So how does one man run the worlds largest company?

Leadership! that’s how, not management. And of most of the books I’ve read “Leadership” gave me the best insight into Jack Welch’s many years of success.

The basis of success for Jack Welch’s tenure at GE was to let the stars shine through, let the people that do the job make the decisions about the job there doing. All is explained in “Jack Welch on Leadership”
The other book, Jack Welch the GE way, has opened my eyes to presenting particularly as I work in an agency/client environment where your always presenting a pitch, getting a point across or making sure everyone hears about your great idea.

Very good book indeed.

After running some checks across several Google data centers it would seem that an update is on the way.

The last update a few months back caused a slight stir on these same forums with a lot of websites losing some PageRank. This sending some SEO guys in to a panic.

I personally believe that PageRank shouldn’t be classed as important as most people do, keep your links clean and the incoming links at a steady growth and you should stay clear of PageRank drop of and penalties.

It is also important to remember that not all sites increase or decrease in a PageRank update, sometimes staying the same doesn’t do any harm to your ranking positions.

SEO marketing has many benefits over other types of search marketing due to the potential return in investment and the low cost compared to pay per click marketing.

So why use a Consultant?
Many organizations look at outsourcing their SEO campaigns due to the lack of in-house knowledge and understanding of the process.
Any SEO consultant worth this salt will be able to tell you what you need, how much time is involved, how much it should cost and which agency would be best suited.

By using a consultant as a partner, like an additional marketing team member that is there when you need them. You can get the best out of your campaign and achieve the best possible return on investment.

Imagine an organization that sells a niche product in a niche market place. The organization heads off to the larger and best SEO firms. The SEO firms have in place standard setup fees and charges a premium for there service. You believe that your getting a great service with client services account managers and a full team of SEO experts, but what if you don’t need that level of service.
Talking to a consultant on the phone or a meeting for a few hours can determine what your organization really needs.

On the other hand your budget may not be inline with appointing a larger SEO agency. Using a consultant and you can quickly find out what you should be targeting effectively to achieve the best possible return on investment.

Finding out if your organization is social media friendly is the first step.

• Would you allow anyone in your organization to talk on your behalf?
• Would you allow anyone in your organization the time to communicate online?
  • Do you trust them?
• Does your organization make it easy for other members to come up with idea’s?
  • Younger members are more likely to be already involved online
• Does your organization reward members for forging new paths?
• Is your organization open to public customer feedback, both good and bad?
• Does your organization have the ability to respond quickly to online messages?

If you want to allow a customer to publicly leave a good feedback then you must have a process for quickly dealing with bad feedback.

Once you can honestly answered these questions then your organization will be ready to make the most of the Social Media landscape.

To get your head around the tools and networks try The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing

I also thought that I had missed out on the web 2.0 stuff kicking off. I even went to a conference about Web 2.0 and thought “what a load of ****.” I didn’t get it, everyone in the travel industry was trying to make Ajax booking engines believing this was their web 2.0 offering to there customers. It surprising how often I still hear this.

So I jumped into blogging in a big way, particularly offering business blogs to clients and building them up to become fast feedback loops and eventually sales channels.

How I’m starting to believe that I’m at the forefront of SEO and social media marketing and my RSS feeds and news systems will keep me there. (That’s only if I understand what the new things are, which isn’t always easy)

So for me it’s time to go back, I need to know what made the huge advertising agencies of Madison Ave understand the consumer and build brands and what made Seth Godin and Yoyodyne great within the direct marketing world. Having this information and converting it for use in the online world where mass marketing doesn’t work online is now my goal.

“You need to know how to mix cement before you can build a house.”

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“Search all City parks and you won’t find a statue of a committee”

This is the best by far. Committee’s get nothing done, except waste time, people set up committee’s when they can’t be bothered fixing the problems themselves.

“Never set copy in reverse”

(White text on Black background) The advertising industry completed research on this in 1963 and found it doesn’t work, why are people still doing it?

One from Lord Rutherford

“If you can’t explain your physics to a barmaid, that’s bad physics”

Talking about using industry related “fluff” words like paradigms, demassification and so on, this is one I really agree with.

“The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife, don’t insult her intelligence.”

“We sell - or else”

I personally live by this sword and sometimes it gets in the way of trying to increase brand awareness for clients. I always look for a bottom line, the sale, and then build a plan that will deliver people to the path that leads them to the sale. You can measure sales, you can’t measure brand penetration.

“The temptation the entertain instead of selling is contagious.”

This is very true of my friends in the web design industry. Most graphic artists don’t consider themselves to be marketers. What they don’t realize is that their design of a website is the first thing a visitor to a website sees before they read any copy or interact with any other element of the website. It really brings it back to “first impressions count” and maybe it changes “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” to “It’s not what you say, it’s what you see.”

As I’m only 54 pages into this book I better cap this blog post for the time being or else I’ll have written more on this post than is actually in the 54 pages I have read. So here’s the last one.

“Don’t let men write advertising for products which are bought by women”

I’m not sure if this transfers over to the online world but I’d hedge a bet on the safe side and say it does. All the online copy writers I know are men, they’ve taken on the copy writing as it’s now seen as being part of on-site SEO, making websites rank higher on search engines etc. Most of the clients I’ve been deeply involved with are in the travel industry which has well publicized research that the women in our families decide where we go on holiday and who we book with. Up to now this copy has been written by men, maybe if it was written by women on-site conversation rates would go up. This can only mean more business for the SEO Chicks or maybe a change in the recruitment plans of most online marketing agencies.

When I’ve completed this book I’m sure I’ll be so inspired that I’ll be booking a one way ticket to Madison Ave, New York and off to build my online marketing agency just like David Ogilvy did.

More from this great book, I got to the end not long after writing the first section of this post.

“Sales are a function of product-value and adverting”

It’s surprising how many people don’t look at it this way. For a while I was a convert of the “stack’em high, sell’em cheap” brigade. But I certainly believe that promotions and price cuts don’t bring in true sales or increase brand awareness. And over a longer period can damage the importance of a product or brand.

“They copied all they could follow,

but they couldn’t copy my mind.

And I left’em sweating and stealing,

a year and a half behind”

Never a truer word spoken!

I’ve just finished reading Seth Godin’s latest book Meatball Sundae, very interesting, it’s not really teaching corporations to suck eggs but making them look at the new marketing (Social Media, etc) from the feet up within their organization.

All companies started off small at one time or another, some with an idea, some with a product, but they delivered goods or products that that space in time demanded for one reason or another. Seth explains that the world is changes or more possible has changed. The book is a good read, very informative and full of clear examples that Seth’s books are known to content. I’ll try not and write the whole book here, Mr Godin might get upset andif he takes his own advice at some time or another he’ll stumplupon this blog post.(Hi Seth, Love the books and if you want to sent me some rubber Squidoo’s then feel free)

My Doodles:

Just because you want people to come to your site and watch doesn;t mean they will.  (On BudTV)

The shift from “how many” to “who”

There are a few more inthat I’ve forgotton at the moment, hencewhy I’m doddling them on a blog post, so, I’ll have to read the book again.

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