A few things I don’t get about online marketers (part 1)

I’ve been in this online marketing thing for a few years now, and I have to say there are a few things about this business that I just don’t get.

This isn’t to say that I think these things are useless, because many people I know and even work for have figured how to use them and, on a monetary level at least, be very successful. I think it’s a matter of my personality type that causes a bit of cognitive dissonance on my part. I’m not being critical, or try to say these things are wrong, I just don’t quite understand why people place so much importance on them.

So let me just run down a very basic and incomplete list – because I’m sure you’re about to finish dropping that deuce in the toilet and need to get going.

1. An “avatar”: This is something that my friend and mentor John Lee Dumas preaches constantly in his Podcaster’s Paradise program. An avatar is a fictional person that you create in your mind, and basically imagine yourself speaking to this person, keeping this person in mind any time you need to make a decision about your business.

   I think I get it on an intellectual level. You want to know who you’re talking to, otherwise you’re a garden hose in a tornado hoping someone will get wet, but at the same time it’s never 100% clicked as to why someone would make decisions for their business based on a figment of one’s imagination. No offense to JLD as it has worked quite well for him, but I don’t get why a person wouldn’t just get to know the actual people listening to a show, know what their issues, their problems are that need to be addressed, etc.

2. SEO in general: I understand the basic concept. You’re thinking there are supposedly millions of people searching for certain keywords, so you want to use those keywords in your content thinking that these faceless, nameless people are going to find you and then you’ll “hook” them in to your worldview and they’ll be customer for life.

   I have personally never done anything more than a one-off purchase on second-rate products I used once if ever on google searches. Sometimes I need an answer to a question, and the results on Google are chock-full of keyword-stocked articles that basically use 1000 words to answer a simple question with some sort of flashing ad promoting some sort of product wedged between every paragraph. Quite honestly, it’s annoying and there’s no way I’ll ever buy anything from them because I feel like I’ve wasted my time scrolling through a bunch of fluff looking for the usually simple answer to my simple question.

   The programs and products I’ve purchased and continued to use have been after sometimes years of consuming content such as emails, podcasts, articles, stuff like that. I don’t see anything wrong with having a SEO-friendly title for a video because it’s there and you may as well use it. What I don’t get is thinking that it by itself is going to build an audience. Better to keep in touch with people you already know, or who already know like and trust you.

That’s it for now, but you may have noticed a bit of a pattern just in the two points I’ve made in this email. Community, personal connections is what it’s all about. I’ll sleep on it and have more to share tomorrow.

James Newcomb