better, and because I knew those tree squiggles by heart so I made the story very convincing.  I would read the squiggles off of the wood like they had some sort of mystic omniscience–but I was making it all up.

Oh, yeah, there’s also a totally relevant point to this nostalgia.  It’s about marketing!

The Tree Squiggle Readers

There are marketing gurus for every marketing avenue.  Social media whiz kids.  SEO geniuses.  Perfect slogan writers.  They know their marketing avenues well, and they’re very convincing when they espouse the virtues of this or that platform, so many business owners easily believe their spiels.  And, unlike me and my tree, most of these gurus actually know what they’re talking about.  The only problem is:  they’re reading off of a single tree.

The SEO geniuses will pronounce that the key to building your business is relaunching your site with better SEO so that customers can find you when they’re searching Google.  All of the social media whiz kids will say that SEO is less important than keeping up with your Facebook presence and making sure to respond to every customer on Twitter.  While these strategies can have some success, the best marketing strategies are run across multiple platforms–social media, SEO, content marketing, slogans, billboards, TV commercials, etc.

Cross-Platform Marketing

Want to stop missing the forest for the trees?  You’ll need to branch out your marketing efforts into a host of different venues.  Build your brand recognition and you’ll build customer trust.  The main reason many companies get caught up in single avenue marketing is that they are too busy to bother with multiple platforms.  If that’s you, your best bet is to take a look at the marketing platforms below and decide 3-5 options that will work for your company.  Then, whether you employ them yourself or delegate the task to a marketing guru, you can rest assured that your company isn’t focusing on a single tree.

• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Your Web Presence
• Article/Content Marketing
• Direct Mail Letters and E-mail Newsletters
• Running an Informative Company Blog
• Write a Guest Blog for a Popular Related Blog
• Sharing Marketing White Papers
• Pay per Click Web Advertising (Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, etc.)
• Advertise Services on Craigslist
• Attend Networking Events
• Host a Networking Event or Customer Appreciation Event
• Rent Convention Booths and Give Away Swag
• Television Advertising
• Radio Advertising
• Magazine/Newspaper Advertising
• Post Business Cards or Flyers at Popular Lunch Spots or Community Centers

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has been buzzed about since search engines began.  Everyone wants to know how to get their company to the top of search engine rankings organically.  Not the paid spots at the top of the page.  The actual search engine results.  That’s free marketing, and who doesn’t love that?

SEO specialists abound, and they all promise to increase your organic search engine rankings–for a fee.  Free marketing apparently comes with a price tag.  There has been a proliferation of websites on the internet, and as a result, companies are jockeying for top position.  With so many companies and only a few first page search results, getting to the top is rarely free anymore.

Unfortunately, with this boom in websites (and the subsequent boom in need for SEO specialists), the internet has become overrun with awful content.  I mean, seriously awful.  Some SEO “experts” will load articles with keywords, to the point where the actual content no longer makes sense.  They are writing solely for the search engines, and not considering how the content might read for the searchers.  For a while, this style of keyword bombardment actually worked.

Now, however, keyword-riddled articles are more likely to get your blacklisted from Google’s search rankings.  The number one search engine is attempting to remedy the problem by constantly making changes to their search algorithms.  This hasn’t stopped the SEO “experts” from charging clients and filling the web with keyword-filled drivel.

What makes these SEO “experts” so bad?  Not only do they bury actual, helpful content in a sea of useless articles, they can be a pricey way to make sure you wind up in Google’s version of oblivion.  If your SEO contractor does any of the following shady business practices, it may be hurting your page rank much more than it’s helping.

• Duplicate content. Often, shady SEO companies will repost the same article with only minor changes.  Over and over and over.  This may increase the number of onsite keywords, but it does nothing to keep readers on your page.
• Unreadable articles. Sure, you want high keyword density, but high is more like 4%, not 70%.  How many people will actually read your articles?  With new Google algorithm updates, the amount of time a user spends on your site can help determine your rank.  If there are unreadable articles, the user will immediately click away.
• Cloaked pages. This is a highly dangerous practice, as it is likely to get you banned from Google search results altogether.  It happens when SEO site builders layer your website pages, so that what you see is a page optimized for the reader, but underneath sits a page filled with keywords.
• Excessive linking and link farms. Part of SEO is obtaining appropriate backlinks, but this is traditionally done by creating awesome content that others want to link to.  Many pages will provide reciprocal links, but only if your page relates to theirs in some way.  However, sometimes SEO “experts” will link your page back to link farms and add tons of links for their other clients onto your page.  This may help with SEO in the short term, but it is also something that Google frowns upon.
• Hidden keywords. The practice of hiding keywords on the page is meant to help search engines find the site without having to worry about actually incorporating the keywords in site content realistically.  Keywords will be written in the same font color as the background, rendering them invisible unless you highlight them.

For business owners who lack web savvy, it can be tough to explain website aspirations to a web developer.  You don’t have the expertise to create detailed plans for the site, but you’ll know the perfect website when you see it.

Businesses, small and large, bleed money through vague web development plans.  Your developer is working hard to give you what you want, but without proper instructions, they’re building your website in the dark.  It should be no surprise, then, when it takes them many tries, and plenty of billable hours, to finally get it right.

How can you avoid this web development pitfall?  Here are a few tips I’ve gleaned from watching my supremely talented web developer husband at work:

• Requirements gathering. In web development, one of the first things developers do is gather requirements. Requirements can be anything from website function to the back-end architecture.  If you want your web developer to be as efficient as possible, while also working toward the exact outcome you desire, you can provide them with an extensive list of website requirements.  This way, you ensure that your developer will not have to waste time coming to you with questions, and they won’t turn in website after website that doesn’t meet your standards.  Make sure each requirement is measurable and testable, and you will end up with a great end product (and a very happy web developer) the first time around.
• Micromanagement. Even if you do have the time and resources to micromanage your web development project, you can’t expect to have control over every little thing.  Giving your developer some space to do their work and choose the best platforms and languages for your project will ensure that you get the best possible product.  You might think that your way is the best way of producing what you want, but sometimes your web developer really does know best.  After all, that’s what they do. That’s why you hired them.
• Macromanagement. I’ve heard so many horror stories (not just through my husband) where a business spends oodles of money to get the web development they need, and end up with a product that is nothing like what they asked for.  Just like in any business, you’ll certainly see shady web developers with limited experience and understanding of web development.  Often, they’re the cheapest of the bunch.  The main problem is that business owners don’t know about web development.  That’s why they’re hiring someone to handle it.  How can they test potential developers on something they don’t know themselves?  This is where it helps to have a project manager that knows PHP from C++.  While you don’t need to lord over every detail of the project, it helps to have someone on staff that understands the technical side of development, so they can ensure that you are getting what you pay for.
• Mind over matter. Many folks think in terms of web design, but (surprisingly) design should be low on the list of website priorities.  Yes, you want a pretty site, one that is eye-catching and modern, but a web presence should function primarily as a marketing tool.  Javascript homepages and menus may look stunning, but they can be terrible for SEO.  White text on a green background is clean and gorgeous, but tough on potential customers’ eyes.  When building your site, you’ll want to focus on function first.  Once the site is a lean, mean, marketing machine, then you can decide which design elements you can incorporate to make it pretty.

E-mail has become ubiquitous in nearly all business dealings.  Postal mail, with its archaic delivery system, is now often referred to as ‘snail-mail.’  E-mail can deliver your letter in seconds, where as it takes postal workers days.  Think of the efficiency!

Of course, if you’re living here in the 21st century, you know all of this.  You use e-mail on a daily basis.  You log in on your phone while you’re waiting at the DMV and shoot off a couple of messages to your clients and colleagues.  You procrastinate important projects by clicking your e-mail’s ‘refresh’ button every five minutes.  But what has this efficiency cost you and your business?

• Bad first impressions. If you’re using text-speak (U know who U R) or simply not checking back over your messages before you hit send, you might be sending out e-mails rife with grammatical and mechanical errors.  Error-laden messages tell your clients and colleagues that you are too lazy to proofread your own e-mails, that they aren’t worth your time, or worse:  that you are practically illiterate.
• URGENT! There is a time and a place to convey an urgent message.  Maybe your e-mail truly is urgent and you need an immediate response.  However, by consistently exaggerating the urgency of your messages, you ensure that no clients will take you seriously when you really do have an urgent e-mail.  Ever heard of The Boy Who Cried Wolf?
• The 2 GB Signature. Imagine if it took you a couple of minutes (and lets be honest, minutes = hours in internet-speak) to load every. single. message.  That’s what you’re doing to your clients when you have absurdly long e-mail signatures, complete with kooky GIFs or JPGs.  Keep it simple, with your name and contact information.  Your clients will thank you.
• Oops, wrong e-mail address! When you dial a wrong number, you can easily apologize and hang up before any real damage is done.  This isn’t always the case when you are sending an e-mail.  Suppose you compose a perfectly written rant about a frustrating client and quickly send it off to your cubicle-mate.  At least, you meant to send it to your cubicle-mate.  With the wrong click of a button, you have sent said rant directly to the client it defames.  Things get even more complicated if you accidentally send out confidential information to the wrong address.
• Reply all. We’ve all heard horror stories about the ‘reply all’ button.  Why, oh why does it exist?  You receive a message about a particularly hideous new office policy and decide to make a snide or sarcastic comment to a friend, referencing the new policy.  Except you hit ‘reply all,’ so now you’re packing up your things because your boss did not appreciate your unflattering analogies involving her/him, no matter how clever.

 
E-mail etiquette is certainly not a new idea, but it is becoming increasingly ignored.  Even in the business world, where correspondence should always be professional quality, there are plenty of folks who refuse to check back over their messages and think before they hit send.

It’s really as simple as this:  Conscientiousness in your correspondence reflects well on your business.

Technology progresses quicker than most businesses can keep up.  As a result, the internet is loaded with articles that are no longer relevant.  When you’re using article marketing as part of your overall branding strategy, these articles do your company a disservice.  They tell your customers that you’re behind the times.  You’re irrelevant.  You can’t keep up.

How do you avoid this pitfall?

1.  Avoid references that might date your article.  While this is not always possible, especially when it comes to articles about the ever-changing realms of business and technology, it is one of the only fool-proof ways to keep an article evergreen.

2.  Utilize generic stand-ins terms.  For instance, instead of referencing Facebook or Twitter–sites that may or may not be relevant within a few years time–use ‘social media.’

3.  Keep a database of articles.  By doing this, it makes it simpler to go back from time to time and erase any information that may have been rendered false over time, and ensure that your articles are still relevant overall.

4.  Continuously produce new articles.  If you have articles that integrate newer technologies, then old, irrelevant articles are more easily forgiven.

Working from home is awesome.  You get to stay in pajamas until way after lunch, there’s no office politics to dodge, and while you’re working you can have a load of laundry going without worrying that the house might catch fire.  No wonder everyone and their mother-in-law wants to be a freelance writer!

However, all of that awesome makes for a crowded market.  And do you honestly want your web copy or articles written by anyone with a laptop and some spare time?  Probably not.  You want a professional, with writing experience under their belt and more passion for the job than passion for working in pajamas.  I’ll be the first to admit it–I’m not even in my pajamas right now.  So much for living the dream.

The Hard Part: Finding a Freelance Writer You Can Trust

While your accountant might prefer that you stick with $5 articles and recycled content, it just doesn’t make good business sense.  Sure, it’s cheaper to choose the cheapest options, but who wants cheap copy?  Would you choose a car or a television based solely on the cheapest price?  Recycled content can’t help boost your web ratings, and $5 articles will mostly likely not be well-researched or well-written.  What your business needs is carefully crafted articles that draw in readers and impress them.

One of the ideas behind article marketing is that the article will get picked up by larger sites with wider audiences.  This viral spread is unlikely if the article is not worth sharing or it has been recycled so many times that it has already saturated the market.

So, how do you find an experienced, high-quality freelance writer when the internet is loaded with imitations?  Easy.

1. Go to the source. By posting a job ad, you’ll almost certainly receive tons of hits with low-ball offers.  You can sift through each candidates’ resume and clips to find the best, or you can find the actual best candidate.  This candidate may not have e-mailed you their resume.  You might have to go searching for them.  If there is a blog that you admire, find out who’s behind the reins.  They might have an open spot in their schedule, or they can give you a great recommendation.  If you’d prefer to post a job ad, try posting on a vetted freelance writing website, where you know the writers are dedicated to their craft.
2. Check out their website. Freelancing tends to draw a transient element.  People who think that freelance writing is a simple, get rich quick scheme do not stick around for long.  Most businesses understand the importance of building a working relationship with their writers, and you can’t build a relationship with a writer who isn’t in this for the long haul.  While anyone can build a website these days, many fly-by-night operations don’t ever get around to building a web presence.  At the very least, a website proves their dedication to freelancing and their understanding of the business side of writing.
3. Network–like, in person. While you may end up with some great writer recommendations off of Twitter, you still run the risk of ending up with an inexperienced writer.  Anyone can fake credentials on the internet.  When you’re talking to someone in person, though, you can get a better feel for their qualifications.  Ask around at your work or at networking events to see who your professional colleagues turn to when they need articles or press releases written.  A recommendation from a trusted source is one of the best ways to find a fantastic freelance writer.
4. Ask for clips.  This one is a no-brainer, but writers without clips are almost definitely inexperienced.  Any freelance writer that contacts you should have something to prove their writing chops–and an enthusiastic reference from their mom or grandmother doesn’t count.  If, for whatever reason, they can’t provide any clips, check out their personal blog.  Is it well-written?  Riddled with mistakes?  Is the content unique and well-researched?  You can tell a lot by a freelancer’s blog.
5. Be honest about your writing needs. Knowing the kind of writing your business requires is a critical piece of the puzzle.  Need someone to write informative blog posts?  Hire a writer that specializes in crafting blogs and has a good-sized portfolio of happy blog clients.  Want articles for your company newsletter?  Find a freelance writer who has experience writing and researching compelling articles.  A lot of freelance writers spread themselves across a variety of mediums, but you can often tell by their portfolio when they excel at one type of writing over the others.  Seems like common sense, but hire writers to do what they do best, and you will be far happier with the results.

Writing is easy.  That’s what non-writers say.  And writing is easy, but making sense?  Not as easy, apparently.

According to this article, we’re reaching the end of the PC era.  IBM ditched the PC market a while back, and now HP seems to be following suit.  Tablets are the future.  Blah, blah, blah.  I don’t want to talk about this transition or the changing face of technology.  I want to talk about a quote from Steve Jobs, who should probably fire his speech writer, or hire one if he’s coming up with this stuff on his own.

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms.” Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular.

“PCs are going to be like trucks,” Jobs said. “They are still going to be around.” However, he said, only “one out of x people will need them.”

One out of X people?  The PC market already only penetrates “one out of X people,” because X can equal ANY NUMBER YOU CHOOSE.  That’s like saying that only one in X people use Facebook, when the actual statistic is one in four people.  One in four is impressive.  Facebook must be very famous.  But what if it X was a million?  Only one in a million people use Facebook.  That statistic would imply that Facebook is barely known in the world community.

In essence, whether the PC market suddenly crashes or booms or stays the same, Steve Jobs can look back on this speech and say he predicted it.  The statistic means nothing.  Perhaps that was his devious plan all along.  Perhaps.

Get it? On the fly? I'm punny.

Sometimes 24 hours is not enough time to get everything done, especially when you’ve got a lot of content to create.  When you think about it, 24 hours is really not that much.  Take out at least 8 of those hours for sleeping–and you should be sleeping at least 8 hours–and you’re left with only 16 workable hours.  Need to eat?  Take out at least two more hours for that.  Have a family?  Yeah, they’ll probably want to hang out with you at some point.  Minus two more hours.  Commute to work?  If you’re here in DC or Northern Virginia, you probably do, and it’ll probably cost you another two hours.  You’re left with ten hours.  Ten itsy-bitsy hours in which to run errands, complete work, feed your cat, go to the little girl’s/boy’s room, etc.

Being that time is a hot commodity these days, how do you make the most of it when it comes to content creation?  To be successful, your content will ideally be informative, compelling, and interesting for your readers.  You’ll need content for article distribution marketing, blogging, press releases, brochures, white papers–the list is endless.  You can spend your ten hours working on all that content, or you can hire a freelance content writer to take care of it for you.  If you choose to work on content creation yourself, here’s a few tips for making the most of your ten hours:

1. Start with a topic that interests you, but also one that is in line with your business. Accountants can write about new tax legislature.  Veterinarians can write about common pet health issues.  No matter what you write about, keep on topic.  Tangents cost time.  Further, if you use your own knowledge-base and only use research to fill in the blanks, you can avoid the dreaded internet research chasm–one minute you’re Googling “Twitter usage statistics,” next thing you know you’ve spent an hour reading about Mary Queen of Scots.  It happens.
2. Subheadings are your new BFF. Subheadings help quickly organize thoughts within larger articles or content pieces, acting almost like a very broad outline.  If you’re writing an article about a philanthropist who just built a new school in a third world country, your subheadings might include:  ”Meet Joe Philanthropist,” “Benefits of Education in the Third World,” “Building an Institution and a Safe Haven,” or “Roadblocks Along the Way.”  All of these subheadings recognize different pieces of the story, and they help organize the information so that even readers who skim (and there are lots of them!) will get the gist of the piece.
3. Write a list. Lists are not only easy for readers to skim, they are also far quicker to write.  Got an idea for an article about comparing universities?  Top 10 Party Schools.  5 Best Schools for Creative Writers.  7 Universities with Low Tuition.  Fill in the list and you’ve got your article.  Added bonus:  list article headlines are very attractive to most web surfers.
4. Write another list. This list refers not to your article, but to your idea log.  While you’re filling your ten hours with various work and fun stuff, try to log ideas for articles along the way.  Journal them, e-mail them to yourself, text them to your inbox–however you need to do it.  When you get around to writing an article, you can skip right over the time consuming task of deciding on a topic.
5. Keep it short. Blogs have a sweet spot of between 300-600 words.  Articles work well between 500-750.  You don’t need to write an epic to get people to read your content.  In fact, you shouldn’t.

Here’s the thing about companies–they want to make money.  Of course they do.  So do you.  So do I.  So does everyone!  In order to make money, though, companies want to find sure-bets.  They don’t want to bet a giant chunk of capital on the success of a new, untested product or technology.  They want to invest in products that have proven successful already, and this is where they falter.

Unoriginality is Unoriginal.

The copycat trend is certainly nothing new, but how often do copycats achieve the same success as the originals?  Rarely, if ever.  Companies that can’t come up with fresh ideas and innovations are doomed to play second fiddle to more original companies forever.

Consider Apple.  Even though Apple has not necessarily come up with anything new, their innovations have become popular beyond all expectations.  The iPod, for example, wasn’t the first portable digital music device, but it was far better than the other options at the time.  Ever since the iPod’s popularity skyrocketed, other companies have sought to copycat the iPod in various ways, with limited success.  Most notably, the Microsoft Zune has incorporated iPod touches from aesthetics to user interface, and yet it still couldn’t capture enough of the market to be viable.  As of this year, Microsoft will no longer put out any new Zune hardware, choosing instead to focus on the Windows phone (a much more original idea).

To Follow the Trends or Not?

Trends are transient.  Style is subjective.  You can never be sure that copying someone else’s path to success will lead you to the same place.  There are only two things in this world that do not become obsolete over time:

1.  Hard Work

2.  See #1

The best thing you can do for your company is break the cycle.  Stop repeating what’s already been done by a million companies before you–even if it is somewhat lucrative.  Think outside of the box, come up with an original idea or two, and soon other companies will be copycatting you!