Maybe it is just me. Maybe it is just a fluke for today. Maybe I’m just so different from the average small B2B business that information doesn’t apply to me.
I am getting major reinforcement that what ‘experts’ are telling us to do is more wishful thinking and promotional that solid advice. What I think of as the marketing message to reality-of-use gap. I see it all the time. Shop here today – but the store doesn’t open for six months. Call from anywhere at anytime – but there is no signal here or here. You know what I mean. The marketing to the projected future ideal when the present is somewhat more problematic.
I am working with Charles Montgomery at NWeSource to spiff up this blog and make it the main website for my business and nicely SEO’d. To make good decisions on my side of the project, I have been doing some research.
While reading an article on how to use review and answer websites to both build credibility and drive traffic I was referred to Bizmore.com as a Q & A site for small to medium size businesses – right in my target market. A visit however, shows that the last question was posted 8 months ago. I had a similar experience with the referred to yahooanswers.com. When I look for small business questions, the posting are a year old or more. The article I am reading is current but the references and link backs are way outdated. Makes me wonder if the author actually looked or if he was just looking for links to improve his SEO.
I’m searching for keywords and phrases for the SEO on my sight and got all excited when I found a website devoted to Solo-preneurs – the thousands of us running one-person companies. “Join our community”, “hook up with others and create a virtual community of support”. It sounded so terrific until I started looking further and found that there are barely a handful of members – 5 to be exact – listed in the directory. Great looking site but the message and marketing don’t live up to the reality. It has more flash than substance.
I don’t mean to imply that this is always the case. It is absolutely not. I have learned a great deal from a number of experts who ‘walk their talk’ – where the marketing is perfectly aligned with the reality of the experience. Those are the experts worth listening to, worth my time and worthy of my trust. I want to be just like them. If there is some flash it is totally outweighed by the substance. How about you?
I’m getting off my soapbox now. Thanks for listening.