They say if you are a leader and no one follows, you are just taking a walk by yourself. At the risk of being a thought leader taking a walk by myself allow me to post a comment I made today on this site’s article here.

One thing social media “marketing” people seem to always miss – Not just gloss over – I mean really miss and avoid like it’s a Social Science Behavioral class someone might take in University studies… It’s emotional connection.

Emotional Connection in marketing is when the message is implanted at the most instinctive level. At that point it’s a strong connection. This is called advertising. Oh, but wait – advertising is dead.  I forgot. See, what a lousy thought leader I am forgetin’ this and fogetin’ that.

Let me just poke this little bit in here. The largest companies in the world are large because of advertising. It’s not dead, it’s just changed it’s locations.

MyStarbucksIdea does this social/emotional connection on a small level.

a site with thousands of customers who submit new product and marketing ideas and vote on them. Some of the best ideas are put into production and become new drinks, products and marketing campaigns. The customers become no longer merely passive recipients of marketing messages but are actively engaged in a whole new level of personal connection with each other and the brand.

But Jones Cola did the same sort of thing long before social media with their customer designed labels. No one needed to log on to get involved so the appeal was on a more “mass” level. Oh, another bad word “mass” tisk, tisk. I totally fail at this Thought Leadership stuff.

Thought leaders can’t go around saying the same thing everyone else is. They have to stick their necks out. But this is like sticking my neck out the window of a fast moving train. It’s going to take a long time for the social media crazy train slows down.

What if all websites were the same and everyone hired the same SEO company to do the same SEO work on each website? Who would show up in search engines first?

Invest heavily in Search Engine Optimization [SEO] and you may generate an adequate return on investment. This is dependent on what your competition is doing and how many are going after the exact same market as you and how active the particular target audience is and and and… Whatever you do – how you want to spend your money in this type of marketing is still dependent on facts.

Be mindful that search engines are not paid for organic search traffic.  They use programming known as “algorithms” to find, index and list websites. Many of these  algorithms are trade secrets and are known to change from time to time.  According to Google’s CEO, Erick Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes – almost 1.5 per day. With this lack of guarantees and certainty, do you really want a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic to keep sending visitors? Seomoz.org, a highly regarded SEO software company completed a study where they suggest that even “search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their traffic from search engines.”

Before closing let’s be clear that analytics and SEO are not the same thing. Gathering analytics is all about gathering facts. These facts are important to performing good marketing in general. This marketing might include SEO and/or traditional advertising.

Avoid suffering major losses due to search engine uncertainty. Of course SEO is good but be aware. Where ever you spend most of your marketing dollars consider business practices that leave you liberated from dependence on search engine traffic.

The clearer the understanding one gets of how the internet works the better view we get of SEO and its value. Yes, SEO work done on a website can bring you sheer numbers if… and there are a lot of  ”ifs”. The big one to keep in mind is that the more crowded your market place the more amount you’ll need to spend and the longer it will take before you begin to see any traction.

How much is your competition spending on SEO? How many? What are their keywords? How long have they been doing it? These are just some of the local questions no one can guarantee.

Is spending a fortune on SEO right for you? To be honest, it’s not the best marketing strategy for every business owner and I’ll venture to say it’s simply a lousy investment on its own for industries like real estate and fitness. You need to think about what the goal of your site is going to be because there are so many other internet and real time marketing strategies that can be far more effective.  Whether well crafted, targeted mass media, print media or internet marketing, a successful campaign depends on engaging emotionally and persuading visitors that you have the better mouse trap. Just getting traffic is not enough.

Now you’re thinking, “yea but the ‘numbers game’ theory!  the ‘numbers game’ theory!”

So you believe this is still like cold calling. If you call 100 people a day on the phone with a 1% success rate you’ll get 3 customers in three days, right? Not so online.

When you call a person, there is no way of knowing if you will relate to this person until the two of you begin talking. The relationship begins to happen on it’s own and you begin targeting this person more than the last 99. This kind of relationship can’t happen through a  website visit.

If they don’t like what they see right away, they “bounce” away. Even the ones who would have related to you bounce if you’re hiding behind a bunch of sales speak and slogans that are similar to every other website in your industry.

What I’m saying here, and if you only get one thing from this post then here it is:

It’s better to invite and send visitors to your website that already relate to you than it is to pull them in by fooling a search engine.

Your website must be a high quality build and design with web pages that engage and persuade your customers so the goal of your website is realized. This is called conversion. Conversion needs more than just SEO to work.  A website where an objective that can be met as easy as possible by customers that relate to your offering and send their friends and family there will make you so busy you will have no time to worry about traffic and bounce rate.

Project Description:  Working with Andrew Hasman is a great experience. Fast at making decisions so the creative can keep flowing. This is one example of a print piece we did for Andrew and his team. It’s a CMA Cover. Some call this a Pre-Listing Package.

Yes, we design print materials too. If you don’t want to waste paper, have us design your next Pre-Listing Package. Contact us today.

Project Description:  Based in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, Credo is a leader in creating innovative content, products, solutions and choreography for 3D character animation applications. DanceForms is one such product. It’s a piece of software developed for choreographing large dance numbers so the choreographer has an idea what they are doing before renting a large rehearsal space. They have the logo, they have the content, they have a great product; Now they just need to sell it. The first step in doing that is to inform the public. We created this to look like a poster for a show so as to engage the creative mind. Software? Dance? how does this work. This flyer tells a story of how it works.

Yes, we design print materials too. If you don’t want to waste paper, have us design your next flyer. Contact us today.

Project Description:  This project grew all the way from the logo to a fully functional and finished website. A large undertaking with a tonne of content. Publishing in versions is the best way to go on a site like this. Creating Version Releases of your website is a great idea for a number of reasons and BetterLiving Group have done it right. During the build myRealPage released a new Weblet in their websites for real estate platform called Neighborhood pages. As you can see we made full use of them.

Learn more about building your project in versions. Contact us today

The next time you go about building a website, why not try breaking it down into smaller pieces and publishing it and re-publishing it on specified release dates. Building a website is not like publishing a book. All the chapters don’t have to be there right away. The promise of more to come is enticing. No matter how small your project, there are number of reasons building a website in versions is a heck of a good idea.

1. Publish smaller sooner to start the Google juice flowing and get indexed.
2. Adding and building content later is actually creating on-site activity. Google likes this. Your fans like this.
3. Budget your project; Can’t afford it all right away? Break it down to bite sized chunks.
4. Set it and forget it doesn’t exist on line – you may as well publish in versions.

Publishing a large site in versions requires a couple of things to remember:

Build a following first with a marketing plan. Avoid waiting until the website is complete to advertise it’s completion. Think movie trailer.  Tweeting and creating a Fanpage following is a great idea. CYGY Online Magazine did it this way. They even asked fans to vote on the logo colours prior to the site release.When the site is published it’s done with a fanfare and rides a wave of activity. Don’t forget other forms of advertising that include business cards. Include those basics in the first version budget.

Then let your fans know about the next release and what to expect. But of course, hold something back as an unexpected surprise.

More and more the real estate brokerage’s brand is sinking into the background. Proctor and Gamble or Milton Bradley seem to do it right. They supply just the right amount of name recognition while spectacularly backing and advertising the brand of the individual products first. After all, it’s their *product* that sells, not the Big Daddy brand in the back ground. I certainly can’t tell by watching an agent on Youtube or reading their feed on Twitter what brokerage they are from. Like the big Daddy Brands of old, brokerages should be following suit along with their fee structure. That right there is the key. Let’s get back to that later.

The basic problem is brokerages aren’t selling homes. They are recruiting agents. The only way they can promote themselves is through the agent. Some brokerages have even gone so far as to provide “free” marketing for their agents. (You know who I’m speaking about?). There is nothing free about that. They are simply paying for advertising of themselves at the expense of the agent having no personal brand at all. It seems like a neat and tidy package that some agents just love. Nothing wrong with it just as long as we’re all clear and on the same page.

Back to the key point: Real estate agents get nickel and dimed at every turn. Some fees and insurances are real. Some are because they have to. The brokerage for the most part is a have to.

Here’s the part about turning it on it’s head. Many often suggest that the brokerage had better start providing more or they are going to be left in the dirt. But my thinking is why don’t they simply provide less in exchange for micofees?  This is the model the music business was forced to take. It works very well. You and I, we start an online virtual brokerage that simply provides the must have legal parts and charge fees in relationship to the service it provides. The brand is way in the background like Proctor and Gamble and we let the agent brand and sell the way they want to.

What do you say? Who’s in?

Testimonial: “TribalYell was extremely easy to work with and very patient. They were always prompt in returning my calls or emails as there is a lot of back an forth when trying to build a website. They made the process easy and painless. I would highly recommend them” ~Judy Shih

Project Description: We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves working for Judy. She had a vision and we listened, presented, refined and programmed the approved design. Like many websites, there is more that could be done to this one and we published it at a perfect point for additions. Unlike printed materials we can publish a website before it’s completed. How do your visitors know it’s not completed? We can then add to the website at anytime your budget allows us to move forward to the next version. We can create a version plan for your next website project. Give us a call or drop us an email.

Let me know if you have a TV spot you want blogged about here. Contact us.