Did you see the movie, Ratatouille?

I am a firm believer that the premise — anyone can cook — is true…   Although I must say, three of my closest friends constantly try to prove me wrong.

Cait’s idea of “cooking” is putting Cheez-Wiz on a Ritz cracker with some salami or “whipping up” Suddenly Salad or whatever that godforsaken pasta-in-a-box-WITHOUT-vegetables concoction is called.

Lynn can cook a little but she is also THE reason why frozen meals have VERY detailed, step-by-step instructions — in other words, to prevent her untimely death, she is the kind of person who reads and closely follows “first, take your nasty, little, shrink-wrapped, chemical dinner out of the box.”

Barbara, er, Cristina,  is one of those people who puts a full pot of water on the stove, sets the heat on low (if she remembers to turn it on at all) and then wonders why it has not boiled an hour later. Needless to say, when someone says “she can hardly boil water” it’s not true. “She can’t boil water. Period.”

Could they all be trained to cook? Yes. Most definitely. Everyone can cook.

Can everyone be a chef? Not. So. Much.

The thing about being a chef versus being a cook is that you’ve got to have passion — and you need to put muscle behind it. Not your biceps but that muscle the size of your fist — called the heart.

Everyone is a chef somewhere in their life. (if you’re like most, it will have nothing to do with cooking but something else that you’re ON FIRE about!) You have something. The company you own or work for has something. We all have that greatness inside of us. (Don’t cue the Kumbaya music quite yet, I haven’t finished.)

Take my dear friend, Lois Geller for instance. She’s unbelievably passionate about marketing — she doesn’t really seem to care what kind of marketing it is — catalogs, solo packages, websites, email, blogs, telemarketing, Facebook — Lois loves it all, just as long as it’s GOOD marketing.

Lois is a Twitter Addict (as in she REALLY needs a support group), corrects every Yiddish word I mispronounce (who can say kvetch as one syllable? I mean really.) and overall, drives me batty (in the best of ways.) She also had a tremendous impact on my career. Not because she owned a chi-chi-la-la agency on Madison Avenue or she wrote a lot of influential books on direct marketing but because she is one of the most creative people to walk the planet. Literally. She and her crackerjack team should be tasked with establishing world peace. They’d probably have it done by Christmas. That’s how good they are.

Lois is one of those people who has been there and done that. I swear, she’s worked at every agency, with every client in every area of the world. She has THE best stories of things she’s done for Weight Watchers, Fairmont, American Express, Apthorp Cleaners, and a bunch of others. Some of the tales are inspirational (like why she moved to Florida) and others are just plain funny — like mistakenly sending a bunch of hard-core sex tips to a bunch of diet magazine subscribers. She has a unique ability to make you laugh — cry — or want to smack her (if you follow her on Twitter.)

Then, you look at her blog — joyofdirectmarketing.com. It’s not that it’s bad — it’s just that it’s not very Lois — and truly not at all joyful.

It’s got a lot of white space and it’s quite vanilla — especially for a woman who gives out prizes (usually trolls) in her speeches. (Yes, I said trolls.)

The header looks like something that could be on any social media consultant’s site — which is not good as Lois Geller is way more than one channel. There is no picture of Lois. No red photo of her as seen on Twitter (over and over). Not a lot to see or do in the first view. A search function that doesn’t really work all that well. A calendar that does God only knows what. Limited navigation…

You get the idea. It’s the blog of a regular cook and NOT a chef, which is extremely unfortunate because Lois is indeed a MASTER chef. (And no, she can’t make anything but reservations when it comes to food either.)

It doesn’t really matter that Lynn, Cait or Barbara aren’t chefs in the traditional sense. Lynn eats things from a box, Cait eats things from a can and Barbara eats things that come in take-out containers from the latest in pretty-place-lousy-food restaurants. None of them are particularly passionate about food (although they all would sell their souls to the devil for a lifetime supply of chocolate) and the fact that they’re not up to date on the latest in molecular gastronomy is what it is… completely ok.

What does matter is that they are all passionate about other things in their lives — just like Lois is passionate about marketing and when they’re talking about those things — the things that are most important to them — they speak like chefs. (Chefs that can’t cook but chefs nonetheless.)

The case of Ms. Geller is a little different however. She’s constantly yapping on Twitter that she doesn’t like her blog and she wants ideas on how to fix it. My advice to her: embrace it like you do your speeches — pig hats and all.

A blog and a website (her website falls into a similar category) that is ALL-LOIS-ALL-DAY — complete with wackadoodle pictures, videos with her sing-song voice, successful case studies, favorite tweets, hopping trolls (ok, maybe not) and all the other things that showcase Lois Geller as the master marketer and creative genius she truly is would be so much better — and make her so much happier — than the frozen pizza site she’s got now.

In what areas of your business are you a chef and how are you portraying it to your users? It’s ok to be Lean Cuisine or Stove Top Stuffing about some things but not others — and definitely not on the important stuff.

Remember, your unique ability to highlight your inner chef is why people come to your site in the first place. You may have the biggest breadth of product line, free customization, incredibly unique merchandise or the best technical support. That’s what you need to promote. The chef in you. (Now you can cue the music — I recommend Carmina Burana as opposed to that religious campfire song however.)

P.S. If you have good examples of companies or people who show their inner chef really well, please add them to the comments, ok?

Tip: For those of you who skip to the bottom of my posts for the “meat”, here’s your tip: If you have an ecommerce site that sells promotional products, the promotional products are all about being a cook. Everyone and their brother has them. Everyone “can sell promotional products.” But if you can imprint them overnight like http://www.rushimprint.com/, that’s where you’re the chef. Your site needs to showcase your inner chef. Not your “anyone can cook” abilities.

Have you been to time-out as an adult?  (No, not Time-Out, the trendy restaurant in Dubai, the place in the corner of your house or on the stairs.)

I was there just yesterday and although I can’t say much for it as an effective disciplinary tool, it did get me to think…  But first with the story…

I was at my brother’s house with my two nephews: Anonymous and Nameless.  Anonymous is three and a half and Nameless (aka 2.0 or TWO, which stands for The Wee One) is 16 months.

I was making dinner and the boys were making cookies (read: destroying the kitchen and mainlining brown sugar.)

My brother?  Supervising, as usual.  (My brother is either extraordinarily helpful or unbelievably useless in the kitchen.  Yesterday, he was completely worthless.  Doesn’t matter which extreme we get, he’s ALWAYS bossy.)

If you’re a parent, you know that making cookies with children is an exercise in patience.  Just imagine making cookies with two terrorists-in-training, cooking paella the old-fashioned way, while having your sibling quarterback from the couch.  (He’s a real foodie so his tips are often helpful but really — do we need to use the vanilla from Mexico not the one from St. Kitts, in the kids’ cookies?  I think not.)

Every so often my brother would come in to inspect what was going on.  (Inspect means taste and offer pithy comments.)  Hearing simultaneous uh-ohs as the entire bag of flour spilled on the floor, he came in for a fourth time to offer his two cents on why his kitchen resembled my dating life.

I did what any sane woman would do at the time.  I hit him with a wooden spoon.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  In front of the kids yadda yadda yadda.  Call Child Protective Services.  It was actually a playful swat.

“YOU NEED TO GO TO TIME-OUT NOW.” Anonymous bellowed.  “RIGHT NOW.”

Cute, I thought.  He’s very cute when he’s angry.  Then I looked at The Wee One.  2.0’s arms were crossed, his chin was jutted out so far a bird could perch on it and he was tapping his left foot.  “Time Out.” He grunted.  TWO does not talk.  He can but he chooses not to.  Why would you talk when you get everything you want without it? (And yes, that’s a rhetorical question for you social media folks.)

TWO pointed to the wall.  Emphatically he repeated, “TIME-OUT.”

I looked at my brother.  “Are you flipping kidding me?” I said with my eyes.  He nodded at the boys, both of their little bodies positioned in defiance.

“There is NO hitting in this house.”  Anonymous bellowed.  Oh how I wish my brother was like my friend, Brian, who doesn’t punish his kids till he sees blood.  (Of course, Brian is a single Dad so that kind of explains why he gets to skip all these think-about-what-you-did pleasantries.)

I looked at my brother as if to say “I hope your dinner burns to a crisp” (yes, I am the picture of maturity) and begrudgingly did the Walk of Shame to the Time-Out wall.

Anonymous is diabolically smart.  I was convinced that he was sending me to Time-Out so he could finish off the chocolate chips.  He had already “snuck” more than we had left to put in the cookies.

“How much longer?” I asked after being there for about 3 seconds.

“There is NO talking in Time-Out!” The boys said in unison.  (Technically, 2.0 just did his caveman thing.)  Thank goodness, Anonymous is a redhead, not a blonde, otherwise I’d think he was in some sort of futuristic Aryan training school.

Stand and face the wall.  No talking.

What fresh hell is this and what on earth does this have to do with web marketing, you may ask.

First, two minutes is a very long time. I never remember that until I actually have to be still for two minutes.  (Yes, my yoga teacher says that if savasana was graded, I would fail miserably.)  When you are looking at your user sessions (the length of time people stay on your site) and you think that “seven minutes isn’t all that long” think again.  Seven minutes is an eternity.

Second, not only does your web site have a lot of screaming girls but it’s also really like Time-Out for a lot of your users. Huh?  What the hell does that mean?  It means that the perspective that you see sending people there is not at all what it’s like when you’re facing the wall, er, when the users are looking at their computers.

Long ago, in the days before Tealeaf (one of my all-time favorite packages), I used to do something that I encourage you to try.  It’s not sophisticated and it’s not statistically significant but if you do it, I guarantee you will learn something useful about your site.  (Yes, @wilsonellis, @zkellyq and @jamesfowlkes, I am looking at you.)

Take 10 or so random sessions that have just happened on your site.  Look carefully at what each user has done, what they’ve seen and how they’ve exited.  Look at the first page they entered in on and then follow, page-by-page, what they clicked, trying to figure out what they did and where they went next.  Act like one of those CSI guys trying to recreate the crime.

It won’t take you long before you start envisioning things in a different way.  You might find that the person exited because they were on a dead end.  You may see that they got stuck on a page because there were no action buttons to click.  You might find that your navigation disappeared when it shouldn’t have or that things just all of a sudden got very confusing.  No, you won’t always find what or why they left but you will share their experience of your site and how it actually works in practice, not just in theory.

No matter what, you’ll see things from an entirely new perspective.

P.S. I am completely aware that #2 (not to be confused with TWO) above sounds cheesy but I really do encourage you to try it.  In the ole’ days (when I was walking uphill to work, both ways, in raging blizzards, with no jacket and only cardboard on my feet), those kind of duct tape and spit things were the only kind of “usability studies” our clients could afford.  I can’t begin to tell you how much I learned from doing that kind of stuff.  You’ll know what I mean once you do it.

P.P.S.  If you’d like to comment on my brother’s parenting skills, I am more than happy to give you his e-mail address so you can write him directly.  Being the “bad influence” that I am, he doesn’t much listen to me and when I say “much” I mean NOT AT ALL.

On the 2.2 days a year that I am not traveling, I live in Vermont. My nephrologist is in Seattle.

If I moved to whatever the furthest place in the world is from Seattle, my nephrologist would still be in Seattle. Meaning that I would travel from anywhere on the planet to see him. I went through over three dozen kidney doctors before I found him. I saw the top guys in the world and I settled on him. Why? Two reasons. (1) He’s unequivocally one of the most competent, knowledgeable, skilled doctors I have ever had and he fits; and (2) He consistently exceeds my expectations.

The “fit” part is important and often underestimated. If you don’t like your doctor, no matter how much any person or report tells you that they’re the Best/Top/Most Published/Most Honored/Least Sued Doctor, dump them and find someone else. Period.

The expectations part is a bit more complicated. The thing about expectations is that one person has to set them first. Both parties can have expectations but one person needs to be in charge and manage them. (Yes, I know, all the “it’s about the conversation” types think both people should have equal expectations. What-the-flip-ever. Some stuff sounds a lot better in theory than it actually works out in practice.)

When I first met, Dr. A., I was over an hour late for my appointment. (That was not intentional. I get lost in a paper bag.)

I cycloned into his office as I normally do and after exchanging a few pleasantries (the guy gives succinct new meaning) I said something to the effect of “look, I can’t commit to a man. There’s no way in Hell I am committing to a machine 3-4 times a week. You need to figure out how to solve my problems without a transplant or a dialysis machine.”

He looked at me quizzically and then nodded at his nurse. I recognized the nod as it’s one that I have seen often — it’s the “make sure to request a drug panel on her blood work lab sheet because this girl is obviously smoking crack” nod.

But guess what? He did it. EXACTLY what I asked him to. He did something that some of the most renowned doctors at the most prestigious hospitals in the world told me was outright impossible. Yes, it’s true. A guy who calls his pocket calendar his “BlueBerry” — yes, blue, not black, because it’s got a blue PAPER cover — solved problems that were supposedly unsolvable.

It’s the same thing with your web site. When a user comes to your site for the first time, you set their expectations. The first view of your site (literally — the first view — the first screen) tells them what they’re supposed to do there.

Is your site a library or is it a bookstore?

Are they supposed to buy or are they supposed to browse? (Remember, any time the user exchanges their personal data with you, it’s a transaction — there’s a market value to their info — so even if you’re trying to get a lead, you can still have a “buying” site.)

Is your search in the upper righthand corner or is there a perpetual cart or lead form there? (A perpetual cart is a cart that stays with you throughout the buying process. You can use them for leads too.) One tells you to buy. The other tells you to browse.

If you have a blog, is there a way to contact you for information about your services or do you bury that somewhere below the fold?

Do you have an action bar or just navigation? An action bar tells the user what things they are supposed to do on your site (sign up for your FREE newsletter, order from a catalog, check out the web specials/overstock/clearance items.) Navigation tells them where they can go, er, in a nice way. (The best, for any site, is a combination of the two.)

Do you have “click here now” buttons or do you just assume that users will know where/how to click? (Hint: they won’t.) Do you have a home link or do you believe that users know to click on your logo to get there? (Hint: they don’t.) Does the top view have just one huge visual and/or a bunch of text or are there are a lot of things to do or look at? (Hint: the latter works best.) Do you ask them to raise their hand (i.e., fill out a survey/poll, download a white paper, sign up for a webinar) or do you just hope they will? (Hint: if wishes were horses….)

You have one chance to make a first impression.

The first screen on your site often determines your outcomes. First screen. One chance. One first impression.
What kind of expectations are YOU setting for your user? What are you telling them to do?

I recently delivered a keynote address at one of those chi-chi-la-la invitation-only conferences. Just before my speech, this guy, Jack, in the second row calls out, “I hope I learn something today.”

I must admit, before I slam him to high-heaven, that Jack’s a decent guy. He runs a privately-held company that’s worth a little over a billion that he built himself with virtually no seed money. He sold it to a VC firm in the late 90’s and bought it back two years later because he didn’t like what they were doing with it.

He’s been to over a dozen of my seminars and he’s FINALLY starting to think that this internet thing may stick. (No, I am not kidding.)This is a guy, who until a couple years ago, had a secretary print out his email three times a day so he could scrawl all over it and return it to her for typing up and sending.

“I mean last time I implemented one of your ideas it was a bomb. Did NOT work whatsoever.” Jack added with a smirk.

What is it with these people? I mean, bring a voodoo doll or something but not right before a speech. Good grief!

Just out of morbid curiosity and basically because I just couldn’t resist, I retorted, “What did you test?”

“Abandoned carts. The program was worthless.” He all but shouted.

Nice buddy, real nice. The flipping topic of my speech was “38 Sure-Fire Tips for Increasing Your Conversion” and Jack The Ripper was attempting to destroy my credibility.

So I started asking him questions… One after another… like an FBI interrogator.

What did you mail? When did you mail it? What was the subject line? Was it personalized? And so on and so forth. It took me eleven questions but I finally found a kink in his armor.

“How many did you mail?” I inquired, not really noticing that EVERYONE in the room was listening intently.

“Seven.” Jack exclaimed triumphantly!

“Seven what? Seven thousand? Seven million? ” I asked.

“No, just seven.”

I burst out laughing. I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. He was dead-as-a-corpse serious. You could have heard a pin drop.

“How could you mail seven and think that you had any kind of statistical validity or that you’d get any results at all for that matter?” I shot back. “I’m not trying to be rude here (I really wasn’t) but are you smoking crack? I mean, you have a $350 average order and you only mailed SEVEN PEOPLE!

If you were lucky, four of them actually received the email which means 1-2 people might have clicked on it – MAX. How exactly did you expect to calculate a quarter to half an order? And just for my information, how long are you leaving your cookies open and at what point do you expire your carts?”

The host was getting anxious about starting on time, so I told Jack we’d finish the conversation after my speech and we did. I’ll spare you all the gory details, but the discussion got VERY heated before Jack got the point. In his defense, this happens with a lot of my clients.

Online testing is difficult.

I will be the first one to admit that. It’s not at all like offline testing. There are many more variables that you have to fit into the equation, the data can be suspect, all sorts of things can impact it, and so on and so forth.

Plus, people tend to do one of two things. They either look at data that is unreliable or inaccurate …. or they use data that is good but they read it incorrectly. Even worse, a tester may often have such a strong theory going into the whole thing that his judgment is clouded. (It took me a long time to become objective.)

8 Tips for Improving Your Online Testing

1. Know whether or not you have a large enough sample size to test. Jack sent just seven abandoned cart emails and then threw out the program because it “failed miserably.” The guy built a big business so it’s obvious that he’s not taking the little yellow bus to work, but he’s not alone in his poor testing decisions. I see literally hundreds of people make the exact same mistake (although mailing only seven was definitely the worst). If you’re going to test something, you need to have significance. A test that ends up with 32 inquiries on one versus 33 inquiries on the other should most likely be thrown out or retested.

2. Do not test anything within 10 days of a major holiday. That’s 10 days before and 10 days after. If you are testing something seasonal (i.e. Christmas, especially) and you simply MUST test, do as many things as you can to isolate everything except a solo variable.

3. If something major happens in the world, throw out the test results. They’re more than likely going to be garbage. If you are www.nbc.com and you are doing a big test of your store, don’t run the test during the night of TheBiggest Loserfinale and think it’s going to accurately reflect what’s going to happen the rest of the year because it won’t.

4. Make sure to separate your online-sourced users from your offline-sourced users. This will make a huge difference. You don’t necessarily need to have an equal percentage of each but you do need to segment them so you can track them separately. Same with e-mail folks — no e-mails versus e-mails must be a segment.

5. Make sure the TOD (time of day) and DOW (day of week) is the same. Many times people come up to me and say — “I did so-and-so test and this was the clear winner.” When I look at the results, I realize that one test was conducted on Monday-Wednesday and the other was Thursday-Sunday… Or perhaps one was conducted from 6 am to 6 pm and the other went from 6 pm to 6 am. That’s not a test, especially on the Internet where time makes such a big difference.

6. Considering testing the same variable more than once. From an online perspective, backtesting the control is almost always a must.

7. Make sure the test is an exact A/B split. You can’t test email creative and landing pages all at once and expect to come out with valid results. Separate your variables and test them one at a time.

8. Most important, watch your metrics carefully. One of my clients recently threw out a 3-month test because there “weren’t more orders at the end.” After closely examining the results, I realized that although there were fewer completed orders, there were over 70% more attempted orders with the test version than with the control. After a retest, we found that the new landing pages were getting a lot more people to ATC (adopt to cart) which, with a good email follow-up process was instrumental in increasing their overall revenue!

I don’t need to have my vision checked but I want a PDF report from an eye doctor that I can e-mail to folks.

Yes, you read that correctly. I want a detailed explanation from a certified optometrist that I don’t need contacts, glasses, or Lasik.

I can see just fine. Why?

I get at least a dozen comments a week about our sites being uglier than a dog’s breakfast. Most of the folks who write give me the benefit of the doubt and think maybe I am “just too busy” to know what our designers are doing.

Others think we are testing ugly (as if this is a metric that needs measurement.)

Nobody ever seems to think that what we have is exactly what we want and/or need. (Ok, it’s not at all “exactly” but it IS pretty close, as unfortunate as the case may be for our creative team.)

Here’s the thing, folks… I know our sites are not going to win awards for aesthetics and the truth is, I COULD NOT CARE LESS.

I am not in this business to have pretty sites. I am in this business to make money.

Money comes from action.
Money comes from people clicking, calling and going to the final step. (The one wherefreshly-minted green bills are involved.)
Our sites are ugly but they do exactly what it is that they need to do. (And in a qualified way to boot.)

If you want to be REALLY successful online, you need to take your ego out of the equation.
No, you don’t need a site that looks like mine. (I am extreme, mostly to prove a point.)
But you do need a site that makes it clear for the user — NOT for you, for the USER — theyneed to know what you want them to do and how they should do it… and do it NOW (as in right this very minute!)

For those of you that like it ONLY when I write something “concrete” and send me missile mails any time I “try to act like Chris Brogan or Seth Godin” (which roughly translates to anypost whereI don’t list at leastthree tips), the ONLY thing you should take away from this is that you need to ask for the order/inquiry on EVERY VIEW of EVERY PAGE in AS MANY QUADRANTS and in AS MANY WAYS as you possibly can. Granted, it’s not pretty but it really does work.

Why? Because aesthetics really don’t matter as much as people think-hope-wish they do. The brain thatdoes the work online cares about security and speed. In other words, you could have the prettiest site in the universe and get no inquiries or orders because it doesn’t appear”safe.”(In the brain, that translates to a place where it’s ok for you to spend time.) The key to a good website isn’t being sexy, it’s being functional. (Read: action oriented.)

If you’ve gotten that down-pat, here are two BONUS tips,
just for you —

1. You are not your user. Just because you like something does not mean that your user will. Just because you do it one way does not mean that your user will do it the same way. You need to get out of your brain and into theirs. First place to look: your exit pages. The only truly acceptable pages are confirmation and thank you pages. If a user is exiting some other place, it means you didn’t do your job correctly. You weren’t clear about setting your expectations and so they didn’t live up to them.

2. Just because someone says they hate it, doesn’t mean they don’t respond to it. (The best way to figure this out for yourself is to spend some time at some adult content sites — no, not looking at the “content” per se, but the execution.) People say they hate billboards but for some companies, they are one of the most effective forms of advertising. People say they hate pop-ups. But do they work? For many, it’s the best tool in their arsenal. What actually works and what people say they like are often two very different things so try testing things that folks “hate.” (And yes, you MUST give the test your very best shot — as if your job depended on it. If you set the test up to fail, you should be shot.)

John Doe says: “In front of 30 of your clients, you asked one of them to order you panties? Seriously? What kind of *&^%$#@ lunatic are you?”

Dear John. Your wife left you for her personal trainer. How could she? With a fake name like John Doe, you must be terribly creative. (And seriously “John,” if you are going to write “anonymous” blog comments you might want to use something like Anonymizer. I mean really.)

Yes, I did ask one of my clients to order underwear online. Hanky Panky’s specifically. Whether or not they were for me will remain unknown. I got enough whore comments after my Are Crazy Women Better in Bed? post — I don’t need more.

YES, THERE WAS A VERY GOOD REASON. I was making a point. (Yes, it happens… sometimes.)

I was at a client’s and they went on and on and on about how much they wanted to be like Nordstrom. (One of the worst ecommerce web sites ever in my not-so-humble opinion.) Nordstrom does this. Nordstrom does that. On and on about Nordstrom as if they were actually an Amazon or eBags.

Finally, I had enough so I said “go online and order me four pairs of honey-colored, low-rise Hanky Panky’s — the 4 for $45 deal that they have now. If you can do it within 10 minutes, I’ll give you $1,000.”

To make a very long story short (involving having to prove that I actually had $1,000 cash in my wallet), the client earned NOTHING. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

Why? As much as I’d like to say it was because he’s an idiot, the truth is he’s razor-sharp and a very sophisticated online shopper. It was more to do with the fact that Nordstrom doesn’t have a quantity box (yes, you read that correctly) and their buy and save offer looks something like this:

Buy 4 or more & save!
Add 4 or more of this item to your Shopping Bag and save $0.65 per item—that’s 4 for $45. Use Promotion Code BUYANDSAVE on the Order Summary page in Checkout to reflect the special price. Items must be ordered at the same time but can be ordered in any combination of sizes and colors. While supply lasts.

Yeah, good luck with that.

The point is: just because they’re a big company doesn’t mean that they know what they are doing.

Just because you see something that you like on an Internet Retailer Top 500 site doesn’t mean it works.

“Poor Mack Collier. That Amy Africa person has him cornered in that mini-room. I’m sure he wants to get away from her but how can he? He’s so polite and well-mannered –“

I tried to stop listening and focus on something — anything else — while words like “aggressive”, “bully”, “witch with a b-” and so on constantly interrupted my thoughts.
The three women — two of whom I know and one of whom I don’t (although it didn’t seem to impact her from making vicious comments about me) — kept on yapping….
Diabolical thoughts of making a loud entrance and dramatic exit from the ladies powder room danced through my brain but alas, my respect for Mack, who was probably waiting outside wondering what in the heck (hey, he’s from Alabama — they say heck down there) was taking me so long, prevented me from making a scene. (And let’s face it, even if I didn’t utter ONE word, it would have been a kitty litter dust-up….)
As I waited not-so-patiently for them to leave, I distracted myself with some of the things that Mack Collier and I had discussed that morning.
Anyone who knows me, knows I’ve had just about enough of social media and the players — many of whom who give new meaning to “the ego grows in the depths of isolation” and most of whom are mean girls (or even worse, mean boys posing as mean girls.)
However, Mack is different. (And no, not just because he’s a Southerner and says things like “damned skippy” which I find amusing for some reason.) He’s a gentleman in every sense of the word; he bends over backwards to help everyone who asks him (even though most of those I’ve witnessed don’t deserve it); he’s gracious and humble as all get out, and most important, he’s not like all the other snake oil salesmen, crawling around the wild world of inbound marketing. (In other words, he actually knows something.)
If it wasn’t for the VERY FEW folks like Mack, I would have given up my QLOG on Day #2 and Twitter on Minute #3. I still hold that most companies get more than enough traffic — and frankly don’t need any more, they just need to figure out a way to convert that traffic to sales — but since the majority of marketers seem to be more interested in creating their own paparazzi (in other words, wasting time on Time-Suck, er, Twitter) than actually selling to people who have actual propensity to buy their products/services, I’ve been forced to learn a little bit about it. (And when I say little, I’m talking teensy-tiny here. Social media will forever be outside my wheelhouse, no matter how many whippersnappers or Bathroom Bimbelinas like the girls above, accuse me of being an old dog unwilling to learn new clicks, er, tricks.)
So, what exactly have I learned from Mack? Here are the top seven things. (Please note, Mack speaks with an accent — not a twang but a touch of social media-ese — so I’ve had to translate these seven sure-fire tips into, well, English.)
1. Not every company should be doing social media but EVERY company should be doing social media MONITORING. Even if you choose not to (or don’t have the time to devote to) spurring and spawning the conversation about your products or services, it’s going to take place. Therefore, you need to develop tools and techniques to make you a better listener. (Icicles are forming in Hell as we speak because I said that.)
2. The idea that content is king in blogging is total BS. Often times folks believe that if they develop a blog, with solid content, people will flock to it. So NOT the case. Mack believes that if you want people to read your blog, you need to work the system — Twitter, Facebook, posting comments on other people’s blogs and so on. From my personal experience, this is a lot of work — however, if you don’t want to put it in the sweat equity, you are going to need to pay for advertising on StumbleUpon, Izea, and HARO or by buying keywords, relevant banner ads, etc. (By the way, this post and the discussion afterwards are worth reading: http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/2009/06/idea-that-content-is-king-in-blogging.html.)
3. It really is a case of quality over quantity. As much as it’s tempting to buy 1,000 Facebook Friends for only $29.95, I never do it. (Bad example as I don’t even use Facebook but you get the idea.)
My dear friend, Lois Geller, follows over 4,000 people on Twitter and she’s constantly hammering people who follow none. “Don’t you want to learn?” she’ll say in that sweet, sing-song voice of hers. If I follow 4,000 people will I make more money on Twitter? What about if I follow 10,000 — will that be an exponential increase? Probably not. (Two dozen of the people who follow me do so because of their belief in the “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” saying. I also have thirteen dogs and seven babies. Even if my friend’s kid is going to do business with us, it’s not going to be for at least seventeen years.) I could go on but you get the point.
The number of people who follow you doesn’t guarantee that you will make any money there or anywhere else for that matter either.
Not to mention… if you need to talk to the decision maker to get a sale and the people who follow you are not, well, there just might be a lot of time-wasting, tire-kicking going on.
4. You need to think about the people you are trying to reach. I got my ass kicked with my Are Crazy Women Better in Bed? post. A lot of my readers weren’t happy. People thought it was “over the top” and “too brash — EVEN for me.” Personally, I think its the best post on conversion I’ve ever written but the truth is that my readers were right — it wasn’t written for them. (And yes, I will dedicate a post about why I wrote it when the dust has all settled.) Do I regret writing it? No. Because it served exactly the purpose I wanted it to serve. With that said, if I had known that people were going to be so offended, I may have done what I needed to do some other way. (More about that in #7.)
5. Just because it’s easy to get a blog doesn’t mean it’s easy to maintain it. Yes, I learned this firsthand from wanting to stop mine after say, the THIRD post. (The allure of having one was far more exciting than actually posting on one, that’s for sure.) Mack’s been blogging for over four years and he’s learned a lot along the way — if you want your blog to be successful, it needs to be visually appealing (this is for certain as people see things in pictures, not in text, online); you’ve got to allow your users to comment on it AND you need to respond (I completely blew this on my first couple of posts and now everyone just sends me e-mails, which are nice but miss the whole community-aspect I want); you need to post frequently so your users have a pattern (this is something I am still working on); and above all, you need to create value. Honestly, I usually find all this value-talk a bit too-crunchy-granola-let’s-all-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbaya for my tastes. However, the way Mack explains it actually is a concept that I understand because I often watch our clients struggle with it. Blogging about your products one-by-one is interesting to nobody — not even the merchandisers who selected them. Blogging about how you can solve a problem or help someone become a better something is very interesting. Probably why Kodak’s blog helps you become a better photographer instead of just blogging about their cameras. (More about why your blog sucks can be found here: http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/2009/04/five-reasons-why-your-company-blog.html)
6. You will fail. Despite what many so-called social media experts will tell you, there is no magic formula for this stuff. What works for you might not work for me and vice-versa. In one of Mack’s posts, he says that he’s made a lot of mistakes along the way and that what he did when he first started blogging wasn’t exactly like what he’s doing today. He goes on to cite Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk about children and creativity. Children “make a go of it even if they aren’t sure what the right way is.” As we grow older, we become fearful of being wrong which Mack thinks is “mostly right.” (More on that and a link to Robinson’s talk are found here: http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/2009/05/you-will-fail-at-social-media.html.) I’ve been at this less than two months and I have made more mistakes than I can count. You get up, dust yourself off and get back in the saddle again.
7. You need to talk about what your readers want you to talk about, not what you want to talk about. Ok, so this is my biggest struggle and perhaps one that I will never conquer. Over half of the people who write me say something rage-inducing like “I love your tips on conversion, now can you please tell me how to take advantage of Twitter?” No. I cannot. I suck at Twitter, I barely use it and I have ZERO expertise where Twitter is concerned. Zero. Zip. None. Nada.
I don’t care how much money you want to throw at me (and the offers have been very generous), I am not going to give you advice on something I know nothing about. I got into this space when NOBODY had an e-mail account and still thought the fax machine was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I have been here through the days when you called someone after you sent them an e-mail to “just make sure they received it” because you didn’t really trust that wacky-cyberspace-thing and I am living through the “how do we make our message work on mobile devices?” age.
Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think social media is ALL a fad — but I also see a life beyond Google. (In 1999, Yahoo was the closest thing to God you could get. Yes, I said Yahoo. NOT Google.)
You need to do what’s best for your business. For you, it might mean building a Facebook fan page or it might mean, improving your lead-form-from-Hell. It may even mean doing both.
But whatever you do, pick your battles. There are some people and some things that are just not worthy of a fight. No matter how much you want to pounce on them.
P.S. If social media is YOUR battle — the war you want to wage — do yourself a favor, contact Mack and ask him about his down-and-dirty social media audit (it’s unbelievably inexpensive and worth every penny.) I don’t get any money from recommending him (so please spare me your e-mails and/or sales pitches) but I adore the guy because he drinks Dr. Pepper, NOT Kool-Aid where social media is concerned. Unlike his counterparts that think social media is the free world’s way to salvation, Mack has a clear idea of what works and what doesn’t and he’ll be more than happy to tell you.
P.P.S. Those social media folks are terrible (read: SUCK, BITE and BLOW) at selling themselves. Mack is a consultant and makes his money off his knowledge, experience and expertise. Please write him only if you are serious and have purchasing authority. If you write him for free advice that you think you are too good or know better than to use, you will have to deal with me. And trust me when I say, I am not from Alabama. I grew up in Vermont. We learn to tip cows five days after we learn to walk.
P.P.P.S. You can reach Mack at mack.collier at gmail.com (Yes, the “at” should be @ but I don’t want to make it easy for the spammers who seem to be so obsessed with me to get his address.) His site is www.mackcollier.com. He also has another site called the Viral Garden. You can find that here: http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/. If you want to follow him on Twitter, he’s @mackcollier.