Brave New World of Internet Business
In relation to the evolution of the computer's role in society and the mainstreaming of the internet, I feel my age group has a perspective that will prove unique in history within a few short years. I remember there being computers in the school library when I was in kindergarten and each year more educational aspects of the computer were used in school. By third grade, weekly trips to the computer lab were normal. We played educational games or typed important assignments in word processing programs that were stone age by today's standards. I also used the computer terminals at the public library to search the collection available through other libraries with shared collections.
Yet my family didn't have a computer at home until my eleventh grade year of high school.It was my brother and I's Christmas gift. I think my parents paid about $1600 for it, a price that today would get you the Cadillac of systems. More shocking to my web centered sensibilities now, we didn't get internet service until spring. I know it's hard to believe, but AOL was high speed and the cool ISP back in 1996 and 1997.
For people too many years older than me, the internet and computer will always be a bit "new fangled." It's not that those people are not knowledgeable users, but the level of natural and normal integration into everyday life usually comes a bit more difficultly. People I've worked with that are great with working on computers don't always understand how I can spend 40 hours in front of the computer, then rush home to have my recreation on the computer.
People that are too much younger than I have grown up in a world where personal computers are not a luxury. They aren't going to remember how surreal it was the first time a commercial for Colgate toothpaste commercial displayed a web address. "Does everything to have a website now?" we asked each other in the late nineties. Today I'd be hard pressed to find an established company without a place on the web.
Today's teenagers will likely not remember there was a world before the web 2.0 revolution. The average person didn't used to have anything more than an email address and a instant message profile. Now everyone has MySpace, Facebook, and Photobucket. Those users aren't the most net savvy, but they are uploading content to the internet in ways that were not main stream even five years ago.
Being a history, sociology, and anthropology geek, these changes interest me. Our whole way of living, working, playing, and doing business has radically changed in my life time - only 27 years. The last revolution to impact so much was the industrial revolution which took much longer to be as far reaching as the digital revolution is today.
As a cold blooded capitalist, I love what the computer has done to the economy. No longer does it take large amounts of money to generate money. A few dollars, a little HTML, and anyone's idea can be launched in cyberspace to a world wide audience.
A dear friend of mine, Violet, one of my co-workers and the oldest employee at our call center at 79 years old, has remarked to me on several occasions that she wishes she had a product to put forth online because in the old days it was "location, location, location" but today you can be anywhere. Violet has a sharp mind for business. She ran several stores and even owned a restaurant years ago. Born a few decades later, she might have been am internet entrepreneur. From someone who learned to use a computer a year ago in training for our job, her understanding of the basic concept of marketing on-line would lead me to believe that it is simple to understand how best to promote a web based business.
I have learned in my efforts to promote my blogs that success online is not as simple as putting up a website. If that's all you do, prepare for disappointment. Without the expertise of a search engine optimization company no traffic will come your way short of those on the receiving end of a business card or an email.
A perfect example of the problem is a friend of mine from work (sorry to pick on you, Mike) who has a wonderful game plan for an internet business to provide a service targeted at real estate companies. When he came to me asking questions about blogging as it would relate to his business and real estate offices, I found that he'd failed to submit his site to Google and Yahoo to be cached for search results. I explained that if you fail to do that it is impossible for a potential customer to find your site without knowing the exact url. Happily, he is cached now. I have high hopes that he'll be an internet entrepreneurial success story.
For a company with a little more promotional budget to work with, a professional Internet marketing companyspan> is the best investment a company can make. There are so many elements to consider when trying to brand a company online and the rules change every single day.
A popular strategy that bands, TV shows and movies employ better than anyone is using social networking sites to build buzz and visibility. A MySpace profile is practically required for anything marketed at the under-thirty crowd. I admit, I'm MySpace friends with Stewie Griffin, Conan O'Brien, and Bowling for Soup. It's a sign of approval and interest in what is being promoted. It also creates the illusion of community that Web 2.0 participants love. Another reason this marketing strategy is to popular is that it's free to make a profile and your customers might even search for you.
The original method of marketing online is plain old advertising. Veteran web users are nearly immune to text ads and banner ads, and hate pop-up ads with a passion. They are all popular enough that they must produce some results, but I believe they should be used with caution. Your more tech geek inclined user knows full well that the webmaster profits when they click ads, so it will take more than curiousity to compel them to click your flashing banner. If your product is geared toward that person, that money is best spent elsewhere.
I am also suspicious of pay to click, or PTC, advertising sites that dole out pennies or fractions of pennies to their members in exchange for viewing and clicking ads. The amount of money involved limits the users to those not savvy enough to see that their time is better spent in other money making pursuits. The only thing I'd imagine advertising through such a service is another similar service. Back to the example of the service aimed at Real Estate professionals, there are not real estate agents and managers spending their free time on pay-to-click services.
A search engine optimization company also has the expertise to plan a strategy to help a website place high in search results for phases that are relevant to their products. The importance of placing within the first or second page of results for whatever your site is about cannot be overstated. No one looks past those pages. Even though I'm aware of the system, I usually pick one of the top three offerings when I do a Google search.
Since one of the most important factors in placing high for a given phrase is having other sites link that phrase as anchor text to your site, many sites are opting to pay webmasters and bloggers to link to them. This strategy is two fold, because an article on a blog with a link can drive real business to the site. Since many consumers are jaded by the traditional media's slick advertising, there is an element of trust that an individual chooses to promote something. This works for me because the bloggers that are active in the communities devoted to blogging that I am involved in are much more interested in their honor and integrity, than in making a quick buck plugging something they don't believe in or a disreputable company.
Above all in this brave new world of internet marketing, all my advice and insight my be outdated within the week.
Hey, I saw I had an incoming link from you and wanted to come by and say "thanks". This is my first time visiting your blog but I can already tell we have a lot in common. Very cool
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Your welcome. I tend to blog roll blogs I don't want to lose the link to. Thanks for stopping by.
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