Archive for October, 2011

Punctuation makes all the difference in the message. Perhaps, my title should have read “Stop WireDoo!”

For some reason MC Hammer thinks he can build a better search engine than Google. I am not sure if he is aware, but others – including former Google insiders – have tried to beat the search giant and have failed miserably. Let me remind you of a now defunct search engine called Cuil.com that somehow managed to raise $33 Million dollars. They had some Google insiders helping them and as I recall, the search results were mediocre at best.

One has to ask “why would someone want to go anywhere but Google to search?” Assuming they had lots of good answers, they would then have to solve the problems posed by those who would leave Google.

Hey, I grew up in the 80′s and I actually like MC Hammer as a person; he’s a positive guy, but I also like a lot of other smart and nice people – none of whom have any business trying to start a search engine.

I am not sure who his team of experts is, but at first glance the WireDoo home page has gotten lots of negative feedback from the haters. That’s probably because he said it has been two years in the making. I could have given him something better in two weeks from a website standpoint and that’s not being arrogant, it’s just saying it sounds like he jumped the gun in announcing this site.

Let’s be honest, Hammer was great on the stage, but he hasn’t proven himself otherwise, let alone in the search engine world. I am not sure who is backing this venture, but my advice to him is “please Hammer, don’t Hurt ‘Em.”

Today on the news, I saw a story of a woman from Arizona who was so fed up with the latest invasion of privacy from Facebook, she had her lawyer file a federal complaint against the company. Her lawyer said the intention was to make it a class action suit and according to the Arizona Republic, she is not the first to attempt a class action suite against the social media giant.

I have to say, I am not a big fan of the latest changes, especially the “we want to track everything you do”‘ feature. I don’t believe it is necessary and people already give up enough information and privacy to participate. The new tracking is confusing to most people, so they will most likely end up giving more information than they want to. And for some, it might even be embarrassing as this Mashable article suggests.

I am curious to see how this one plays out. Stay tuned

Some of the highest paid professionals excel for one reason; they have had good coaches. And it’s not just athletes either. Business coaching is a huge industry and I can attest first hand their worth (if you find the right one). I have a business coach and he has advised me on a specific area of the internal operations of my business. I have finally come around having lost lots of time and actual money doing it “the way I thought I should.”

It’s no different with Internet Marketing. Failure of your business is not an option. You have too much invested and too many people counting on you to succeed. If you want to reach a goal, the fastest way to get there is to talk to someone who has done it already. A coach might be just what you need to point you in the right direction. Sometimes it’s just a few tweaks and sometimes it’s helping you put together a winning long term strategy, but either way each coaching session should leave you with a step in the right direction, and specifically put you closed to connecting with more customers.

We currently have a few openings for coaching clients, so if you are looking for a coach, now might be your opportunity. Visit our website to learn about the Internet Marketing Coaching program and get pricing info, then contact Anthony at 480-338-6744 for more info or to get started.

The last several weeks have given us plenty of changes on Facebook. Most reacted with disappointment, and a few embraced the new changes. Others kept reminding people they were getting what they were paying for (because it’s free). Some even talked about jumping ship for Google+, which for the record is NOTHING LIKE FACEBOOK

I was disappointed for two reasons. First, I originally joined Facebook to stay in touch with people. This was before business pages and I found that this was not as east of a task and that I no longer felt in touch as much as I had. Granted, I don’t spend all day going through old news feeds because I am quite busy, but there was clearly a difference in the volume of data I could see.

As a marketer, I was very disappointed in that my business page notifications seemed to be of less importance to anyone, especially because they weren’t there to get my updates anyway. They, like me, had joined Facebook to connect with people so they weren’t going to complain that they could not see my business page updates.

Some took the position that Facebook was doing this to make businesses have to pay for Facebook ads to get the visibility they were seeking. And if you have not at least tested Facebook ads, I do recommend it, but I would be disappointed if the underlying ploy was to get us to buy ads.

In the end, I regard Facebook as a great means of branding and connecting, but I would say it’s lost a bit of favor with me. Don’t hear what I am not saying; I didn’t say it doesn’t have value, but when the core of a websites users is frustrated with changes, does not know how they work, and really not willing to fight to stay current, you have to be cautious how much emphasis you give it in your overall marketing equation.

I’d love to hear your thoughts below. Have a great day!