Yesterday I spent some time talking to a new client (whee!) about what seems to be a very common problem for small businesses. And it looks like I’ll be doing some work with them, and actually using them as a case study of sorts.
It’s the Wateree Animal Hospital in Camden, SC. I found them because one of our little pugs had a sore leg, and I just wasn’t happy with the big “shopping center vet” that we’d been going to — so I asked my Twitter peeps for a recommendation. They sent me to a town about a half hour from my house, that’s even smaller than Columbia. Tiny.
Why did I go there? Well, because my pets are very important to me, and I wanted someone who’d really care about them. And take good care OF them. (And it didn’t hurt that their web site had a HUGE picture of a pug on the home page.)
I ended up spending time talking with the owner, with the Practice Manager, and several other members of the staff after Max got his leg taken care of. They had a pretty decent web site, and had just set up a Facebook page. But were a little confused about what happens next.
(If you tell people you’re a nerd, you probably have this conversation as often as I do. And find it just about impossible to explain how to use social media effectively in ten minutes. Unless you’re Chris Brogan.)
So I offered to come back and spend an hour or so showing them around the Interweb and give them a few pointers, in thanks for getting my doggie back to top condition. That led to lots of talking, and now we’re going to spend some time adding good content to their site, doing some SEO, sharing out what they know on Twitter and Facebook, etc. All the basics.
Will I get rich off this? No. But it will be lots of fun, I’ll be able to write a heck of a case study, and who knows — someday I may need to get a pug taken care of at 2AM on a Sunday.
Just feeding the Karma machine.
There’s a great post over at Tim Bray’s blog about the continuing discussion of whether Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is still important. In a nutshell, SEO is the science (or art) of making your web site rise to the top in search engines like Google so people will find you.
I believe that SEO is still important. People need to be able to find you, so it’s important that your site follows the rules and is searchable in the ways that work. You’ve got to understand this stuff if you’re going to succeed developing all that great content that I keep talking about.
If you really want advice on how to make it happen, head on over to Naomi Dunford’s site and buy her SEO School — a great overview of how it all works. Most of it makes my head hurt.
(Disclaimer: That link is NOT an affiliate link, and I don’t get a dime if you buy it from her. She really doesn’t much approve of me and would NEVER accept someone like me into her affiliate system, I’m sure.) (Unless my mailing list was much, much bigger.)
The thing that really caught my eye was in the comments, though:
A lot of times good SEO is just a matter of making a good site. The classic example of an “impossible” case is the local real estate agent.Who’s going to make a link to a real estate agent’s sites? Nobody… I mean, who cares about some real estate agent?
Your average real estate agent wants to pay an SEO $500 who will then sprinkle pixie dust and spammy links around.
A good (effective) SEO will tell the real estate agent to spend one commission on a freelance writer; one commission is a handsome sum for several months of blogging. [And it also provides a lot of "deep link" targets for... uh, "content syndication"]
Your average real estate agent will stomp out and think making a blog is entirely beneath them, but the one who follows your advice will be the winner and the one who doesn’t will be the loser.
How amazingly true! And how often I’ve had this conversation with a potential client, and had them end up paying somebody else $500 for some pixie dust and spammy links!
At the end of the day, SEO is just a part of the plan. More and more often, content is what makes the difference.
Writing for your web site or email newsletter might be the most important thing that you do — if people don’t want to waste time wading through your lengthy prose, they’ll never get to your amazing offer. There are lots of great resources like MenWithPens and Dave Navarro and Naomi Dunford and Sonia Simone to teach you all about it, but I’ll give you a little tip that I use right here.
Step 1: Cut.
Step 2: Cut some more.
Step 3: Cut a little bit more.
Most of us tend to fall in love with the sound of our own voice, whether it’s out loud or just the gentle clacking of the keyboard. So go ahead and write your paragraph, then start editing out every single word that you can. Do this until it “breaks” the meaning. And then you’ve got a winner.
Here’s an example of some copy for my Imaginary Swimming Pool Company:
#1 Summer Is A Great Time To Consider Buying One Of Our Swimming Pools!
As Spring turns into Summer, it gets warmer and we begin to think of how hot we’ll be outdoors. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a nice, cool, relaxing swimming pool to jump into after work so that we could cool off and enjoy ourselves once we’ve gotten home?
#2 Summer Is A Great Time To Consider Buying One Of Our Swimming Pools!
As Spring turns into Summer, it gets warmer and we begin to think of how hot we’ll be outdoors. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a nice, cool, relaxing swimming pool to jump into after work so that we could cool off and enjoy ourselves once we’ve gotten home?
#3 Summer — A Great Time To Enjoy Buy Our Swimming Pools!
As Spring turns into Summer we begin to think of how You’re going to be hot we’ll be outdoors this summer. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a nice, cool, relaxing swimming pool to jump into after work so that we could and cool off and enjoy ourselves?
Summer — A Great Time To Enjoy Swimming Pools!
You’re going to be hot outdoors this summer. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a cool, relaxing swimming pool to jump into after work?
I didn’t have time to get to the Jaguar dealership to buy all my readers cars this year, but here’s something even better — a magical jelly bean just for you.
This is a little bit of free software that roots through your computer and finds those serial numbers that you should have written down somewhere for your Microsoft products — like Windows, Office, and other things you paid good money for.
Just run it once, save the little text file somewhere not on your computer and you’ll be able to easily re-install the software when disaster happens. (Note that I didn’t say “if” disaster happens.)
Here’s the description from the site:
The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware open source utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install Windows from your registry. It allows you to print or save your keys for safekeeping. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003, Server 2008, Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007 family of products. It also has a community-updated configuration file that retrieves product keys for many other applications. Another feature is the ability to retrieve product keys from unbootable Windows installations.
Some people prepare to release their creative Djinn by turning off the radio, closing the doors, sending the kids out to play and putting a sheet over the goldfish tank. They like peace, quiet, and tranquility for their surroundings. This allows them to carefully focus their grey matter on the task at hand, with no distractions.
I am not those people. Today, I wanted to try to rough out a writing project and finally gave up working at home — it was just too quiet. So I’m here at “Cool Beans” Coffee Shop on the campus of the University of South Carolina. It took me a good ten minutes just to find a place to park, and there isn’t another empty table in the whole place.
There’s Blondie playing on the sound system, young people chattering at seven other tables in the room (there are three other rooms), and the clang and bash of dishes in the kitchen as people yell out their orders and greet favorite customers. Starbucks, it ain’t.
This makes me think about the typical model of education that we offer to students — aligned in neat rows, keeping quiet and listening carefully, afraid that they’ll miss something that will be on the final test. Then we send them out into the noisy, un-planned world where they have to make sense of all the input on their own. (When the Army teaches people how to do urban warfare, they have situations where both “good guys” and “bad guys” pop up randomly, some with guns and some holding babies. Turns out that there’s a world of difference between teaching people how to shoot at paper targets and doing it in real life.)
The best learning I’ve ever done has been messy. Where I didn’t really know what was going on, didn’t understand exactly what the rules were, and was allowed to push that old envelope to the point that all four corners were in tatters. Then I could reel things back in and take a look at what I’d found.
In Minnesota, as a young pup, Dad would take us out to a big empty shopping mall parking lot on the first snow of winter — and let us go wild driving the car around with abandon. Spins, skids, locked-wheel stops — we had a better time than any bumper-car ride at the State Fair. I’ve always suspected that’s why we never had any bad accidents — we all had a pretty good idea of what “awful” looked like, and it wasn’t too surprising when it happened.
So how about you? Do you work to keep everything neat and tidy? Or is it ok if there’s a little mess involved in your learning?
It has come to my attention that some of you didn’t get the memo. You’re apparently unaware that we’re living in a world of 15-second TV commercials, 140-character tweets, and three-minute “long-form” videos on YouTube.
Nobody gives a rat’s ass about your context, your setup, your overview, your background, your rationale, your reasoning, your formative thinking, or the deductive path that you followed. Except maybe your mom. (And she’s lying, you know.)
You need to get to the point, right now.
If it’s a presentation, make it clear and easy to understand. Here’s one of the opening slides I used last week to explain the talk I was giving:
No animations, no bullets, no fancy fonts and it stayed on the screen for about 60 seconds. But it clearly outlined what folks would be hearing from me, and I referred back to it at least a dozen times in the next 45 minutes.
And while this is great advice for a presentation, it’s also pretty wonderful for blogging, picture captions, white papers and email. Tell me early on what the reason is for the experience, and let me decide if I want to know more about the other stuff.
(Now as an experienced education professional, with a degree and all, that’s not the way I’d always prefer to work. If I’ve got you locked in a room with me for an hour, I may spend some time setting up what we’re doing, giving you the “big picture”, or somehow providing context. But if we’re working online, I’ve got to accept that your forefinger is itching to click that mouse button and move on to something involving either cute kittens or hamsters.)
As a test, hand your copy to a friend and give them two minutes. Then take it away and ask them to tell you the one big thing that came out. If it’s not the main point of what you’re doing, draw a big red X through what you’ve done, and start over.
Last night I had the privilege of presenting to Social Media Club Columbia here in my new adopted home town of Columbia, SC. We had a great turnout with lots of new folks — well, new to us — and there were lots of questions and interaction.
I was talking about how geeks can profit from social media — both by getting cash, and by building their brand. My slide deck had a tour of successful sites that ran from a site about pole dancing to a site about airline seats. And we talked about how building up your tribe can be a great way to find a new job, convince potential clients that you’re the one to hire, or just connect you with others around the world that like to collect Green Hornet comic books.
Here’s the deck. Feel free to download and enjoy. And I LOVE feedback.
I’m a big fan of applying (the appropriate) updates to your Windows operating system, whichever one you’ve inflicted installed on your computer.
But I have to admit that I’m just a wee bit annoyed at the constant nag screen that comes up every three seconds asking me if I’d like to restart my computer. I’m one of those folks who only reboots every few days, and it gets on my nerves. But I can never remember exactly where to flip the bit to fix that.
I
MPORTANT WARNING! IF YOU’RE NOT AN EXPERIENCED WINDOWS WRANGLER, PLEASE EITHER CLICK HERE OR JUST SMASH YOUR MACHINE INTO MILLIONS OF TINY LITTLE PIECES RIGHT NOW!
OK. The kids are gone, and it’s just us grownups. Or us and folks with a need for a boat anchor.*
The dialog box can be configured here:
Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations
You can disable reminders completely (dumb) or define a time period for the reboot later option. You could select every four hours for example or even more if you like. I’ve got mine set to remind me every 600 minutes.
UPDATE: In a truly delicious irony, you’ll continue getting bugged about the update until you actually re-boot your computer. The registry change you’ve made doesn’t take effect until then.
*Should you use this advice and f-up your machine, send $500 cash to “I’m Dumb As A Box Of Rocks, POB 12345, Columbia, SC 29203″ and we’ll send you a replacement typewriter via UPS.
I’ve been following the discussion on my friend Havi’s blog about her aversion to being called a “coach” with great interest — because that’s one self-applied job description that still makes my skin crawl. (Much like “Social Media Guru”, “Animal Psychic” and “Colonic Therapist”.) Since I’ve spent most of my adult life in what’s called the Learning and Development pond, I get the wonderful opportunity to interact with people who have decided that they are coaches way more than I would like.
(To make things interesting, they keep changing the name of their discipline. Recent ones have included “Human Potential” and “Human Capital” — bleech!)
Overall, the idea is that these folks have the power to remove your roadblocks and maximize your potential, while they actualize your internalized developmental possibilities which baseline the best practice modalities integral to moving to the next level as you break through your self-imposed limits.
Uh huh.
Now don’t get me wrong. There is certainly a need to assist people as they struggle to improve on many fronts. And there are lots of skilled folks in the world (like @Havi) who I would recommend you send big sacks of money to.
But “Coach” is such an imperfect metaphor. Most sports metaphors suck, but this particular one sucks 1000%. It comes to play, it shows up, it really comes down to any given day.
You see, in today’s athletics, “coaching” has become pretty much a lowly-paid guy who gives advice to highly-paid superstars. Who then pretty much ignore that advice, and go ahead and do whatever they want. Mostly to raise their personal stats, which increases their income and cements lucrative endorsement deals.
And in the corporate arena, where I work, “coaching” pretty much has become a lowly-paid manager trying to get lowly-paid employees to do the work of several people (who were laid off) for a company that really doesn’t care about them and sees them as interchangeable parts.
Yogi Berra was a Coach. And he said that “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
So how about if you consider becoming a “Habits Educator” like Havi, or a Performance Facilitator, or a Supporter Of Those Who Wish To Be Amazing.
Just don’t coach.
In a perfect world, we’d all create software and websites and knowledgebases and blogs and videos and e-learning and such that would be posted and then never be opened up to the most evil and destructive beings on the planet.
Users.
Our work would shine brightly, with buttons and links perfectly aligned, un-clicked and never seen, so that we’d never have to hear those annoying whining noises. “I can’t make it do this” and “It won’t do that” and “It doesn’t have any of those” keep echoing in our heads at night, as we try to sleep. Don’t they know that we’ve created perfection?
Users!
You can’t live with ‘em. And you can’t kill ‘em, chop ‘em up, wrap ‘em in paper, and UPS ‘em to random people from your phone directory. (At least according to last week’s version of “CSI: New York” you can’t.)
So what’s a poor coder to do?
You might think about doing a little usability testing. It’s not really that hard, and if you integrate it from the beginning of your project it can really improve the final product. The problem is that you (and your little Red Bull drinking buddies) really aren’t the target users. You know too much about whatever it is that your software does. So you’ll need to buy a couple of pizzas for a user group, show them some mock-ups, and then SHUT THE HELL UP as they try to complete some simple activities.
Video tape the action, and then bring it back to deconstruct. Work a little further, and repeat. And repeat. And repeat.
Don’t know how to do a simple UI review? Point your mousie over to http://www.useit.com and listen to Jakob Nielsen, the God of web design. Do what he says.
Or hire an expert. There are lots of good people available to hold your hand and make sure what you’re developing actually works for the poor fools who give you money.
Then you can buy more Red Bull, games, and a membership on Match.com. Maybe even move out of Mom’s basement.
