I have come to the conclusion that doing Search Engine Optimization as a standalone business is not worth the headache.
I figured out how to do SEO for my direct mail business and decided to sell it as a service.
Then I found out I had to become a webmaster. So I became a webmaster. I had a lot of help with the technical end, of setting up a CMS but most web designers really have no clue either how to design or to put it efficiently on the web.
But I put together a team of everything from writers, designer, project managers, analytics, etc (all freelance) and have come to the conclusion that it’s easier to give birth than to raise the dead.
For less effort — and more money — I can start a site from scratch with all the necessary components than trying to tweak a pre-existing site. Maybe take some ideas and content, but much easier to start from scratch.
And best of all, it will be better for the client!
I have been busy the last few days with new clients and learning new tricks about search engine optimization.
As an entrepreneur, I have to deal with so many issues. But I my business services are expanding from traditional direct mail to search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, and web design.
To keep up with the new stuff and everything going on with the Post Office, I sometimes feel stressed out. However, I also appreciate that I have job security as I continue to deal with new clients and their marketing challenges.
Everything is changing — and there is no way to keep on track. However, it beats working in a big corporation and then being let go without any skills that are applicable in today’s fast changing world.
Posted by Michael Rosenberg on Oct 27, 2009 in
Change Management,
How to Influence People,
Innovation I was talking to a senior executive who told me, “It takes 7 years to change a culture and I don’t even intend to be here that long.” His statement reflected the culture of the company – short-term fixes, no commitment and focus on numbers over people. What I told him blew him away. “I can change the culture within 6 months.” I said. “Not only that, I have the instrument to prove it.” I told him about the Tetrahedron Culture Instrument and how it measured culture from a number of angles. “Okay,” he smirked, “then how can you change the culture in such a short time.” Here is how.
1. Start at the top
What are the values of the organization? What are your goals and the strategy to get there? The first place is a strategic planning session that aligns with the values and ethics (and yes, they are different but more on that later) of the organization.
2. Look at the rewards
The fastest way to change a culture is to change the rewards structure of the organization. People respond to how they are punished or rewarded. Do rewards, including compensation, recognition and promotion, aligned to both the values of the organization and the goal/metrics? If you reward people who “hit their numbers” even in conflict of the organization’s values, you may do well in the short term but the long term sustainability and values of the organization will be undermined. Recognition for good things is more motivating than punishments for bad. People who are rewarded are engaged to achieve. People who are punished are disengaged and hide.
3. Communicate and train
Coaching and mentoring are very important. Great leaders create more leaders. They help their people develop the skills they need to succeed and recognize their strengths. Often intuitively they use the Appreciate Inquiry model and focus on strengths and solutions rather than weaknesses and problems.
When it is all done, you measure the before and after and, within a short period, you will start to see a significant shift in the culture.
Tags: communication, culture, ethics. leadership, recognition, rewards, strategic planning, values
Do you ever feel like a dinosaur?
The world is rapidly changing and it’s survival of the fittest.
In today’s business environment, the race is being won by the fastest, not the largest.
I am, thankfully, surviving in this tough economic environment that is killing many of my larger competitors.
The days were I envied people working at large corporations and steady paychecks have long vanished as I go to work in my garage.
Yet there are many days I feel like a dinosaur. I have yet to learn how to text. Don’t want to. Still not on Facebook, but I am on LinkedIn, but haven’t yet figured out why.
But I survive because I adapt and am flexible.
My business is constantly evolving – even though my main source of revenue is old-fashioned snail mail. However, I am expanding my marketing expertise to include web design, search engine optimization, and e-mail marketing.
I recently changed my company’s name from MarketPlace-Mail.com to MarketPlace-Solutions.com to reflect this change.
I have a degree in journalism from the University of Illinois. Talk about Jurassic Park! I remember hot lead type and bulky typewriters. It’s hard to believe that in high school, I was the only male to take a typing course where we learned how to set margins and type fast so we could be good secretaries.
I can’t learn everything, but I have stayed enough ahead of the curve to stay afloat. I adapt disruptive technology to keep my business growing.
It’s all about being flexible and curious. Change is happening whether you want it to happen or not. The challenge is to embrace the change that suits you, reject what is irrelevant, and realize you can’t do everything.
The most important tool I have learned is how to effectively use the web. I sat down and learned how to do search engine optimization – the ability to be found on the web.
I started off by paying someone, but quickly determined he was a fraud. I probably spent an hour a day for over six months figuring out how to make Google my salesperson instead of trying to make cold calls.
You cannot go to school to learn this skill. I don’t think there are any college courses on the subject because the people with the knowledge don’t have time to teach it.
I feel I have given Daniel a master’s course in search engine optimization. Daniel’s help and advice have benefited my business – and help pay his college tuition. I feel Daniel’s knowledge puts him in a better position than many of his peers in finding a job or starting his own business.
As I became more involved in SEO, I realized that I had to learn more about how websites are constructed. Again, I find many people claim knowledge, but few really know what they are doing.
I spent the last several months learning the intricacies of Cascading Style Sheets. You see, a website that was constructed 5 years ago or more was done using HTML tables. That way is obsolete, yet many are still doing it. Between the books I read, the online videos I watched, and the time I spent actually doing it, I spent more time on the subject than if I had taken a course at a university.
I learned that there are probably only 30 or less basic web designs. The infinite variety of websites is a result of manipulating the CSS.
It’s best when you have the CSS in a CMS – a content management system, which is the latest wrinkle in web design. But that is another speech.
I also learned to delegate it to other people who I can trust so I can concentrate on the business. But I have enough knowledge to look under the hood and make repairs – and determine who knows what they are talking about and who is faking it.
However, the most basic form of communication – speaking and listening – is never going to go out of style. That’s why I am in Toastmasters. Speaking and listening are skills that need to be constantly honed.
I am obviously a dinosaur. When I talk to my children about days before computers, cell phones or cable TV, I feel a bit obsolete. I have yet to figure out all the functions on my 4 remote controls.
Yet, I am surviving because I keep adapting. My secret? Going to Toastmasters every week. Every meeting I learn something new, laugh a little, and enjoy the camaraderie of my fellow Toastmasters. You can’t become extinct when you have to give a speech!
This is a copy of the press release my brother Michael wrote about my business:
With the automakers and banks receiving billions of “stimulus” dollars to help them through these difficult times and “save jobs”, the question is how much money is being committed to help the largest single source of job creation in America – small business? The answer is not a single dollar.
So, how does a small business build or even survive during a major economic downturn. “The answer,” says Steven Rosenberg, Ppesident of Marketplace-Solutions.com wryly, “is to embrace your enemy.”
Steven has had his own business Marketplace Mail for the past 18 years. A direct mail business, Steven designs and delivers bulk mailers for a number of clients. However, a major disruptive technology (the internet) has had an effect on the mail business. “In fact, the post office is down 20% over the past year alone.” comments Steve. “I hear about the post office laying off staff and many of my much larger competitors have really been hurting these past few years. It was then that I decided to embrace the technology instead of fight it.”
With a hard learning curve, Steve learned every element about search engine optimization and web design, realizing that some very ‘fancy’ websites were useless if Google couldn’t read them. “It is all about being ‘found’.” Steve says. “Actually, the internet is the great equalizer. It is a place where a small business has the same exposure has a company many times its size.”
Because of Steven’s expertise, during the last election, he was rated in the top 10 on Google for ‘political mailings’ and is consistently in the top 10 for ‘direct mail’, even with millions of competitors. The results on his business have been profound.
“Even though the economy has been sluggish, our business has remained steady and profitable. Incredibly enough, we have not seen any drop in business over the past year.” says Steve. In fact, in order to incorporate the changes in our business we’ve gone from Marketplace Mail to Marketplace Solutions to help others embrace a technology that can either be a disrupter to their business or a boon for it.”
Steve ends with this conclusion. “With no stimulus for small business, it is only through their own entrepreneurship and ingenuity that they will be able to compete.”
I am currently reading the book “Why GM Matters.” I recently finished the books “Gamble” about the war in Iraq and “What Would Google Do?” In addition, I am trying to assimilate “Web Design for ROI.”
Although these books are all different on the surface, I realize that all of them are about corporate culture. It’s a term Mike uses a lot.
The only way GM can survive, according to the book, is by changing their corporate culture — making more innovative and less bureaucratic. The author details some of the changes that have been going on for several years. It’s the vision and leadership of a few people that can determine the fate of hundreds of thousands.
Same thing with “Gamble.” It’s about the complete change that Gen. David Petraeus had to implement to keep Iraq from descending into hell. His plan was not well-received and he had many, many political obstacles to overcome. But he had a vision and a team and they changed the dynamic.
“What Would Google Do?” gives ideas on how to think outside the box — and how Google’s mindset has changed almost everything in society. I am currently trying to build membership for my synagogue. My idea? Lower membership dues and increase the base!
These are ideas and thinking processes that Michael covers in “Flexible Thinker.”
As a small business owner, I have no concept of office politics and trying to influence a huge bureaucracy. However, I constantly have to stay sharp and re-invent myself. I am redoing my website. There is no such thing as resting on your laurels in small business and failure is an option. My business has been steady this year and I am paying my bills. Not an insignificant accomplishment. Reading books is one way to “sharpen the saw” and I recommend it to other entrepreneurs.
Tags: Change Management, competitive advantage, disruptive technology, human resources, Organizational Culture
Posted by Michael Rosenberg on Mar 20, 2009 in
Change Management,
Innovation,
Organizational Culture Why is it that some businesses last only a few years while others last centuries? The answer lies in their ability to continuously innovate. The issue is that most people don’t want ‘creativity’ or ‘innovation’. “That is the way we have always done things around here.” they might say.
Innovation means thinking differently. It means thinking differently about your products, your processes, your employees. In other words it involves CHANGE. Change is like a wave. Either you can ignore it, in which case the change will overtake you and you will drown or you can get a surfboard and ride the wave. It may not take you where you thought you would be, but it will be a whole lot better than drowning (and you may enjoy the ride itself). Organizations that are innovative are change ready.
Another reason that people don’t like creativity and innovation is that they see it as impractical. It is ‘pie-in-the-sky’ stuff that does not really directly the business like project management. Yet there is what I call practical innovation.
What is practical innovation?
It starts with thinking differently. The same old thinking will always lead to the same old conclusions.
Next, the new thinking is focused into a direction and strategy. Here is where we take all of the ideas and create a strategic plan or direction.
The third step is to breakdown the strategy into a series of projects that are implemented in the organization. These projects are broken down into 3 categories – short-term (less than 6 months), medium-term (6 months to less than 2 years) and long-term (greater than 2 years).
The final part (before we start again) is to assess and measure the results. What has been learned? How has what done affected the organization, both from a bottom line and a competitive perspective?
The thing to remember is that this is a continuous process. It isn’t something you do once, say ‘glad that is over’ and then go back to normal. It is about continually creating a new normal because the world changes constantly and rapidly.
Tags: competitive advantage, creativity, measurement, practical innovation, project management, strategic planning
In order for training to be effective, you need to create new neural pathways. How do you know when there is a new neural pathway? You have an ‘aha’ moment. The ‘aha’ moment indicates, according to scientists and researchers, that the mind has actually changed. The question is – how do we create the ‘ahas’. The answer lies in a study from the University of Michigan that has absolutely nothing to do with brain research. It is a sociology experiment where people were given a flyer on the flu from the Center for Disease Control (“CDC”). What they found was that a significant portion of the people who read the flyer BELIEVED THE EXACT opposite of it within a short time frame and quoted the CDC as their source of information. What the study discovered, as we all know, is that it is very difficult to change a person’s mind and that you cannot argue myths (bad information) with facts (good information) because people only hear what they want to.
So, what does this have to do with training? What a course needs to do is create a by-pass road. In other words, don’t take on a subject head on. Through the use of metaphor and games, you can take a person in a different direction that has nothing to do with the myth (and therefore keeps their defense/neural pathway down) and then lead them in the debrief to make the connection. What happens is that you now have created a by-pass neural pathway/road that, if reinforced in the environment, will eventually overtake the myth and allow the transfer of knowledge.
Tags: aha moment, Center for Disease Control, neural pathways, University of Michigan, Washington Post
There has been a lot of research done on how training changes the brain. It is the basis for accelerated learning and what we apply in all of our instructional design. We have written previously about how to create a culture of learning and the work of Howard Gardiner from Harvard. In addition, there has been a lot of work done by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz and in his book The Mind and the Brain he discusses how neural pathways create thoughts and that through training a person’s neural pathways can be changed.
However, something very interesting appeared today in the Science Daily. Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have shown for the first time that the active training of the working memory brings about visible changes in the number of dopamine receptors in the human brain. You can read the entire article by clicking here.
The difficulty, of course, is overcoming those ‘old roads’. Part 2 will talk about the University of Michigan study that discussed how to change people’s minds.
Tags: brain research, dopamine receptors, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, Harvard, Howard Gardiner, Karolinska Institutet, Multiple Intelligences, Science Daily, The Mind and the Brain, University of Michigan
May you live in interesting times, goes the Chinese curse. Well, these are certainly interesting times. There are reports that say that the manufacturing and automotive sectors need to think and act differently. Yet, have you heard of them doing anything? As we work to promote our consulting in innovation (through Flexible Thinker), it will be interesting to see if anybody does anything about it. I find it interesting that we KNOW they need it, but they really don’t WANT it and (as Steven says) people buy what they want not what they need.
I have talked with other people in the industry and they will all tell you that you cannot give away a system to harness the innovation of the workforce and shift people to a commitment mindset. One client told me that the problem with creativity is that most people think they are already creative. You know what? My client is RIGHT! EVERYBODY IS ALREADY CREATIVE!!! The problem has never been that people are not creative. The problem is that organizations do not put systems in place to harness group innovation and, often times, actually set up obstacles to it. For instance, if you are rewarded for keeping you head low and the person who sticks their neck out get its chopped off, what are you going to do? Over 80% of all organizations have the word ‘creativity’ or ‘innovation’ in their value and mission statement, yet do not create systems to allow people to be creative.
As we enter this difficult period where the government is bailing out everybody, it will be interesting to see if these companies start to think and work differently or siimply continue to pay it lip service.
Tags: auto bailout, flexible thinker, Innovation, manufacturing